Yet as the fair trade world has discussed this question, certification has grown into something far more than a market niche.

In a new paper, we look at the current state of ethical certification, especially labels making fair trade claims. This paper looks at the latest research on the impacts of ethical certification, as well as changes in the food system over the past decades, including increasing corporate consolidation, and the impacts that has had on attempts at market-driven change.

READ MORE

Ethical Certifications: Growing in Scope

Fair trade, and ethical certifications more broadly, have become enshrined in companies’ Corporate Social Responsibility Programs. Certifications have become a de facto benchmark for what’s fair, for pricing, baseline working conditions, and more. Certifications are used to guide billions in public procurement, and are being pointed to as possible partners for corporations in adhering to the European Union’s forthcoming mandatory due diligence legislation. From food safety to forced labor, certifications are promoted as a solution. Most recently, as Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings grow as a hot trend in finance with over $35 trillion in global assets invested in funds that make claims around vetting companies on ESG principles, certifiers are promoting themselves as a solution there as well.

While many of us working for justice struggle to make legislative progress due to corporate capture of elected officials, certifications offer themselves as a solution to regulatory gaps and government failure to enforce basic rights. Yet these certifications, with rules written by corporate-friendly multi-stakeholder processes, offer an even more corporate-friendly form of soft law.

Thus, the broader movements for food justice, human and labor rights would do well to pay attention to ethical certifications – they’re definitely not just about choosing a chocolate bar these days.

We Urgently Need Real Corporate Accountability

As multinational corporations have adopted fair trade and other certifications to fulfill compliance requirements within their supply chains, the rules-based language of compliance has overtaken the initial purpose of the movement. At this point, fair trade labeling focuses more on prohibitions for those with least power in supply chains vs challenging the power of the biggest brands. There needs to be a reckoning with the scope of multinational corporations and their disproportionate market leverage to couple that with responsibility–and levers of power that are suited to holding them to account for the consequences of the decades, and centuries, of extractive purchasing practices that have left communities in poverty.

What comes next?

Fair trade certification reveals the complications and inherent flaws of looking to a market-based, voluntary system to address the fundamental injustices of our food and trade systems that are built on 500 years of colonization and extractive capitalism. Without a deliberate effort to recognize the power dynamics inherent in these relationships, too often certification has helped replicate, and even reinforce, the dynamics between worker and boss, and between the so-called Global South (producers) and Global North (purchasers).

The mechanics of exploitation rely on defining some people as expendable, putting their human rights and their humanity, below the goals of protecting profits and maintaining business as usual. Oppression based on race, gender, caste, national origin, and immigration status, to name just a few factors, helps to define these categories of marginalization. Adding more rules alone does not change the fundamental power dynamics.

Our new paper focuses on the flaws of certification, the critical weaknesses where well-intentioned programs are falling short, and even causing harm. Fundamental transformations are urgently needed to change our food, farming, trade, and economic systems to put food justice, racial justice, and climate justice at the center.

Transformation is urgently needed. Our new paper includes some suggestions for reforms that could help shift the balance of power within supply chains, using the levers of purchasing and certification systems as they currently exist.

VIEW/DOWNLOAD REPORT

The post Looking Back, Looking Forward: Fair Trade Certification in 2022 appeared first on Fair World Project.

We, the undersigned Certified B Corps have joined together—with the support of certification watchdog, Fair World Project —because we believe the very mission of B Lab and the integrity and relevance of B Corp Certification is at risk.

As brands, we are Certified as B Corps because progressive social impact and environmental stewardship are core to our approach to business. We believe that B Lab and the broader community of B Corp Certified brands are an important force in transitioning our economy away from extractive practices and towards economic models that truly benefit people and the planet. Because we value this community and deeply believe in what it means to be a Certified B Corp, it is imperative that we speak up now to protect the B Corp Certification and the movement it represents.

We are united in our concern about Nespresso’s recent Certification as a B Corp. Collectively, we envision a world where B Corp values can scale to include companies of any size, but this must not happen in a way that dilutes the integrity of the movement the certification stands for. Without a structurally higher certification bar and a mechanism for enforced accountability within the B Impact Assessment or certification process, we are concerned that corporations will do the bare minimum to ‘greenwash’ themselves as B Corps.

The fair trade movement was born decades ago to address the exploitative and unethical human rights abuses involved in coffee bean farming and coffee supply chains. While distinct from and broader than a fair trade certification, the B Corp Certification should nevertheless structurally build on the fair trade principle of centering human rights, and rule out historically exploitative companies who have not put remediation and restorative structures in place to benefit the people in their supply chains.

Although Nespresso has achieved the minimum currently required for certification, scoring 84 out of 200 points, Nespresso’s abysmal track record on human rights from child labor and wage theft to abuse of factory workers is well documented by the media and NGOs.  Indeed, Nespresso’s extractive business model is publicly known to be fundamentally at odds with the ethical and just future B Corps want to build and should have structurally been a barrier to Nespresso’s B Corp Certification. Structural barriers in the certification process could be improved through a more informed and thorough review of Risk Factors taking fair trade movement history and NGO expertise into account.

Nespresso’s size certainly provides additional complexity and challenges for traceability and transparency throughout its supply chains—but size must not be permission for potential child labor, worker abuse, or wage theft for large B Corps. Instead, the fact that Nespresso can achieve a score that allows them to be Certified as a B Corp and use the Certification to greenwash its business model and practices demonstrates that the B Impact Assessment scoring system and certification process is in serious need of repair.

As part of the certification announcement Nespresso expressed they intend “all viable farms to reach a living wage by 2030,” and to “improve our global approach on human rights due diligence and create a scalable Child Labour risk mapping and remediation process plan.”   However, there is currently no way for the B Impact Assessment (BIA) or certification process to measure or hold Nespresso to these self-imposed commitments. Thus, in addition to strengthening the minimum criteria for certification, B Lab must develop a protocol for holding B Corps to improve Risk Factor areas over time or face losing their B Corp Certification. 

Many of our brands have participated in the multi-year public feedback process B Lab has facilitated regarding potential updates to the B Corp Standard and voiced the need for changes. Yet we have not seen changes to the standard that sufficiently raises the bar, nor have we received a response to our suggestions or offers to engage more deeply.

Summarized here are key areas where we believe the B Impact Assessment and Certification process must improve if B Corp Certification is to maintain integrity and relevance going forward:

• Rather than a minimum total score, there must be minimum scores per Impact Business Model and per applicable Score Area.
• The B Corp Standard must center human rights in the Supply Chain Impact Business Model and reference the UN Guiding Principles on Business Human Rights framework, including a company’s responsibility to respect human rights and provide remedy and remediation for harms.
• Unless there is demonstrated evidence of remedy and remediation for harms, and course correction to prevent future harm, human rights abuses should be a non-negotiable Disqualification Factor preventing certification.
• Sourcing a majority of raw materials from non-fair trade certified supply chains, CAFOs, or industrial farming systems should be added as a Risk Factors for consumer goods companies, requiring documented improvement over time.
• Risk Factors must be reflected in scores, monitored closely over time for required improvement, and re-certification should be contingent on demonstrated improvement. If Risk Factors are not corrected over time, re-certification should be withheld.

B Lab has said it is up to the “influential community” of consumers and companies like ours to hold other companies accountable. However, we could not prevent Nespresso from certifying, and we cannot take away Nespresso’s B Corp Certification if they fail to improve—only B Lab can do that, and only if the certification requirements and process change.

