Labour standards and wages the focus of a resolution at Tesco’s AGM today

We are all waiting with baited breath to hear about the outcome of the shareholder resolution at the Tesco AGM today. The campaign group Action Aid have brought Gertruida Baartman, a fruit picker from South Africa, over to speak about her experiences at this years AGM. It is the second year that Ms Baartman has visited the AGM. Last year Ms Baartman told how she worked very long hours for £3.41 per day. She demanded that Tesco use their influence to ensure a fairer deal for workers in their supply chain. She also explained how workers were exposed to dangerous pesticides. Terry Reid, the Chairman of Tesco promised to look into the issue and ensure conditions improved at her farm.

The Guardian have reported today that this year Gertruida has explained how some conditions have improved at her farm, especially after Tesco’s Chairman visited in May. However she says that her pay has not improved.

Tesco for their part have stated that they are members of the ETI and take labour standards in their supply chain very seriously.

At today’s meeting Tesco’s shareholder will be asked to consider a resolution demanding higher standards for workers in Tesco’s global supply chain. If passed, the resoulution would oblige Tesco to “appoint independent auditors to ensure that workers in its supplier factories are guaranteed decent working conditions, a living wage, job security and the right to join a trade union of their choice.”

Many of the larger shareholders are unlikely to support the resolution, because it asks the company to ‘guarantee’ conditions. Something that with the best will in the world Tesco is unlikely to be able to ensure. However the resolution, which was tabled by War on Want’s company secretary, Ben Birnberg, has the support of investors like the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

There is still a great deal of pressure on supermarkets to show that they are responding to these issues. It is unlikely to go away.

1000 children aged 8-13 years old working in brick kilns in Shanxi

Our China team just sent over this terrible story from the Chinese papers. Be warned its not for the faint hearted…

Following the news stories on the Olympics firm accused of using child labor, the Chinese papers have reported  that at least 1000 trafficked children  were found working in brick-making factories in Shanxi. The youngest children were only 8 years old,  the oldest only 13.  The children were locked up after working all day until 10 at night. They did not have water for showers, many had skin diseases.  Many were reported to have been severely beaten by the supervisors, some to the point where they had limbs broken, others had been beaten up with hot pods for churning bricks until their backs were burnt deeply. 

 

About 400 parents have signed a petition letter on the internet desperate to seek help. The local media have reported that some parents rescued 40 children, but found that some local police deterred parents from rescuing other children, warning them ‘not to interfere with children of others’ while leaving the children working in the factories.  Local police have been accused of being involved in trafficking the children among different brick factories in the region.  Other local police were accused of putting money for financing the rescue action into their own pockets. 

This sheds light on how deep corruption in the Shanxi area goes.  

Unfair labour for the Olympics

The Playfair 2008 coalition released a report on Sunday alleging poor labour conditions in factories making goods for the 2008 Olympics. No Medal for the Olympics on labour rights focuses primarily on child labour, excessive hours and poor wages. The Playfair coalition includes the Clean Clothes Campaign, Intertational Textile Garments and Leather Workers Federation (ITGLWF) and the International Trade Union Conference  

The allegations though extremely worrying, reflect the general situation in China. Campaigners should be congratulated on their dedication to uncovering the issues. Researchers worked in the factories alongside workers to discover what conditions were reallly like. In one factory they found 20 children, some as young as 12, working in their school holidays. In another factory they found forced overtime, fines and pay 65% less than the local minimum wage.

Play Fair 08 are calling on the International Olympic Commitee to ensure labour standards are upheld. Poor standards clearly contradict Olympian values. After similar campaigns around the 2004 Athens Olympics the IOC should have been better prepared this time around.  

