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Panorama and Primark

Panorama viewers will have seen the other side of cut-price fashion. The recent BBC programme traced several Primark garments right down to the sweat-shops in India that produce them. Women working from home and even children in back-street workshops are paid starvation wages - less than half the legal minimum wage, under 50 pence a day.

Campaigners are asking ethical consumers to tell Primark to raise pay and conditions of workers producing its goods. Click here to add your voice and tell Primark to deal responsibly with the poorest workers in its supply chains and to get child workers into school, and not to abandon them by taking away their livelihoods.

For details of the Primark campaign see the Labour Behind the Label website.

UK supermarkets continue to grind down the conditions of workers producing their products, as graphically illustrated during a fact-finding tour of banana plantations in Latin America by MK Fairtrade Forum member, Peter Williams, in February.

The banana 'price wars' led by Asda, Tesco and other UK supermarkets saw the retail price of bananas fall from £1.06/kilo in 2000 to 66p/Kg in 2005. The lower prices were passed on to the suppliers. Plantation owners responded by sacking their workers and employing them on an informal basis, saving on national insurance contributions and the cost of providing holidays, maternity and sick pay. In 2000 20% of banana plantation workers in Costa Rica were informal workers. By 2006 this had risen to 60% of the workforce[1]. Almost all the 300,000 workers on plantations in Ecuador, the world's leading banana exporter, are employed on a cash-in-hand basis, often by "gangmasters" not even directly employed by the plantation.

The reality of life for workers who pick your bananas - No toilet or running water, this family of four lives eats and sleeps in one tiny room of a shack shared with four other families.

Workers on Fairtrade-certified plantations have proper job contracts, which means they get holiday and maternity pay, pensions and the kinds of social security benefits we all take for granted.

See previous article Tell M&S, Primark, Tesco and Topshop to pay a living wage for details of Labour Behind the Label campaign].

Things are no better in the fashion trade. Homeworkers in India making clothes for UK High Street stores earn well below the minimum wage. Last year MKFTF member Peter Williams met homeworkers in Bulgaria sewing mocassins for the UK market. Despite the high retail price of these 'hand-made' shoes, the homeworkers were paid less than the minimum wage and struggled to make ends meet.

Most high street retailers belong to the Ethical Trading Initiative [ETI]. To join they must commit to to raising the pay and conditions of workers in their supply chains. ETI also comprises unions, charities and labour rights organisations, whose role is to advise companies on how they can trade ethically, to scrutinise the actions of retailers and pressure them to live up to their commitments.

"Consumers can have a big impact by telling retailers they care about the workers producing the goods they buy. We need consumer pressure for initiatives like ETI to be effective", said Peter, who represents homeworkers' groups within the ETI.

Militon Keynes Fair Trade Forum is supporting a campaign for two high street shoe shops, Clarks and Stylo (which owns Barrets, Priceless and other shoe stores) to join the ETI. It is part of a global campaign by homeworkers for decent work and equal treatment with factory workers.

Who Foots the Bill? campaign postcards are available from Sust! Either post them to Clarks and Stylo, or leave them at the Sust! shop in the food centre, and we'll post them for you.

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The above article is based on a presentation given at the MK Global Centre Spring Drinks even held on 22 May 2008.

References
[1] Cashing in on Ethical Consumption? The case of Fairtrade Bananas in the UK Supermarket Sector, Jonathan Hall, Oxford University Centre for the Environment (2008).

The Phone Co-op

The Phone Co-op is the Ethical Consumer Best Buy for line rental and broadband services (2006). Voted second-best provider for customer satisfaction by Which? readers (2006). All services are climate-neutral.

The really good news is that if you sign up to the scheme quoting AF0333, not only will you save money on phone bills, the Milton Keynes Global Centre will benefit with a 6% donation of the ongoing value of their bills.

Be a voice for trade justice

Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) are bilateral trade agreements the European Union (EU) has been negotiating with 76 African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. These replace longstanding preferential trade agreements between these countries for products such as sugar and bananas. Read more about Economic Partnership Agreements from Traidcraft.

Under EPAs, in return for wider market access, the EU is demanding these countries open up a range of their industries to international businesses, which could prevent the development of domestic businesses. Some developing countries, such as Malawi, are so concerned by this that they have refused to sign even an interim deal. Currently, just under half of the ACP countries have initialled interim trade deals following intense pressure from the EU. However, there is still time for these countries to renegotiate better terms of trade.

In 2005, the UK Government issued a position statement on EPAs saying it believed poor countries should not be forced to liberalise their economies. But that's exactly what's happening. We need the UK Government to use its influence with the European Commission to open up the initialled EPAs for renegotiation.

Send a message to Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for International Development, asking that the UK Government supports the calls for renegotiation at the Fairtrade Foundation Website.

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