As businesses dedicated to social good, we stand in solidarity with social and environmental organizations and with those most negatively impacted by Nespresso. In the interest of the movement to ‘use business as a force for good,’ we hope to see these critical improvements to the B Impact Assessment and B Corp Certification process. In turn we hope these changes can help hold Nespresso and other companies—including ourselves—accountable over time as we build an economy that is inclusive, regenerative, and just for all.

Sincerely,

All Good Products
amamus Coffee
A Stellar Co
Better apc
c|change
Café Campesino
Cooperative Coffees
Dean’s Beans Organic Coffee Company
Dr. Bronner’s
Elvis & Kresse
Endiro Coffee
Exilior Coffee
Fair World Project
Food Freedom Radio – AM950
Green Element
Grove Collaborative
Happy Porch
KOA+ROY
LOACOM Social Purpose Corporation
LAUDE the Label
Lotus Foods, Inc.
Mightybytes
Modern Species
ØNSK ApS
Peace Coffee
Real Phat Foods
Rivanna Natural Designs, Inc.
Sweetwater Organic Coffee
Thanksgiving Coffee Company
thinkPARALLAX
Thread Coffee Roasters
Vianova
Wholegrain Digital

If your company is a Certified B Corp, add your name here to support this call for higher standards: https://forms.gle/wPZLGg1qVJUa5SKr6

The post The B Corp Standard is at Risk appeared first on Fair World Project.

Cocoa Made Right? – Cadbury’s Child Labor Commitments are Words not Action

Cadbury is owned by the U.S. food giant Mondelēz International (formerly Kraft Foods), who made over 3.6 billion dollars in profits last year. You probably know Cadbury’s chocolate. Every spring, bags of their Cadbury eggs line grocery store shelves – those creamy chocolate eggs with the pastel-colored crunchy sugar coating – an Easter and springtime staple. They used to be a favorite of mine as a kid – probably when I was around the same age as the children found harvesting cocoa in West Africa. I’d try to savor the bag of Cadbury Eggs I’d find in my Easter basket, but inevitably I’d polish them off pretty quickly and would be left looking forward to the next year’s supply.

But the story behind those tasty Easter chocolates isn’t sweet at all, and you won’t find that out just by reading the Cadbury packaging or even by visiting their website. In fact, you’ll find quite the opposite story. Front and center on their website reads “100% sustainably sourced cocoa – 100% better for cocoa farmers and communities.” This is all part of their Cocoa Life program they claim ensures their cocoa is “made right.” The Cocoa Life mission states:

This sounds nice. But here’s the problem: big chocolate companies have been making nice-sounding declarations for decades and still child labor continues.

Child Labor is a Symptom of Big Chocolate’s Exploitative Business Model

Two decades ago, after an earlier BBC expose of child labor in the chocolate industry led to intense pressure, leaders in the chocolate industry pledged to end child labor in cocoa supply chains in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. This commitment was made under the 2001 Hankin-Engel Protocol and was renewed again with the 2010 Framework of Action. But we’ve arrived at that twenty year mark, only to find child labor to be on the rise. In fact, a report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Labor found the rate of child labor in cocoa in agricultural households in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana increased between 2008/2009 and 2018/2019.

Not only have rates of child labor in those two countries increased, but the conditions under which many of these children work have become increasingly dangerous with the use of pesticides and chemical inputs. We’ve known what the chocolate industry pledged to accomplish and we’ve been calling out their utter failure to do so.

Child labor is a symptom of a much larger problem: the systemic exploitation of cocoa farming families by big chocolate companies. Even as chocolate companies make billions, many cocoa farmers live on just $1 per day. Instead of launching more PR campaigns and corporate initiatives, it’s high time companies pay cocoa farmers a real living income for their crops.

Add your name to the petition calling on cocoa companies to take meaningful action to end child labor

Big Chocolate Failing to Act on Child Labor

Last year should have been a landmark year in the fight against child labor in cocoa. Instead, the cocoa sector as a whole remained suspiciously quiet as the benchmark year for eliminating child labor came and went.

The recent documentation of child labor in Cadbury’s supply chain sadly doesn’t come as a surprise. After all, even Tony’s Chocolonely – which boasts the motto of “Let’s make chocolate 100 per cent slave-free” – came under scrutiny when it was revealed earlier this year that 1,700 child workers were found in their supply chain.

From reports of child labor in the supply chains of “ethical” brands like Tony’s Chocolonely to chocolate giants like Cadbury, it’s clear that exploitation is baked into the conventional chocolate business model.

Support Companies Building a Fair Chocolate Industry

But thankfully there are brands who are committed to building a different kind of chocolate industry – one based on supporting fair livelihoods for chocolate farming families and supporting people instead of big payouts for shareholders.

• Dr. Bronner’s Magic All-One Chocolate
• AlterEco
• Equal Exchange

You can find our full list of Mission Driven chocolate brands on our website, too.

Hear More About the Bitter Truths Behind Big Chocolate

Lastly, whether you’ve been with us in our fight against child labor in cocoa for awhile or whether you’re just learning about this work, don’t forget we have an entire podcast season exposing the bitter truths behind the ingredients in Nestle’s KitKat bar. The latest reports of chid labor in cocoa may be in Mondelēz International’s supply chain, but the reality is that the story shared in our “Nestle’s KitKat Unwrapped” series covers many of systemic issues and market forces that fuel the dependence on child labor across many of the biggest chocolate brands.

The post This Easter, Let’s Take Collective Action Towards a Fair Chocolate Industry appeared first on Fair World Project.

Unfortunately, our warnings about the risks of developing a program without the involvement of farmworker organizers, as well as our specific critiques of the standards are being born out by what we are hearing from frontline organizers.

In May 2021, Fair World Project published the report Label before Labor: Fair Trade USA’s Dairy Label Fails Workers . Since then, that subheading has become an even grimmer reality. The report was published when Chobani yogurt bearing a fair trade label was available on store shelves but before the final standards were released in July of 2021. This article will review the updates made to the standard after the release of the report, and will also document what we know about the implementation of the standard.

The Label Before Labor report focused on 3 key areas of Fair Trade USA’s dairy label, as well as reviewing current research pointing to what would make for a more effective standard. Those areas of focus were:

• Inadequate standards development process
• Standards that are not fit for purpose
• Lack of enforcement mechanisms

This article will review updates in those three areas, with a focus on implementation included under the topic of enforcement mechanisms.

Fair Trade Dairy Standards Process Out of Touch with Research and Workers

The development of Fair Trade USA’s dairy program was decried in a statement by 30+ labor, food justice, and human rights groups, including Fair World Project, calling it “a sham process” and “an exercise that doesn’t reflect the needs and values of workers.” The “ Summary of Feedback and Response” published by Fair Trade USA after the release of the final standard confirms that assessment. The majority of the feedback summarized comes from farm owners and industry. Much of that feedback focuses on the costs involved in improving wages and working conditions.

The absence of organized farmworker voices and their advocates is clear. The summary of worker perspectives is “Overall, the dairy workers that we spoke to reported feeling happy and satisfied with their current work and living situation at their respective farms.” That assessment is dangerously out of touch with current research on farmworkers both in New York State and nationally, and the voices of worker advocates. Instead, it points to the ways that Fair Trade USA’s program continues to fail to address the power imbalances between farm managers and workers.

