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In this issue:
HOW SUSTAINABLE IS OUR LATTE? AN ASSESSMENT OF TRENDS AND STANDARDS IN FAIR TRADE FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF A NEW TRULY SUSTAINABLE PEOPLE AND PLANET-CENTRED PARADIGM This is an assessment of fair trade from the perspective of the pursuit of true sustainability for all participants, especially those who have been dispossessed of their right to live a dignified life due to today's market system, designed for the benefit of global corporations. The research considers that with the current market-driven structures governing societies worldwide, it is sheer wishful thinking to imagine the millions of small landholders and labourers of the South enjoying a dignified life, equivalent to that in the North, through fair trade. To make it a realistic expectation, conventional wisdom must be radically changed to redefine the purpose of society, democracy and business. Thus, to change the current ethos, the sustainability for people and planet, instead of the logic of the market of today's untrammelled Darwinian capitalism, has to be the only purpose of societies. This analysis was performed parting from the context that we live in an absolutely unsustainable environment based on the following rationale:
The author, Álvaro de Regil, supports its arguments on a detailed assessment of fair-trade coffee. In this way, through the detailed analysis of the core elements that define the limits of the sustainability that fair trade offers to Southern participants, such as the norms for their participation, the price mechanisms, the channels of distribution, the competition of opposing concepts (FLO, Starbucks, Utz Kapéh...) as well as the fundamental role of consumers, the author drafts the path that the authentic fair-trade movement will have to go through to build a truly dignified and sustainable ethos in the long term for all participants. The author concludes that the fair-trade movement is in an enviable position to contribute to this mission given the soundness of its claims and the growing disposition of the majority of the population, in our role as consumers, to build a truly sustainable world. To accomplish this, several fundamental actions must be taken by global civil society:
Consequently, as outlandish as it may sound to some today, the author asserts that the only way to achieve true sustainability for people and planet both North and South is to replace the current market ethos with the new paradigm. Not doing so would not only render fair trade as another useful token effort, a mere poverty-mitigating mechanism, full of rhetorical claims, that provides cover for the owners of the market, but would contribute meaningfully to further the decay of mankind and of our planet until we cross a threshold of no return. Download the pdf file of How Sustainable is Our Latte? here.
Globalisation imposes a new ethos quite reminiscent of colonialism. Despite all of the international organisations and conventions created by the This commentary clearly exhibits the absolute impossibility of sustaining the current North-South system of exploitation, of quasi-slavery in which the South's role is, essentially, to supply labour at a cost that perpetuates it in servitude and to surrender its natural resources to the global corporations of the institutional investors. It also shows us how, despite the official rhetoric that states that the decent work concept has led to the international consensus that productive employment and decent work are key elements to achieving poverty reduction, everything remains the same.
Download the TLWNSI Issue Commentary: Modern Slave Work here.
California's civil society begins a new consumer campaign against Kroger, Safeway and Albertson's in anticipation of a likely new strike. Given that the negotiations that started months ago to establish a new contract between the workers represented by the UFCW and Kroger (onwer of Ralph's), Safeway (owner of Vons) and Supervalue (owner of Albertson's) are not making progress, the odds for a new strike keep growing. Beyond the current conflict, lies the hard evidence of how, since 2003, these supermarket giants have imposed, with the pretext of preparing to compete against Wal-Mart, a two-tier discriminatory compensation system. The system reduced the benefits, especially health benefits, of their workers, and established a new system with lower wages and benefits for all of their new workers. The new system is so predatory that it makes it practically impossible for new workers to enjoy a health insurance benefit. Of the 44.000 second tier workers, less than 3.800 have health care coverage, and of that 3.800, less than 80 have benefits for their children. As for the first tier workers, they have not received a wage increase since 2002.
MEXICAN CONSUMERS LAUNCH CAMPAIGN AGAINST JUNK FOOD The fledging new consumer organisation El Poder del Consumidor is demanding that Kellogg's modifies its labelling and advertising practices to stop misinforming consumers and promoting junk food consumption. El Poder del Consumidor (Consumer Power) a partner of the TJSGA, was founded at the end of 2006, and it has just launched a vast and permanent campaign against junk food in Mexico. Its first action is being directed at Kellogg's "Zucaritas" (Sugar Frosted Flakes) due to the premeditated misinformation in the cereal's packaging and advertising strategy, targeting children, using deceptive tactics to encourage them to consume a product with minimal nutritional value.
