New research gives an in-depth look at how Fair Trade USA (FTUSA) and the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) programs are failing to protect workers’ rights in Mexico.
Workers report retaliation, including for requesting PPE for pesticide application, rampant wage theft, and other abuses of their fundamental rights, including the right to organize. Finally, the research pushes back on the common position, that a weak Corporate Social Responsibility program is better than nothing, examining the ways that such “fairwashing” undermines worker organizing and the engagement of civil society.
Key quotes:
“On April 11, 2019, farmworkers from Rancho Nuevo Produce, a berry and tomato plantation subcontracted by San Diego–based Andrew & Williamson Fresh Produce (A&W) and sold under the Good Farms organic-strawberry label, launched an anonymous denouncement:
Rancho Nuevo, where slavery exists. Rancho Nuevo, where they don’t pay overtime. Rancho Nuevo, where you are fired if you raise your voice. Rancho Nuevo, where they demand quality but don’t pay quality wages. . . . Rancho Nuevo, where there exists a pro-business repressive union that defends the boss and not the worker. Rancho Nuevo, where the Fair Trade and Equitable Food Initiative certifications exist to sell the produce more expensive in the United States without bettering the working conditions and the treatment of the worker…
Despite the worker protests, the label on the clamshell baskets of Good Farms organic strawberries claims that they are “Responsibly Grown, Farmworker Assured,” and certified by the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) and Fair Trade USA (FTUSA).”
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“Produce supply chains organized by US-based companies have increased in production in Mexico, given that one of the country’s “comparative advantages” is a historically entrenched and legally protected authoritarian labor regime that, despite recent reforms, functions as a mechanism to lower labor costs, increase productivity, and generate greater profits. The inability of private labor standards to overcome the structural deficit of a weak national institutional framework for freedom of association and collective- bargaining rights should not be surprising. At their best, private labor standards are limited in their ability to bring about meaningful change. At worst, they do more harm than good as they fairwash abuses and prevent legitimate collective-bargaining agreements. Worst of all, these programs fail to facilitate the necessary political and economic transformations inside the workplace or in the industry as a whole, which could allow for greater labor and human rights.
The private regulation of labor standards in the Mexican agricultural enclave of San Quintin demonstrates that CSR and MSIs are largely ineffective, as they do little to disrupt the savage inequality of power, profits, and resources in global produce supply chains.”