Finally, the Label before Labor report details concerns regarding stakeholder participation and how Fair Trade USA’s process was at odds with the best practices laid out by ISEAL, the global governance body for standards-setting. Still more concerning is that while the process was explicitly a pilot of standards for the dairy industry, the resulting standard was issued as an amendment to the Agricultural Production Standard that will be applied to all farms in the U.S. That’s vastly different in scope from what was announced. It seems reasonable to assume that far more people would have wanted to weigh in on the definition of fair work and “worker wellbeing” in the United States had it been clear that was what was at stake.

Fair Trade USA’s Standards Fail to Fill Regulatory Gaps

Redefining what is “fair” to match U.S. law that is grounded in injustice certainly doesn’t sound like it’s in line with fair trade principles.

Unsurprisingly, a standard development process that does not include workers is skewed against them, yielding a standard that fails to adequately address key labor and human rights issues.

Ethical certifications have long claimed to fill a regulatory gap that exists between local law and best practices or international norms. And there are large gaps in U.S. labor law, especially as it applies to farmworkers. In the United States, farmworkers are exempt from:

• Aspects of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), including overtime pay and child labor protections;
• National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), which forbids employers from firing a worker for joining, organizing, or supporting a labor union.
• Farms employing 10 or fewer workers are exempt from enforcement actions by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA).
• Further, the U.S. has ratified just two of the eight core International Labor Organization (ILO) conventions, abstaining from committing to issues including the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining, Forced Labor, Equal Pay, and Minimum Wages, as well as conventions on working hours.¹

Yet Fair Trade USA’s standards development process did little to bridge these gaps. Instead, the result of the dairy pilot has actually weakened the standards for workers on U.S. farms below the bar set for international production.  The stated reason? To “streamline” their standards and have them match “the unique legal definitions and operating context in the United States.” It’s worth noting the conditions that gave rise to that context in the United States.  Farmworker exemptions from standard labor law date back to a New Deal-era compromise with Southern legislators which was, in the words of one researcher, ” well-known to be a race-neutral cover for maintaining the domination of white supremacy in the South and excluding Black workers from labor law’s protection.” Redefining what is “fair” to match U.S. law that is grounded in injustice certainly doesn’t sound like it’s in line with fair trade principles.

Fair Trade USA’s Standards Continue Racist Double Standard for Farmworker Work Hours and Pay

One clear example of this is the issue of working hours. Like most fair trade certifications, Fair Trade USA had previously followed the ILO conventions on hours of work in their standards, limiting the regular workweek to 48 hours. In the revised standards for the United States, Fair Trade USA made major changes to their work week, as detailed in the side-by-side comparison in the box (emphasis added).

Overtime rules also got a significant overhaul. Thus farmworkers in the U.S. have both a higher cap for working hours and much more liberal guidance for how often their hours can exceed that cap (three months per year, or much of a harvest season, vs. four non-consecutive weeks).

In addition to appealing to “the unique legal definitions and operating context in the United States,” the feedback document from the standards development process highlights that workers *want* to work long hours. Such a  statement speaks to just how far removed from farmworker organizing the Fair Trade USA standards development process has been, as was also pointed out by researchers cited in a recent article in Jacobin Magazine.

Failing to address that power dynamic between worker and employers means that workers’ voices are not meaningfully included, as researcher Margaret Gray has written of elsewhere on farmworker pay equity. Without the voices of organized workers and worker advocates in the process, the results are skewed against workers.

Standards Fail to Address Root Causes of Low Wages

Ultimately, people work in order to get paid. If wages are low, people will want more hours to make ends meet. Yet by framing the issue of working hours as whether or not workers want to work long hours, Fair Trade USA’s “Summary of Feedback and Response” sidesteps that fundamental reality. While the section on working hours is long, the section on living wages is comparatively short. It notes that, “Dairy pilot participants also expressed support for living wage in concept but were concerned with their ability to close the gap without support from their buyer.” This is a reasonable concern. Dairy farmers are subject to low and volatile prices. Meanwhile, end buyers like Chobani stand to benefit from “fair trade” marketing. Yet instead of leveraging that brand benefit, Fair Trade USA opts not to include any requirement for brands to support farmworkers’ progress towards living wages. Fair World Project has previously criticized Fair Trade USA for placing all their emphasis on “awareness” of living wages without including timebound requirements for progress, and this standard continues that trend.²

This is not just a procedural issue. Instead, it undermines a key area where Fair Trade USA’s program falls short.  Academic researcher Elizabeth Bennett has noted that the strongest thing that voluntary sustainability standards such as Fair Trade USA can do to improve workers’ livelihoods is to require living wages and support the worker organizing that allows them to negotiate Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs) for better wages.

Worker Leadership + Brand Participation Supports Fair Livelihoods

It is worth noting that solutions to this living wage gap for farmworkers exist. In fact, they are currently being implemented in the dairy industry by the worker-driven Milk with Dignity program. The Label Before Labor report provides an in-depth comparison of this program with Fair Trade USA’s dairy label, so this will exclusively focus on wages.

Under the Milk with Dignity program, buyers are required to pay premium funds to support farms in complying with their binding Code of Conduct. The Code requires that workers on participating farms are paid at least the prevailing local minimum wage. This is significant given that farmworkers are exempt from many state minimum wages (and on smaller farms, from federal minimum wage requirements as well). Premium funds from brands are required to be used to get workers’ earnings to the locally benchmarked Rural Livable Wage. The Milk with Dignity Code of Conduct clearly spells out how they calculate the wage adjustment to incorporate health insurance and employer-provided housing. According to Milk with Dignity calculations, about 50% of Vermont dairy workers outside the Program make below the minimum wage. Meanwhile, workers on participating farms have seen wages rise so that most are now earning living wages.

Fair livelihoods for farmworkers are placed at the center of the standard, with a clearly articulated plan to transfer money from the brand at the top of the supply chain, who has most money and power, to the worker at the end of the chain. Instead of pitting farmworker against farmer in an effort to make ends meet, or laying the responsibility for making the food system profitable upon farmworkers’ shoulders, this addresses the root causes of the issue.

Fair Trade USA Going Against Trend of Farmworker Overtime, Rights and Dignity

Lastly, it is worth noting that the changes to the work week in Fair Trade USA’s updated Agricultural Production Standard (A.P.S.) for the United States are going against the current trend of farmworker organizing. There is growing recognition that the exclusion of farmworkers from getting the same overtime pay as other workers is rooted in racism and injustice . California and Washington State have recently been joined by New York State, Colorado, and Oregon in requiring overtime pay for farmworkers. While timelines for implementation vary, as do thresholds for hours worked, the trend is clear. By increasing the standard work week, Fair Trade USA chooses a side against those working for worker justice and fair livelihoods – as well as stepping out of line with international guidelines and recommendations from researchers.

Implementation of Fair Trade Dairy in Chobani’s Supply Chains

The Label Before Labor report detailed several key issues with Fair Trade USA’s dairy program based on an analysis of the standards. Several key issues highlighted included the explicit addition of at-will employment to the standard, that is, the right to fire workers for no cause, reinforcing a condition that labor advocates have pointed to as an obstacle to workers’ organizing. The report also underlined the limited scope of “know-your-rights” training requirements, lack of accessibility for reporting issues, and the standard’s reliance on annual audits to protect workers’ rights. This section of the report concludes:

Unfortunately, nearly one year after Chobani’s yogurt with Fair Trade USA’s “fair trade dairy” label appeared on the shelves, what we’re hearing from organizers underlines just how important it is to center workers—and the dire consequences that can come from implementing a program without their organizing.