Ambitious new Nike Corporate Responsibility Report

 Nike has in the past few days (May 31, 2007) released their Corporate Responsibility report. The section dealing with ‘Workers in Contract factories’ makes interesting reading. It starts by acknowledging that the 800,000 workers in their supply chain overshadow any other direct constituency; that 80% of these workers are women aged between 18 and 24 and  they are themselves significant agents of change for their wider communities.Nike has set themselves some very ambitious targets. They state they want to bring systemic change for workers’ rights in their supply chain and in the industry at large. In particular, by 2011 they intend to:

• Eliminate excessive overtime in their contract factories
• Implement tailored human resource management systems and educational training for workers in their focus factories
• Implement Freedom of Association Educational programmes in 100 percent of focus factories
• And lead multi-brand collaboration on compliance issues in 30 percent of their supply chain

Nike describe how their programme has gone through three iterations. Generation I and II were about standards and monitoring, Generation III they argue is about ‘responsible competitiveness’, identifying and remediating root causes with systemic approaches.  Specifically it focuses on:

• Building excellence in factory remediation
• Developing sustainable sourcing strategies
• Building business integration and accountability
• Increasing contract factory ownership of corporate responsibility
• Building industry coalitions

Nike used to be synonymous with sweatshops. They are now, along with the GAP, widely acknowledged within the ethical trade community as having the leading and most well resourced ethical trading programmes of all companies. That’s not to say they haven’t got problems. No companies can guarantee that their supply chains are problem free. After all this is about human relationships and about 800,000 young women in very poor countries. 

Nike argues that most people in ethical trade have become experts in rooting out the bad, but the real challenge is in outlining and delivering a vision of success.

One could quibble about whether all ethical traders are finding the problems in their supply chains, however Nike are right about the need for successful visions. Nike should be applauded for setting themselves such ambitious goals. But the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

Chinese Workers Paid With Fake Cash

There was a burst of incredulous laughter from one side of the Impactt office this afternoon, as this news piece dropped into our inboxes, signalling a new low for labour standards in China. 

The article, posted on ChinaCSR.com, reports that 20 workers at an unnamed jeans-dyeing factory in Guangdong were paid in fake bank notes. When the workers asked the factory to exchange the fake notes for real ones, they were dismissed. 

The factory reportedly claimed that they were victims of the forgery as well, and that they would pay the workers in real currency when they had resolved the issue with their bank. But this does not explain the dismissal of the workers, and goes against the additonal reports that the factory ‘usually uses the fake notes only for new workers’.  

The story is in fact not remotely funny.

We have spent the past 30 minutes discussing what we should say on this matter, and how we as a company should react to the news. What we all agree on is that this is a form of forgery that goes well beyond the common practice of faking books to show that workers have been paid the correct amount of real currency. 

Ghosts – a film about the Morecambe Bay cocklepickers

I watched the harrowing film ‘Ghosts‘ last night. I found it an extremely emotive reminder of why we work on issues of labour standards. Ghosts dramatises the stories of the 23 Chinese illegal migrants to Britain who drowned in Morecambe Bay in February 2004.

The opening scenes of the last group of migrants standing on top of their white van as the cold dark waves lap around their legs was absolutely heart-stopping. The film works back from these moments exploring how these workers found themselves in such a desperate position. Ain Quin, a young Chinese girl pays $25,000 to be smuggled into the UK. She becomes one of 3 million migrant workers that work in Britain. Living in cramped conditions with eleven other migrants she works in meat factories supplying UK supermarkets: Tesco, Sainsbury’s and ASDA. When the work dries up and they are hounded from their home by racist abuse, the Chinese migrants find themselves cockling in Morecambe Bay.

After being beaten up by other cocklers they risk their lives by going out on the sandbeds at night, with disastrous consequences. The film brings into clarity many facets of migrants’ lives. At almost every turn they were vulnerable to exploitation. Many were bonded to moneylenders and the smugglers who had got them into the UK. As illegal migrants they were as worried about being caught as they were about scraping together their meagre living.

The film raises many questions about the plight of illegal migrants in our globalised world and gives no easy answers to their situation. A fund has been set up for the victims’ families, who are still saddled with debts and under enormous pressure from moneylenders.

Everyone working in ethical trading should be made to sit down and watch this movie, maybe it would prompt braver and more human strategies to prevent this ever happening again.