In this way, in its first campaign, the organisation is accusing Kellogg's of using irresponsible practices that contribute to the deterioration of public health. It contends that Kellogg's is:
El Poder del Consumidor, through its legal suit, is specifically demanding from the Federal Consumer Attorney that Kellogg's be ordered to stop all deceiving advertising practices of "Sugar Frosted Flakes" or of any other of its products violating any of the above federal laws. This is a clear case of blatant corporate irresponsibility where Kellogg's, in pursuit of greater shareholder value, promotes unsustainable social practices by directly and premeditatedly contributing to the increase of major public health problems. For further information about "El Poder's" campaign against junk food, visit its website:
OECD WATCH GUIDE TO THE GUIDELINES FOR MNCs COMPLAINT PROCEDURE: LESSONS FROM PAST NGO COMPLAINTS Despite the fact that the OECD Guidelines for MNC's, like all other CSR frameworks, do not address the issue of living wages and are only a voluntary framework, they are still one of the most useful mechanisms for civil society to file formal and concrete complaints against a corporation. Albeit bureaucratic, the Guidelines have a mechanism through the National Contact Points (NCPs) that in some cases have resulted in successful outcomes for the complaining entity. As the OECD Watch (OW) Guide explains, governments that have endorsed the Guidelines are essentially conveying that they expect multinational companies to follow these principles and standards of good conduct in their operations worldwide. Indeed, although the OECD currently has only thirty member countries, mostly developed economies, global civil society can file a complaint against any global corporation with a home office in any of these countries, for any irresponsible business practice that violates the OECD Guidelines, regardless of where this predatory practice is being perpetrated. Since 2000 a new procedure allows NGOs to file a complaint for an alleged breach of the OECD Guidelines to a government's NCPs body. The Guide to the Guidelines aims to assist civil organisations in the preparation of formal complaints, with the objective of increasing their effectiveness and the probability of successful outcomes. The Guide explains that NCPs from different governments have handled complaints in a diversity of ways, and many have been mishandled. Yet there is a growing number of successful outcomes, including making governments implement the Guidelines in a more effective manner. In this way, the Guide to the Guidelines encompasses six years of experience by OW member organisations in dealing with the use of the Guidelines in real cases; and, taking these lessons in mind, OW has prepared a "how to" approach to constructing effective complaints. The Guide is also meant to supplement a set of other tools previously published by OW to increase the rate of success in the use of the OECD Guidelines. Download the pdf of the Guide to the Guidelines here.
WHO PAYS? HOW BRITISH SUPERMARKETS ARE KEEPING WOMEN WORKERS IN POVERTY Every week in Britain, 32 million people shop in supermarkets. Inside these cathedrals of modern consumer society, everything is carefully presented: meat trimmed and packaged, potatoes washed, tomatoes uniform in colour and size. Yet there is a darker side to the supermarket revolution, a far cry from this sanitised, neatly-presented world. This report by ActionAid investigates the supply chains of British supermarkets in the South. It explains that the structure of these supply In their obsessive pursuit of ever greater shareholder value, supermarkets in the UK are strategically, premeditatedly and, thus, perversely exploiting Southern workers in all sectors. Rahela, a garment worker in Bangladesh, working in a sweatshop hired by British supermarkets, describes her misery: sometimes we don't have enough to eat. My neighbours are too poor to give us anything. I cook what I can manage. Sometimes it's just rice - I can rarely manage fish or meat because it's too costly. The study explores a way in which supermarkets in the UK are banding together to profit over people in the South, particularly women, is becoming a common business practice of supermarkets worldwide. Indeed, women find that their already disadvantaged position in the labour market, and in society as a whole, makes them quite an attractive prey for supermarkets, when suppliers try to drive down pay and conditions in their vying for a contract from a supermarket. It is this pool of cheap, pliable labour that allows Northern consumers to buy goods cheap, whilst concurrently allowing supermarkets to generate high profits in this Darwininan ethos. The report argues that the growing power of big supermarkets in the UK is both the product and the driver - a vicious circle - of a way of doing business that is made possible by the exploitation of women workers in developing countries. Some of the predatory practices that such power provides are:
These power results in the transfer of business cost and risks down the supply chain, which engenders a transfer of wealth in the opposite direction: from workers and suppliers in poor countries to supermarkets, consumers and shareholders in the rich North. It is the blatant reestablishment of good old colonialism. Given these grim realities, ActionAid asserts that voluntary CSR initiatives, such as the UK's Ethical Trading Initiative, have clearly failed in their mission to make corporations practice business models that provide a dignified sustainability for all stakeholders, especially those at the bottom of the pyramid. For this reason ActionAid makes a number of specific recommendations to different regulatory actors (UK government, European Union and United Nations) to create new legislation that upgrades the current regulatory frameworks, and to monitor supermarkets and business in general to enforce the rules. It also calls on supermarkets to:
Yet, the above recommendations notwithstanding, ActionAid, rightly so, conveys as one of its conclusions, that in the UK, we have come to expect a certain level of ethical standards from retailers, standards that have not and cannot be achieved through voluntary initiatives alone...In the absence of a statutory regulator, a handful of NGOs - backed by consumer pressure - is all that exists to hold supermarkets accountable. Nonetheless, albeit ActionAid is calling on consumers to mobilise, it prefers to use direct consumer pressure to governments, to implement and enforce a new regulatory framework, at a time when governments are increasingly acting as ushers of corporations all over the world. Jus Semper believes that ActionAid will in time arrive at the conclusion that the only way to get companies to expediently change their practices is to use the logic of the market to vote as citizens and consumers with our consumer power. It is by making informed and responsible decisions concerning where to buy that we can improve or lessen the bottom line and shareholder value of corporations. It is also our responsibility to not increase our own personal sustainability through low prices at the expense of millions of people who are exploited; for, by supporting the corporate race to the bottom, we are endangering our own sustainability. It should be clear that it is also immoral to subsidise our high quality standard of living at the expense of people in developing countries. Yet ActionAid's campaign to put pressure on governments is a valuable contribution; but it should move in tandem to complement a permanent consumer pressure on corporations, especially in this era of ever more pervasive quasi-slavery practices in the South. Download the pdf of the ActionAid Report here.
CLOSE TO SLAVERY: GUEST WORKER PROGRAMS IN THE UNITED STATES Given the increasing reports denouncing the growing enslavement of people from the so-called developing world, the case of the United States cannot be left out, for U.S. quasi-slavery practices are the archetype of modern slavery. This crass reality is exposed by the Southern Poverty Law Centre in a brand new report. It informs us that the executive and legislative branches of government in the U.S. have been discussing an immigration reform that includes provisions that would potentially bring millions of new "guest" workers to the United States. However, what politicians are not saying is that the United States already has a "guestworker" program for unskilled labourers, -of which seventy-five percent are Mexicans- largely hidden from view because the workers are typically socially and geographically isolated. Thus, the Centre calls everyone to get inform and examine how this system of quasi-slavery operates. The Southern Poverty Law Centre alerts us that there is a formal guestworker program in operation that in practice places these "guests" under conditions of brazen servitude. The highlights of this report exhibit another prominent feature of today's Darwinian ethos.
As a leading U.S. Congressman, Charles Rangel, recently put it: This guestworker program's the closest thing I've ever seen to slavery. The Centre explains that this is nothing new and quotes former Department of Labour official Lee G. Williams describing the old "bracero" program -- the guestworker program that brought thousands of Mexican nationals to work in the U.S. during and after World War II -- as a system of "legalised slavery." The Centre exhibits a grim reality for people, already dispossessed in their countries, who resort to these conditions as a last recourse. The Centre contends that the current H-2 program can be viewed as a modern-day system of indentured servitude. Yet in contrast with European indentured servants of old, today's guestworkers have no prospect of becoming U.S. citizens, for they must leave the country when their visas expire. In this way, they constitute the disposable workers of the U.S. economy. The Centre's report is based on interviews with thousands of guestworkers, scores of legal cases and the experiences of legal experts from around the U.S. The Centre alerts that the abuses described are the foreseeable outcomes of a system that treats foreign workers as commodities to be imported as needed without affording them adequate legal safeguards. In this way, the Centre calls for a complete overhaul of the H-2 program before an expansion is ever considered. This is a call to be carefully examined by civil society in both the U.S. as well as in Mexico and other countries experiencing a dramatic exodus of people due to the refusal of their governments to abide by their most basic responsibility: to procure the welfare of every rank of society, especially of the dispossessed. Download the pdf of the report of the Southern Poverty Law Centre here.