Workers Don’t Know What “Fair Trade” is

Fair World Project remains in contact with organizers at the Workers Central of Central New York (WCCNY), who organize with farmworkers, including those on farms selling to Chobani and participating in the fair trade dairy program. These updates draw on conversations with those organizers, and many of the key points are also captured on our For a Better World podcast.

Chobani announced the pilot project with participating farms nearly three years ago and has been selling yogurt as “fair trade” for nearly a year. Yet what we hear from worker organizers is that overwhelmingly, workers on participating farms don’t know what “fair trade” is. That’s not just a semantic problem. If workers don’t know what fair trade is, it’s almost impossible for them to meaningfully claim the protections they are supposedly entitled to, or to meaningfully comment on what is happening in their workplaces.

Fair Trade Committees: Misrepresented and Disempowering

In episode 7 of For a Better World podcast, WCCNY organizer Crispin Hernandez explains “workers are told they are supposed to form a ‘fair trade committee.’ But the workers don’t know how to and they don’t give them this information to form a committee.” These “committees” are a critical aspect of many fair trade programs. In their standards, Fair Trade USA describes their purpose:

The fair trade committees are key to Fair Trade USA’s claims to “empower” workers. But reports from the dairy barns of New York don’t sound very empowering. Instead, worker organizers report that not only do workers not know what they’re supposed to be doing with their new mandate, the process is being run by Chobani and/or by farm managers. Once again, Fair Trade USA is putting marketing before substance. In a recent article, Fair Trade USA’s Producer Services Manager Jamie Padilla describes the Fair Trade Committees, saying, “The members are democratically elected by all workers. It’s a huge responsibility and, honestly, one of the most empowering things I’ve seen.” This statement misrepresents both the experience of worker organizers in Chobani’s supply chain and the actual process on paper in Fair Trade USA’s standards.

Module One of Fair Trade USA’s Agricultural Production Standard describes the formation of the Fair Trade Committee (FTC in the illustration), how members are to be chosen as well as a timeline for the activities.

In this example, Premium Participants would be farmworkers on participating farms, and could also include farm managers and small and mid-sized traders or facility managers who help to get the product to the Certificate Holder (Dairy Farmers of America or Cayuga Marketing, in this case). These participants are supposed to “understand fair trade,”  elect their own representatives, and have conducted and communicated a needs assessment on a clear timeline: “Before Fair Trade Premium is spent, or Year One at the latest.” That work has barely begun.

“Sign This Paper and You Can Get Money”

It remains unclear whether premium funds have been spent yet. Another troubling revelation in an interview for our For a Better World podcast describes funds going to workers (emphasis added):

The deal stated there “sign this paper and you can get money” does not sound democratic or empowering. Instead, it sounds rather coercive. More investigation is needed to understand how widespread such arrangements are. Yet overall, this anecdote underlines the risks of creating a Fair Trade Committee in the absence of worker-led organizing. Without clear structures for participatory democratic decision-making, premium allocations, especially direct payments to workers, fail to empower workers and can instead be used to prop up existing power structures, as has been previously noted by researchers.³

Dire Consequences of Fair Trade without Organized Workers

Research, including MSI Integrity’s definitive report Not Fit for Purpose, has pointed to just how essential it is that workers are involved in both the development and implementation of standards intended to benefit them.  Fair World Project’s ” Reference Guide to Fair Trade and Labor Justice Programs” has previously summarized that topic as “Formal Participation of the Intended Beneficiary.” The formal language may obscure the urgency, and the dire consequences that can result from this omission. But without the involvement – and leadership – of organized workers, programs repeatedly fail to protect workers’ rights, including their most basic safety needs.

Conversations with organizers in Chobani’s supply chains and efforts to learn where workers are participating in fair trade programs underline just how opaque these supply chains are, even to the people who labor in them. This fall, a person known to WCCNY to be working on a farm selling to Chobani and participating in the fair trade program was seriously injured. The account of his injury is captured in episode 7 of For a Better World podcast. The grim injury and its aftermath highlight the insurmountable challenges of trying to navigate Fair Trade USA’s standards as a tool for supporting someone in urgent need. Without clear guidance coming through fair trade programming, the next obvious place to turn would be the Fair Trade USA website.  In the Label Before Labor report, we highlighted how Fair Trade USA’s website is focused on the needs of consumers and businesses. Now, that lack of focus on worker accessibility comes into focus not just as a hypothetical failing, but as a grim reality. The site remains solely in English, the “Report an Issue” option is not even available from a mobile device (when viewing the page on desktop, it’s buried at the bottom). Ultimately, the takeaway is that the fair trade dairy program is not making these opaque supply chains any more transparent or accessible to the people who work in them.

Fear of Retaliation Remains Under Fair Trade Dairy Program

The “empowerment” that’s sold on fair trade packaging does not extend to the workplaces. Instead, the power dynamics that keep workers silent continue.

Fear of reprisal is a thread that has run throughout discussion of the fair trade dairy program. A definitive piece of research on conditions where the fair trade program was piloted is the report Milked: Immigrant Dairy Farmworkers in New York State, authored by the Workers’ Center of Central New York and the Workers’ Justice Center of New York. The report details an environment that is dangerous (two-thirds of workers surveyed had been injured on the job) and one where fear of retaliation is high.

Fear of reprisal—including the very real possibility of deportation—prevents people from raising concerns about pay, conditions, or even getting care for a serious injury.

Now, nearly one year after the launch of the fair trade dairy program, we continue to hear from organizers that those fears continue. Without the participation of organized workers or the robust engagement of worker advocates, there is little to combat that fear of reprisal. Workers have not spoken out publicly about the fair trade program – or the continued issues on participating farms—not only because they do not know about the fair trade program, but because the fair trade program has failed to change their realities. The “empowerment” that’s sold on fair trade packaging does not extend to the workplaces. Instead, the power dynamics that keep workers silent continue.

Fair Trade Dairy Fails Farmers Too

One critique was over-estimated in the Labor before Label report: the participation of small-scale farms. Small-scale dairy farmers have been hard hit by low prices, corporate consolidation, and U.S. policy that has overall been geared towards pushing them to “get big or get out.” Farmers are increasingly losing their farms and livelihoods–it would seem like these smallest farmers would be the logical target of a fair trade program for dairy.
Thus, when assessing the standards, as well as the average sizes of dairy farms in New York state and the size of their workforces among those surveyed for the Milked report, our assumption had been that there would be more small farms involved. The Label before Labor report detailed the many exemptions for farms with fewer than 6 employees– including the fact that many of the safety and basic trainings and workers’ rights standards in Fair Trade USA’s standard are marked as “Best Practice” not mandatory requirements for such farms. Instead, as we have learned the names of farms participating in the fair trade program, they are milking 2000-3000+ cows – much larger farms than initially expected, with workforces who should in fact be covered by the standards. While it’s good news that fewer workers will fall through the non-mandatory “Best Practice” loophole in theory, in practice, workers still don’t know what fair trade is.

