A recent article in the Observer caused some interesting discussion when I posted it on the BAFTS Facebook page. The article, entitled "How poverty wages for tea fuel India's trade in child slavery" and the response from the Fairtrade Foundation, pose serious questions for those of us who are buying, selling and campaigning for fair trade. You'll find links to both at the bottom of the page.
Tea pickers in Assam were found to be packing the same tea in boxes which carried the FLO mark, Rainforest Alliance and the Ethical Tea Partnership logos. This tea was bound for British supermarkets as well as Tetley, Lipton and Twinings.
So far, so disconcerting - if the tea's the same why should we choose Fairtrade over Rainforest Alliance or any other label? Where it gets even more worrying is the revelation that tea pickers were paid the same whether they were picking Fairtrade tea or any other kind of tea, and that the amount (89 rupees a day) is less than 60% of the legal minimum wage in Assam. If a supermarket, or a fair trade shop, was paying its adult workers £3.70 an hour there would be an outcry, and quite rightly.
So what do we do? The Fairtrade Foundation has worked extremely hard over the last few years to extend the reach of Fairtrade products into the mainstream, in order to improve the lot of producer groups. Some, such as the Kuapa Kokoo collective in Ghana which owns a majority share in Divine chocolate, can be seen to have benefited hugely from the Fairtrade premium, and since it is a collective there are no problems with plantation owners choosing to pay poverty wages. Fairtrade started out as a movement for collectives, co-operatives and smallholders, but the culture in certain countries is resistant to collective ownership. Some crops are harder to grow collectively, but that does not mean we can just say it's OK for these tea pickers to be paid less than the legal minimum. Fairtrade is not just about banning child workers, it's about making sure adult workers, whether male or female, are paid fairly and given a chance to improve their lives. When we choose a Fairtrade product it's because we want it to be a better choice for the workers.
It's vitally important that we never blindly trust a label, but delve a bit deeper to find out exactly what's going on, where the products come from and who benefits. If we find that a product is not what we thought it was, we need to question it, and put pressure on people who can make changes. Collectively we can make a difference.
It's vitally important that we continue to question our own commitment to fair trade, which is why BAFTS asks its members to complete a renewal form every year, where they look at what they have been doing and what they hope to do in the future.
It's vitally important, because the tea pickers' lives, and the lives of their children who could end up in slavery, depend on it. It is completely unacceptable for the fair trade label to be used as a marketing tool to sell tea bags which exploit the poverty and reduce the life choices of farm workers. It diminishes the whole idea of fair trade and risks tarring us all with the same brush.
Not all fair trade products are equal; some are clearly more equal than others.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/20/poverty-tea-pickers-india-child-slavery
http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/press_office/press_releases_and_statements/july_2013/response_to_the_observer_article_on_tea_wages_in_india.aspx
No comments:
Post a Comment