HARVEST OF SHAME. CHILDREN IN GUATEMALA ARE PAYING THE PRICE FOR U.S. VEGETABLE PRODUCTS In the same way as NAFTA, CAFTA, its twin brother in Central America, is generating wonderful levels of shareholder value for U.S. agro-industrialists, thanks to 13-year-old children and minors working under deplorable conditions at the Legumex factory in Guatemala. They are forced to work 11 to 14 hours a day, six and seven days a week, while being paid below the legal minimum wage and cheated of their overtime. They work under conditions where every single labour law in Guatemala is being violated. Yet governments and their corporations are ecstatic. This report, from the National Labour Committee (NLC) denounces the exploitation of children in Guatemala. The report focuses on the exploitative The report denounces how the company violates every single labour law in Guatemala, preferring to hire children, especially girls, instead of adults. They do it because:
In this way, Legumex:
With the joyful cooperation of the Guatemalan government, the sheer predatory practices of Legumex and of their clients in the U.S., such as the Hanover Brand of frozen vegetables, from Hanover Food Products in Pennsylvania, and Superior Foods in California, violate the constitution of the republic, the labour code, the ILO conventions and the International Convention of the Rights of the Child to which Guatemala is signatory. According to the NLC, a quick check of retail prices showed that a one-pound bag of Hanover frozen broccoli sells in the U.S. for anywhere between U.S. $1,89 and 2,99. Given that the produce entered the U.S. at a total cost of 30 cents, the mark up ranges between 583 and 896 percent. The case shows, once again, a consistency in the unsustainability of the North-South terms of trade. Producers must offer the lowest cost to their Northern clients, which requires the payment of hunger wages and the stark violation of labour and human rights. Then marketers and retailers keep the overwhelming majority of the profit margin; and we, the Northern consumers, we get subsidised with low prices by the children of Guatemala, or workers elsewhere in the South. Such producer to retail price ratios leave no excuse for not paying not only minimum wages but living wages to workers in Guatemala. Yet the sheer greed and the predatory nature of this relationship, where governments and businesses work in partnership, ignoring any kind of supply-chain social responsibility, exposes the perversity and unsustainability of the current ethos, which only Northern citizens, in our role as conscientious consumers can change. Download the pdf of NLC's full report here.
UNDUE INFLUENCE. CORPORATIONS GAIN GROUND IN BATTLE OVER CHINA'S NEW LABOUR LAW - BUT HUMAN RIGHTS AND LABOUR ADVOCATES ARE PUSHING BACK Continuing with its focus on new labour legislation in China and the behaviour, in response, of the so-called corporate citizens, Global Labour Strategies (GLS) makes an assessment of the efforts of global corporations to circumvent new legislation to deny Chinese workers minimum labour rights. This paper also assesses the efforts of global civil society to defeat such efforts and protect labour rights, which even on paper still leave a lot to be desired. Given the global repercussions that Chinese labour endowments are having on the livelihoods of workers both North and South, it is of the utmost importance to defeat corporate efforts to impose a view that regards human beings as another commodity. This report informs about the behind-the-scenes battle raging worldwide over reforms in China's labour law. On one side are U.S.-based and other The report alerts that despite the fact that this corporate lobbying has already resulted in a weakening of the proposed new law, U.S. corporate groups have launched an unpublicised new attack demanding further amendment. Nonetheless, the report explains that counter-pressure from Chinese and international pro-worker groups has led to splits among global companies operating in China. Chinese and international forces are engaged in a significant pushback against the gutting of China's new labour law:
This has led to splits among global companies operating in China. Nike has virtually repudiated the efforts of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to lobby against the law. And the E.U. Chamber of Commerce has reversed its opposition to the law and renounced its threat that its member companies may leave China if the law is passed. The battle may come to a head in the Chinese National People's Congress in 2007. The outcome will also depend on broader changes in Chinese labour relations, which are increasingly marked by worker protests, lawsuits, and changing forms of labour organisations. GLS contends that the new focus on the role of global corporations in China represents the emergence of a "new paradigm" for analysing the current form of globalisation not just in terms of a "trade debate" based on "free trade vs. protectionism," but as a product of a global "sweatshop lobby" that is deliberately shaping labour law and labour markets around the world. In this way, the report concludes that workers, unions, and their allies worldwide have a vital interest in defeating this corporate offensive, for expanded rights for Chinese workers can help halt and reverse the race to the bottom in the global economy. Download the pdf of the full report here.