Fair Trade Partner Dairy Farmers of America has Long Record of Unfair Business Practices

There’s a bigger issue at stake here as well. These large-scale dairies are part of the problem with the industrial food system. From small-scale farmers to workers to the climate crisis, this model has been linked to harm and, quite literally, un fair trade. The latter is not just a theoretical assertion. One of the “fair trade partners” listed on Fair Trade USA’s website for dairy is the mega-cooperative Dairy Farmers of America (DFA). While the traditional fair trade story has focused on small-scale farmers and their cooperatives as an engine of economic growth and fair livelihoods, Dairy Farmers of America has been cited and even sued multiple times for acting against their farmer-members’ interests. Over the years they have settled multiple lawsuits charging price fixing, as well as one that is currently ongoing . They’ve also been subject to charges of conspiring with other agribusinesses to drive down prices to farmers as well as using their market power to retaliate against any members who speak out.

Both dairy farmers and analysts alike have specifically pointed to DFA’s business practices as a key factor driving small-scale farmers out of the dairy business. In Episode 5 of For a Better World podcast, Claire Kelloway of Open Markets Institute sums up the issue:

Kelloway’s assessment takes a high-level perspective, naming the “democracy issue,” and questioning how the fair trade dairy standard addresses the issues with DFA. Fair Trade USA’s Agricultural Production Standard does not address key issues named in previous farmer suits: the concept of price fixing is wholly absent from the standards. The section on pricing (Objectives 5.2.2 – 5.2.3)⁴ is not scaled to an organization that controls one-third of the United States’ milk supply and is involved at all steps of processing and distribution.⁵ In this way, the diagnosis as a “democracy issue” is prescient. The key issue at play is, just as it is with workers, a failure to address the power imbalances at stake in the supply chain.

Conclusion

Fair Trade USA rolled out their “fair trade dairy” label in concert with Chobani in spring 2021 – amid a long campaign for Chobani to negotiate directly with the farmworkers in their supply chains.  The weaknesses in the standards highlighted in the Label before Labor report are having grimly predictable consequences as they are implemented.

Fair Trade USA’s standards development process was decried from the start as “an exercise that doesn’t reflect the needs and values of workers.” The resulting process gathered feedback that focuses on farm owner and brand input, and is dangerously out of step with the findings of researchers and farmworker advocates. Fair Trade USA’s new amendment to their Agricultural Production Standard for farms in the United States increases working hours. That’s a move that mirrors the United States’ long exemption for farmworkers from many workplace protections, an exemption grounded in racist discrimination–hardly the grounds for a standard that dubs itself “fair.”

Fair Trade USA’s standards don’t live up to the language of fairness that they sell. Further, the implementation of the dairy program is failing at even the most basic steps: too many farmworkers do not even know that their workplace is participating in a fair trade program. Further, we have heard troubling stories of what sound like coercive practices (signing a paper that says you agree with Chobani to get a bonus); bad living conditions, including bed bugs and cockroaches; and consistent fear of retaliation.

Frequently when Fair World Project critiques an ethical standard or program, the response is “But isn’t it better than nothing?” That’s not a choice that needs to be made here. Multiple other choices exist, and the workers in Chobani’s supply chains have made clear their demands – they are calling on Chobani to negotiate with them and have repeatedly made clear that a fair trade label does not address their calls for justice. Further, it’s worth noting that before partnering with Fair Trade USA to pilot the fair trade dairy label, Chobani met with members of the worker-driven human rights program Milk with Dignity. Per Milk with Dignity participants, “…instead of joining [the Milk with Dignity program], the company [Chobani] decided it was easier to put a label on their product.” It’s clearly not easy to partner with Fair Trade USA to pilot a label not developed for the dairy industry. Instead, the “easy” here speaks to the worker-driven, enforceable standards and binding contracts of the Milk with Dignity program–a far cry from the marketing-driven Fair Trade USA dairy label.

Options exist to meaningfully address the concentration of power in the dairy industry that is hurting both workers *and* farmers. But instead, Fair Trade USA has put their seal of approval on the very model that is driving the crisis in dairy – without meaningful mechanisms to address the power imbalances.

Having a fair trade dairy label that neither supports workers’ own demands for justice nor provides meaningful protections is not better than nothing. A fair trade label papers over the exploitative status quo with a thin veneer of “empowering” marketing. As more and more people become aware of the working conditions of the people who work in the fields and barns, they want to support something better. Instead, they’re being misled.

¹ ILO conventions represent the global consensus around fair labor. Conventions are not legally binding in themselves; countries who ratify them then pass laws to make them enforceable within their own countries. For a full list of ILO conventions that the U.S. has not ratified, see this list. The U.S. has declined to ratify these conventions because they are incompatible with existing U.S. labor law, including the exemptions for farmworkers cited above, and concerns that they may conflict with the ability of the private sector to profit from prison labor, as detailed in this policy brief from the U.S. Council for International Business.

² In the Feedback and Summary document, the response on living wage continues, “Fair Trade USA also plans to continue to create resources for supporting conversations between Certificate Holders and buyers to support living wage improvement, and in the future consider requirements to be included in the Trade Standard for buyers.” Such consideration would be welcome – and represent a shift from all Fair Trade USA’s current standards.

³ Sarah Besky has covered this issue in her research into fair trade tea plantations in India, https://www.sarahbesky.com/uploads/3/4/6/0/34604216/awr.pdf. Further, a study sponsored by Fairtrade International into premium usage found direct payments to workers covered by their Hired Labor standard to be a less effective use of premium funds https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02048855/document. This study also highlights the importance of the decision-making process in premium fund allocation to achieving stated goals around “empowerment.”  See: Allison Marie Loconto, Laura Silva-Castaneda, Nadine Arnold, Alejandra Jimenez. Participatory Analysis of the Use and Impact of the Fairtrade Premium. [Technical Report] Inconnu. 2019. ffhal02048855

⁴ Fair Trade USA’s Agricultural Production Standard  Objective 5.2.2: “The Certificate Holder has a written contract in place with all farmers and facility owners included in the scope of the Certificate regarding how prices will be paid and calculated and how conflicts will be resolved. The contract is followed.” Objectives 5.2.2a-c spell out what must be included in a contract between farmers and their cooperative as well as a definition of market prices—but says nothing about the larger issue, if the cooperative is large enough and fully integrated enough to have massive influence over those market prices.  https://www.fairtradecertified.org/sites/default/files/standards/documents/FTUSA_STD_APSUSAmendment_EN_1.0.0_0.pdf

⁵ Dairy Farmers of America is categorized as a “Producer” on Fair Trade USA’s website, thus their certification falls under the Agricultural Production Standard. While many coffee cooperatives are also tagged as “Traders,” Dairy Farmers of America is not, thus implying that they are not held to the separate Trade Standard. The Trade Standard includes some more relevant standards, although still falls short of clear pathways to remedy or enforcement. Traders only engage in fair and transparent trading practices.

Standard 2.5.1.a reads “There is no indication that traders engage in unfair trading practices that clearly damage the capacity for producers to compete or the capacity of producers to comply with Fair Trade USA production standards,” with the further clarification that “Unfair trading practices are ‘practices that grossly deviate from good commercial conduct and are contrary to good faith and fair dealing’ and are unilaterally imposed by one trading partner on another.”

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We’re not going to add another gift guide to the mix. Instead, our offering is a few suggestions on how to read those scorecards and best brands lists. There’s no one single way to make your values match your purchases – after all, they are *your* values. But each list is shaped by its own values and choices too.

What does “Slave-Free Chocolate” Mean?

