Firms in the West want to stop it, but will consumers pay a premium to end Third World exploitation, asks Roger Cowe
CHILDREN paid a pittance to pick jasmine for French perfume houses before dawn in the mud of the Nile delta have a potential new ally – the British shopper.
Consumers are now in the vanguard of the battle against trade-induced injustices as the emphasis shifts from campaigns in high places to the high street.
The latest move to enlist shoppers in this fight is the launch of the Oxfam FairTrade Company. It will transform Oxfam’s approach to selling crafts and food and hopes to reduce losses the charity has built up.
Development agencies have not abandoned the idea of a new world order in which poor countries’ debts are wiped out and trading relationships transformed to improve workers’ pay. Indeed, they are pushing for these issues to be discussed at the Singapore meeting of the World Trade Organisation in December.
But those targets are as remote now as they were in the Seventies, when Oxfam and Traidcraft began importing craft work from India and Bangladesh.
An elastic concept, fair trade is not just about price, says Pauline Tiffen of Twin Trading, a partner in the Cafdirect venture. “It is a trading chain where the producers are not the weakest link, where due respect is given to their skills and contribution. But it’s not just positive discrimination – consumers should get a good deal as well.”
Phil Wells, director of the Fairtrade Foundation, said: “It is trade that empowers the disadvantaged producer.”
The foundation, set up in 1992, is involved in both strands of the fair-trade movement: addressing the needs of agricultural producers and industrial workers. Both rely on a willingness among Western shoppers to pay more, albeit for higher quality goods. First, products such as Cafdirect bypass existing brand owners to offer an alternative, giving producers better terms.
The foundation is also persuading Western companies to insist on higher standards in their suppliers’ factories. The Sainsbury supermarket chain and the Co-op have signed up for a project to work out how to define and enforce standards.
Separately, charities are trying to apply consumer pressure to harness the power of retailers against appalling Third World conditions. Oxfam has a clothing campaign aimed at Marks & Spencer, Burton, C&A, Next and Sears.
These campaigns have been sparked in part by events, such as the 188 fire deaths at a Thai toy factory in 1993, but mainly by the endemic exploitation in countries where cheap clothes, toys and footwear are now produced.
Campaigners want to stamp out 60-hour weeks, fines for failing to meet production targets and poor protection from lethal chemicals.
In the United States, where brands such as Reebok and Levi’s have acted to stave off consumer pressure, the emphasis has been on child labour.
In many cases the children working in the carpet factories and clothing sweatshops of India and Bangladesh, or the training shoe workshops of southeast Asia are there illegally.
But development workers urge caution. Oxfam cites the upheaval in the Bangladesh clothing industry when US Senator Tom Harkin put forward a Bill to ban the import of products made with child labour.
Factory owners threw out children to ensure they could keep selling to US customers, with the result that families lost vital income and children were left living on the streets, many dragged into prostitution.
So engagement rather than boycott is preferred. The aim is to get British companies to adopt codes of conduct in their dealings with suppliers from the developing world.
Adopting a code is not enough. The toy industry has a code of practice but, as Jessica Woodroofe of the World Development Movement says, “The whole procedure assumes that the code is not going to work. Companies need to monitor factories, which they do already for product quality and safety. And there must be some form of independent audit.”
It is not easy, as Body Shop’s Jacqui MacDonald admitted, even in a company with an explicit commitment to different trading patterns.
The former Oxfam worker was recruited two years ago to sort out the company’s Trade Not Aid campaign, which had failed to make substantial purchases. It has now been renamed Community Trade, to reflect the emphasis of sourcing products from cocoa butter to baskets and pottery in small communities.
Sourcing is one thing. Selling is another. The evidence of the green boom in the late 1980s suggests that in Britain people will not pay more, even for values they espouse.
Richard Adams runs Out Of This World, an ethical consumer co-operative, and he believes many campaigners underestimate how difficult it is for manufacturers and retailers to meet their demands, and wonders whether there is enough altruism in the tough 1990s. “A generation has grown up being told that the world is very competitive.”
There is clearly a fair trade niche and the idea is entering the mainstream. Last week the British Retail Consortium agreed to sponsor a meeting with manufacturers, retailers and the Department of Trade and Industry to attack exploitation.
Chris Williams, representative for C&A, which last year set up its own auditing operation, said: “There’s a time for everything. Now a lot of people are saying: `Let’s try to push fair trade forward’.”