LABOUR STANDARDS IN CHINA: BEST PRACTICE GUIDELINES This guide is produced by the British Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF), which was set up in 1991 as a voluntary association of 39 public sector pension funds. It exists "to promote the investment interests of local authority pension funds, and to maximise their influence as shareholders to promote CSR and high standards of corporate governance amongst the companies in which they invest." The Forum's members currently have combined assets of £70 billion. Although the CSR standards they use are conventional and do not address critical issues such as the issue of a living wage, TJSGA considers that they are still a valuable example of the tools that conscientious investors can use as a starting point to demand responsible practices from corporations in China or elsewhere. Yet, given the substandard conditions of labour rights in China and the push by corporations to maintain them at the bottom of the scale, as it is clearly illustrated by GLS in the preceding document, these kinds of investment tools become all the more relevant in the case of China to stop the predatory practices of global corporations. In this way, considering that the Guide was developed as a framework for regular monitoring of companies to detect emerging concerns about risk and value destruction due to poor labour standards, conscientious investment groups, such as the LAPFF, with a leverage of a £70 billion portfolio, are in a rather powerful position to force corporations to stop their sheer Darwinian practices in China and allow the Chinese to uphold, as a starting point, minimum labour and human rights standards. Download the pdf to the LAPFF Best Practice Guidelines here.
A NEW CONSUMER SURVEY SHOWS A HIGH SOCIAL STANDARD AMONG YOUNG U.S. CITIZENS U.S. Young Adults and Teenagers Appear to be Prepared to Reward or Punish Companies by Leveraging their Consumer Power Depending on Their Perception of the Level of Commitment of Corporations to Social Causes. A recent U.S. survey, conducted in the second half of 2006, explores how corporate cause-related initiatives influence U.S. young adults The major highlights:
To be sure, Millenials show a high degree of sensitivity when prompted to express their opinions regarding the social responsibility of business. Yet, since companies have far more power than civil society to advertise their own story, even if it is not entirely true or if it is a blatant lie, there is strong probability of young consumers falling prey to the premeditated misinformation of marketers unless they are aware about other sources that can provide the other story or the whole story. All the more reason for consumer organisations to reach out to these civic-minded consumers and inform them objectively. Download the press release of the survey here.
"THE STATE OF WORKING AMERICA 2006-2007" EXPOSES AN ETHOS IN THE U.S. OF GREATEST INEQUALITY AMONG THE WEALTHIEST NATIONS IN THE WORLD The report shows that growth has bypassed all but the wealthiest few; wages have stagnated despite rapid productivity growth; young workers' The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has been providing accurate and objective economic analysis that has consistently shown that neoliberal economics have clearly worsened social inequalities at the core of neoliberalism. Indeed, the EPI's The State of Working America 2006-2007 report shows that starting in 1995, a new and important change occurred in the U.S. economy: productivity -the output of goods and services per hour worked- began to grow more quickly. Yet, despite this unequivocally beneficial development, many people in the U.S. report dissatisfaction with where the economy seems to be headed, and many worry about their own and their children's well-being. These concerns have led some policy makers and economists to ask: why aren't people happier about the economy? The authors' analysis concludes that if the findings in the hundreds of tables and figures in the report can be reduced to one observation, it would be that, when it comes to an economy that is working for working families, growth in and of itself is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. The growth has to reach the people: the bakers need to benefit from bread they create each day of their working lives. The benchmarks by which the economy is judged must reflect these distributional concerns, and the U.S. must construct policies and institutions to address them. If not -if the enhanced productive capacity continues to benefit mostly the wealthiest citizens- the U.S. risks sacrificing bedrock principles that have historically defined the U.S. economic experience. To learn more about The State of Working America 2006-2007, click here. For a full review of the Executive Summary of The State of Working America 2006-2007, click here.
2007 TOP TWENTY RESOURCE DOWNLOADS
1.TLWNSI Issue Analysis: Wage Gap Graphs Based on PPPs - Mexico
A living wage is, universally, the most important element in the achievement of everyone´s right to a dignified life and the eradication of poverty. Relative to the social responsibility of business, a corporation or organisational entity employing people, regardless of size or trade, public or private, cannot be considered to behave in a socially responsible manner if it does not pay a living wage, regardless of how responsibly it behaves in all other areas of activity.
Mexico City policeman chains himself to the main doors
of the City Assembly in protest because his salary does not
make a living wage (19 December 2006).
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