SlaveFreeChocolate.org is both a list and an advocacy organization by the same name. One thing that’s important to note: “Slave-free Chocolate” is their vision, not a guarantee.
Their criteria includes, but is not limited to, certifications and the answers to three questions:

• Where do you source 100% of your cocoa?
• Do you have something on your website to spread awareness?
• Do you have initiatives that are either beneficial to the farmers or the environment?

Slave Free Chocolate made waves in the chocolate industry earlier this year when they removed Tony’s Chocolonely from their list. The reason? Despite their vision for “100% slave free chocolate,” Tony’s chocolate is made by Barry Callebaut, one of the major chocolate companies currently being sued for child labor in their supply chains. Those ties “[allow] them to produce chocolate cheaper than those who do everything ethically from soup-to-nuts,” Slave Free Chocolate’s director said in an interview.

What does Vegan Chocolate Mean?

Food Empowerment Project is a vegan advocacy group that has a chocolate list “To help people buy chocolate that does not involve the exploitation of human (children or adults) or non-human animals (such as cows and goats)”. Their criteria for inclusion on their list includes whether the chocolate is vegan as well as the answer to the questions:

• What countries of origin does your cocoa come from?
• What countries are your vegan products sold in?

Food Empowerment Project’s list does not rely on certification as they, rightfully, point out that certification does not guarantee that a product is free from child or forced labor (for more on this, see our podcast episode with Charity Ryerson of Corporate Accountability Lab). Instead, they focus on excluding chocolate produced in Western Africa or Brazil. While there is more evidence of forced labor being found in these locations, Food Empowerment Project’s standards focus on a broad geographical definition instead of looking at supply chains or business models.

What does Union-Made Mean?

AFL-CIO, the largest federation of unions in the U.S., maintains a list of union-made products on their site. Their criteria is simple: is it made in a union factory in the United States? Their list is quite useful when looking for anything from appliances to restaurants. They also have a chocolate list – but what their list doesn’t contain is any criteria for ingredients such as cocoa, sugar, or palm oil, all of which are likely grown outside the United States. The AFL-CIO also maintains a database where one can check on current boycotts called by workers on brands.

What’s in a Scorecard?

Green America is part of a coalition that releases a Chocolate Scorecard ranking the largest chocolate companies on their policies relating to a range of human rights and environmental policies. The scorecard explicitly ranks companies on “company commitments and policies. It does not assess effectiveness or implementation.” Big chocolate companies’ collectively have a bad track record on following through on commitments—that’s how a company like Nestle can get a top mark on child labor, despite being sued over their failure to address child labor in their supply chains.
The stated goal of the scorecard is to make companies’ commitments public, and potentially shame the big chocolate companies into doing better.

What’s that Label Mean?

Finally, Fair World Project has two resources we make available. There’s a list of “Mission-Driven Brands” which focuses on companies whose business models are focused on original fair trade principles and benefit to small-scale farmers and artisans. The criteria are focused on business models instead of individual products, and lean heavily on membership in trade justice-focused organizations instead of certifications. The criteria also require that brands are not supporting or lobbying for harmful policies such as free trade deals.

We also have a “Reference Guide” to labels that you may see in the store. The criteria rank certifications on their standards—not their implementation. Scores are for topics that certifiers can take action on, including building in participation of the people they’re supposed to benefit (those are the “intended beneficiaries” mentioned) as well as things that companies and certifiers alike make a lot of claims about, such as fair wages and prices. It’s important to note what’s not here: there are no guarantees that the presence of these labels, especially the most common ones, offer any guarantees of human rights, unfortunately. Research and too many exposés have shown that a certifiers’ annual audit alone is inadequate to protect workers’ and human rights. Finally, some of the strongest protections for workers’ rights don’t have any label on the package to let you know they exist, for example, the Milk with Dignity Program.

Ethical Holiday Gifts – And Beyond

Zooming out from the details of all these criteria for a moment, one thing is clear. Our global economy is built on extraction and exploitation. And the same corporations that are doing a lot of the exploitation tend to have the biggest budgets to market their goods to us as in some way “ethical.” There’s no doubt that there’s a lot of noise to cut through.

And, too often, in the name of simplicity, a lot of nuance gets omitted. People are organizing and doing good, ethical work even in countries with high rates of child labor. Instead of casting blame based on geography, we can keep our focus pointed on the corporations whose buying practices are driving exploitation.

Sign up for our newsletter for ways to keep holding those corporations accountable, advocating for better policies, and backing the work of people around the globe building a better world every day.

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While this decision is disappointing and a blow to the six men’s case, it is not the sweeping corporate immunity that Cargill and Nestle’s lawyers had argued for. Instead, the court decision seems to further clarify just what kind of situation the Alien Tort Statute applies to. In this case, “the companies provide funding, planning, marketing, pesticides, education… that all occurred in the United States,” as Terry Collingsworth, one of the lawyers who crafted the case, explained on our “For a Better World” podcast. In their ruling, the Supreme Court stated that, “allegations of general corporate activity—like decision-making—cannot alone establish domestic application of the [Alien Tort Statute].” Multinational corporations have developed these long supply chains of suppliers and contractors across many industries. This decision chooses to overlook the massive power that these big corporations have to set the conditions in their supply chains. Instead, it reaffirms the value of having supply chains out of sight and keeping abuses offshore.

Corporate Solutions Are Failing to End Child Labor

The case, officially Cargill, Inc. v. Doe I, spans over 15 years, and too many continuing failures of voluntary commitments to end child labor in the cocoa industry. The case was initially brought in 2005 as the chocolate industry missed its first deadline to voluntarily address child labor under the Harkin-Engel protocol. Now, this verdict comes just a week after the International Labor Organization’s latest report warns that the rate of child labor is up for the first time in 20 years – and that growing inequality fueled by the global response to the pandemic is on track to increase that rate by an additional 9 million children by 2022. Regardless of the outcome of this specific Supreme Court case, it is high time for meaningful action on child labor.

It has been 20 years since the cocoa industry pledged to tackle child labor as part of the Harkin-Engel protocol, a voluntary deal struck to avoid binding legislation. In that time, we have seen numerous corporate social responsibility programs rolled out. Our “For a Better World” podcast spoke to people at the front lines of the rollout of those corporate pledges, and advocates and lawyers tracking the results. The resounding conclusion is that these corporate-led solutions have had limited effectiveness. Pledges to end child labor have not been coupled with meaningful efforts to pay a living income and tackle the root causes of child labor: poverty. Indeed, the number of cocoa-growing families in poverty is not declining. Just 9% of cocoa farmers in Ghana earned a living income, according to the 2020 Cocoa Barometer report. Recently, 35 organizations from across the globe, including Fair World Project, signed onto a statement calling on the chocolate industry to take real and meaningful action to address those root causes, dubbing the industry’s collective silence “shameful and inappropriate.”

It’s pretty clear that Nestle and Cargill are willingly and knowingly profiting off of forced child labor. Their arguments before the Court emphasized the threat this case posed to their “competitive advantage.” The Supreme Court did not go so far as to endorse that argument. Yet the Court’s ruling that those abuses are just a consequence of “general corporate activity” is an indictment of their whole business model. Real solutions are needed that are fit to tackle the systemic scope of the problem.

Real Change Means Real Accountability

We need to transform our food and farming systems so that forced child labor isn’t a norm in global supply chains, one that is deemed regrettable but allowed to persist. The fair trade movement has long advocated for a vision of global supply chains that enrich communities and support fair livelihoods for families. Yet voluntary commitments and ethical labeling are not going to bring about the sort of transformative change that is needed. A market-based approach to change cannot compete in a market where the competition can bank on the worst forms of abuse to keep their costs artificially low. While we may ambitiously speak of a world that puts people and planet before profit, that’s actually contrary to the shareholder primacy that’s baked into our current economy. Corporations’ responsibility is to their shareholders and to maximizing profits. Transformative change also requires real accountability and raising the cost of corporate abuses.

The U.S. Needs Meaningful Human Rights Due Diligence Legislation

This Supreme Court decision establishes the U.S. as an outlier around the globe, choosing to narrow the scope of corporate accountability. Meanwhile, countries around the world are moving towards mandatory human rights due diligence legislation, legislation that puts the onus on corporations to proactively address abuses in their supply chains instead of waiting for brave people to speak up and find their way to international courts of law.

Such legislation needs to include meaningful requirements for corporate accountability and address the full scope of human rights. That means recognizing living incomes and fair livelihoods as a human right. That also means centering the voices of those most impacted both in crafting the rules and in creating mechanisms for enforcement. Meaningful corporate accountability also means including corporate liability and access to remedy for those who are harmed. The Supreme Court’s decision in favor of Nestle and Cargill makes clear just how urgent such conditions are.

Read through the Supreme Court’s decision and there is one perspective that is noticeably absent. Nowhere in the decision is there any acknowledgement of the horrendous abuses that the six survivors of trafficking and child labor endured. Their case has been making its way through courts since 2005. In that time, another generation of young people have spent their youth doing hazardous work and risking their health and lives. Future solutions need to include these voices, and their right to live and work with dignity.

Photo Credit: Photo by Claire Anderson on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/Vq__yk6faOI?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditShareLink  

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This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the chocolate industry’s promise to end child labour in the cocoa sector of Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, a commitment they made under the 2001 Harkin-Engel Protocol and renewed again with the 2010 Framework of Action. Furthermore, it is the International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour.

This year should have been a landmark in the fight against child labour in cocoa. Instead, the cocoa sector as a whole has been conspicuously quiet on this topic.

This year should have been a landmark in the fight against child labour in cocoa. Instead, the cocoa sector as a whole has been conspicuously quiet on this topic.

Child labour is still a reality on West African cocoa farms, and there is strong evidence that forced labor continues in the sector as well. Recent reports – such as Ghana’s GLSS 7 survey and the study of the University of Chicago commissioned by the United States government – show that close to 1.5 million children are engaged in hazardous or age-inappropriate work on cocoa farms in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire. The vast majority of these child labourers are exposed to the worst forms of child labour, such as carrying heavy loads, working with dangerous tools and increasing exposure to harmful agrochemicals.

After two decades of rhetoric, voluntary initiatives, and pilot projects, it is clearer than ever that ambitious, sector-wide action is needed, coupled with binding regulations, to address both child labour and the poverty that lies at its root.

These solutions must include regulations for mandatory human rights due diligence for companies operating in all major cocoa consuming countries.

These solutions must include regulations for mandatory human rights due diligence for companies operating in all major cocoa consuming countries, including avenues for legal remedy in those companies’ home countries. We note with interest the developments around regulations in the EU, although the announced delays are concerning. We also observe that the United States – the world’s number one cocoa consuming country – is particularly lagging in regulatory developments on this issue.

The industry, however, cannot use a lack of regulation as an excuse not to shoulder their own responsibility. As such, every chocolate and cocoa company should have a system in place that monitors and remediates child labour in all of their value chains with a child labour risk. The impact of these systems must be communicated publicly and transparently in a way that enables meaningful participation and access to remedy for workers and their representatives.

In parallel, effective partnerships between producer and consumer countries are needed to work on the necessary enabling environment. These must be developed in a much more inclusive manner than previous attempts, bringing in civil society organisations, independent trade unions, local communities and farmer representatives. Adequate resources must be provided to enable these local actors to participate as equals in the development and implementation of solutions.

Child labour can only be effectively tackled if its root causes are also adequately addressed.

Child labour can only be effectively tackled if its root causes are also adequately addressed. As such, the cocoa sector must ensure that child labour approaches are deeply embedded into realistic and ambitious strategies to achieve a living income for all cocoa households. Such strategies must include the payment of fair and just remuneration at the farm gate; prices need to be sufficient to provide a living income. There are clear calculations available for Living Income Reference Prices, which are not even close to being met.

In all, this process must deliver time bound and measurable action plans that are ambitious enough to cover the full scope of the challenge ahead.

It is time that the cocoa sector lived up to its promises and started to deliver on a sector wide and ambitious plan to tackle child labour and poverty. The industry’s collective silence this year is shameful and inappropriate.

Signatories 

ABVV/FGTB HORVAL – Belgium 

Be Slavery Free – Australia

Child Labour Coalition – United States

Conservation Alliance International – Ghana

COOPASA – Côte d’Ivoire

COOPS Ecam M’bloussouè – Côte d’Ivoire 

EcoCare Ghana – Ghana

Fair Trade Advocacy Office – Belgium

Fair World Project – United States

Fairtrade – Global 

Forum Fairer Handel e.V. – Germany Freedom United – Global 

Global Media Foundation – Ghana Green America – United States 

Inades Formation Côte d’Ivoire – Côte d’Ivoire 

Indigenous Women Empowerment Network – Ghana

INKOTA-netzwerk – Germany International Rights Advocates – United States 

ISCC – Germany 

Mighty Earth – United States 

ONG GAYA – Côte d’Ivoire 

Oxfam – Global 

Public Eye – Switzerland 

Rainforest Alliance – Global 

Réseau des Jeunes Entrepreneurs de Côte d’Ivoire (REJECI) – Côte d’Ivoire

SchokoFair-Stoppt Kinderarbeit! – Germany 

SEND GHANA – Ghana 

Solidaridad Europe 

Solidaridad West Africa 

Südwind – Austria 

SÜDWIND-Institute – Germany 

The Human Trafficking Legal Center – United States 

Tropenbos Ghana – Ghana 

VOICE Network – Global 

World Fair Trade Organization – Global 

Photo Credit: Tetiana Bykovets – Unsplash – @tetiana_bykovets

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Fair Trade USA’s standards development process is so flawed that it has been denounced by labor organizations on multiple occasions. Over the past decade, labor and human rights groups have decried the lax standards and corporate-friendly approaches to enforcement put forth in both apparel and produce standard development. Last year, as Fair Trade USA announced their draft standard and pilot process for dairy, 30+ labor, human rights, and food justice organizations signed onto a statement opposing the pilot of the standard, calling it a “sham process.”

Fair Trade USA’s Standards Fail to Protect Workers

Fair Trade USA’s heavily criticized process has yielded standards that are structurally unfit for their purported purpose. Over the last decade, Fair World Project has repeatedly highlighted the substantial failings of Fair Trade USA’s standards on paper, including a 2016 report, Justice in the Fields, that strongly cautioned against relying on their label to protect workers’ rights and safety.

Unfortunately, those standards-based critiques proved all too real when Fair Trade USA certified a Fyffes melon plantation in Honduras where workers had documented over a decade of ongoing and unremediated abuses. The certification had no impact on working conditions on the plantation. Instead, it highlighted Fair Trade USA’s inability to find problems and ensure that standards are met – the “fair trade” certification was only revoked after the launch of an international public campaign supporting the workers’ demands for decertification. Just one month before the public campaign that caused Fair Trade USA to decertify the Fyffes’ plantation in Honduras, Paul Rice wrote confidently that their last audit, “did not yield any evidence of ongoing anti-union activities or human rights abuses.”

While Fair Trade USA rolls out their dairy program with claims that it is backed by “a rigorous 200-point checklist of social, labor, and environmental criteria,” it is worth noting that the standard piloted (and presumably currently being used for products on the shelf) specifically eliminates environmental criteria included in other standards. Further, their “checklist” is based on the same Agricultural Production Standard that has failed to ensure workers safe conditions in the past.

Product Marketing but No Public Standards

Yet no one can actually comment on the final dairy-related additions to their agricultural standard as it has yet to be released to the public, despite the fact that yogurt bearing a fair trade label has been on store shelves for weeks. This fact underscores the ongoing critique that this fair trade label is more of a marketing exercise than a program intended to protect workers’ rights or transparency, as their statements have suggested.

As recently as last week, organizers confirmed that workers on New York farms that were supposedly participating in Fair Trade USA and Chobani’s pilot program were unaware of the program or what it meant for their work. If workers are neither involved nor aware of the program, it is clear that any claims to “empower” them are no more than feel-good marketing copy.

Furthermore, calls from the Workers Center of Central New York for Chobani to resume conversations with their members remain unanswered by Chobani. Fair Trade USA has chosen to apply their label to yet another situation with an ongoing labor dispute.

Organized Workers are the Best Defenders of their Rights

Fair Trade USA’s release of a “Fair Trade Dairy” program goes against a growing body of research confirming that annual audits and corporate social responsibility programming alone are inadequate to protect workers’ rights. Instead, models developed *and* led by workers are gaining respect for making demonstrable progress towards improving workers’ conditions through organizing, training, and participation and leadership at every step of the program. If Chobani is truly interested in improving conditions for workers, they should look to the leadership of programs such as Migrant Justice’s Milk with Dignity program that are already doing just that in Ben & Jerry’s supply chains and engage with organizations like Workers Center of Central New York who is organizing with workers in their supply chains already. In the words of an organizer with Migrant Justice, “Companies see these certification programs as easier and cheaper and we are like, ‘No, actually, go with us. It’s not cheaper, it takes more time, but it’s real and concrete.’”

Lastly, Fair World Project has long decried the ways that Fair Trade USA has co-opted the language and goodwill of a movement and a message developed by small-scale farmers and their coffee cooperatives. It is particularly egregious in the case of Fair Trade dairy. Fair Trade USA’s messaging borrows the feel-good cooperative messaging to market a program driven by the corporate players at the top of the U.S. dairy industry with no democratic involvement from the most impacted people. That’s highly relevant here as one of the root causes for the declining prices for farmers and conditions for workers is ultimately the crushing corporate consolidation in the dairy industry. To provide cover for massive players in the industry while co-opting the messaging of small-scale farmers is to add insult to the injuries piled up by weak, unenforceable standards.

Fair Trade USA’s dairy standard is nothing but a hollow veneer of marketing. Despite claims of transparency and “empowerment” for workers, there is no public standard to evaluate. Further, if a claim is being made to “empower” workers, we’re left with a final question: Why are the very organizations with which dairy workers are building their own power left as an afterthought in its development?

The post Fair Trade USA and Chobani’s launch of “Fair Trade Dairy” is Opposed by Labor & Human Rights Groups appeared first on Fair World Project.

TAKE ACTION

The Rich are Getting Richer on the Backs of Working People

In recent years, the economy has continued to degenerate, with growing income inequality and a corresponding increased attack on workers’ rights. Incomes for the top 1% have grown 7 times faster than the bottom 90% since the 1980s.  Real wages have fallen or remained stagnant, while the cost of living continues to skyrocket. This reality has been exposed and exacerbated during the COVID-19 crisis, as “frontline” workers, from the fields to the meatpacking plants to the grocery store, have borne the brunt of the pandemic with disproportionate rates of infection and fatalities. From meatpacking workers to Instacart shoppers, corporations are capitalizing on the crisis to undermine worker rights, safety, and welfare – and pocket the savings.

And it is not just food and agriculture chain workers. Amazon workers are organizing in Alabama to take on one of the biggest corporations in the world to fight for basic human dignity. Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, Amazon has raked in record profits, propelling Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to the richest person in the world.  In fact, Jeff Bezos could pay all Amazon employees and contractors a bonus of over $100,000 and still be as rich as he was before the pandemic. At the same time, Amazon workers have faced low pay, unsafe working conditions and an employer hellbent on denying their right to organize for better conditions.

Corporations Have Weakened Protections for Working People

The current crisis for workers didn’t happen by accident. In fact, workers’ rights have been eroded over the course of the last generation due to the watering down of federal labor law and anti-worker policies, through misclassifying employees as “independent contractors” to deny them their rights, so-called “right-to-work” laws at the state level and pro-corporate decisions from right-wing justices.

Labor organizing has been in the crosshairs of big business for over a generation. And the results have been terrible. The decline in organized workplaces has coincided with the rise in income inequality and poverty in the United States. The reduction in unionization rates in the U.S. even negatively impact public health. Historically, the very idea of middle-class life has been built by people organizing for fair wages, healthcare, retirement and safe working conditions. In short, bringing democracy to the workplace has proven to level the playing field for workers. Considering the widespread attacks on workers’ rights and precarious employment in the United States, almost half of Americans polled shows they would join a union if given the option. Worker empowerment and fair wages are needed more than ever.

The PRO Act Would Protect Working People and Fair Livelihoods

The Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2021, known as the PRO Act, is the most comprehensive piece of labor legislation the U.S. has seen in years. At present, approximately 75% of large employers hire firms to stop organizing efforts, with 40% charged with violating labor law. Workers are getting outspent by massive disinformation campaigns, as was visible in California recently. Instead, we need far-reaching legislation to safeguard worker organizing in the workplace and provide legal recourse for violations of workers’ rights.

The PRO Act aims to protect workers’ basic rights by:

1. Introducing meaningful, enforceable penalties for companies and executives that violate workers’ rights. Currently, employers who violate workers’ rights face no civil penalties and workers are barred from bringing lawsuits against employers who violate the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA).
2. Expanding workers’ collective bargaining rights and closing loopholes that corporations use to exploit workers. Right now employers can “misclassify” workers as independent contractors, denying their right to organize.
3. Strengthening workers’ access to fair union elections and requiring corporations to respect the results. Current laws empower employers to stall union elections and retaliate against workers organizing their workplace.

From Extraction to Regeneration – Time to Put People First

As we look to the future and the critical priority to shift to a green economy, those jobs need to be dignified jobs. Green jobs must be good jobs. Worker empowerment in the workplace must accompany the massive transformation needed to decarbonize our economy. We need a Just Transition to take us from our current extractive economy to a regenerative economy that prioritizes the wellbeing of people and our planet.

Fair trade was founded on the principle of solidarity: uniting farmers, workers, and activist consumers in a joint effort to fight for basic human and economic rights. In fact, the PRO Act and other campaigns for worker empowerment reflect the parallel values of the fair trade movement. Democracy in the workplace, empowerment and fair pay should be something we all support.

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