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SECTION 1 2 3 WHAT CAN BE DONE THE LOW ROAD: WORKING TO STAND STILL CASE STUDY MALAWI TEA PLUCKERS: IN WORK AND IN EXTREME POVERTY Tea picking in Mulanje, Southern Malawi (2009). Photo: Abbie Trayler-Smith Mount Mulanje is home to Malawi’s 128 year-old tea industry, which employs more than 50,000 workers in the rainy season. Maria, 32, has plucked tea on the green, seemingly endless hills for over seven years. She and her fellow tea pluckers are the face of in-work extreme poverty. Maria is fortunate that she lives in housing provided by a plantation and has recently been put on a long-term contract; but almost threequarters of workers have neither of these things. 323 The difficulties workers face are exacerbated by the fact that most have no land of their own and cannot supplement their income or food intake through farming. The work is hard and Maria must pick a minimum of 44 kilograms of tea every day to earn her daily cash wage. This wage still sits below the $1.25 a day World Bank Extreme Poverty Line at household level, 324 and she struggles to feed her two children with it, both of whom are malnourished. According to a recent living wage estimation, Maria would need to earn around twice her existing wage just to meet her basic needs and those of her family. 325 But things are starting to change. In January 2014, the Malawian government raised the minimum wage by approximately 24 percent. A coalition, led by Ethical Tea Partnership and Oxfam, is seeking new ways to make decent work sustainable in the longer term. 326 Government regulation and the right of workers to collectively bargain with employers can help to tackle inequality and increase wages for ordinary workers. However, in recent decades, in the context of weakened labour laws, the repression of unions, and the ability of industries to relocate to where 74
SECTION 1 2 3 WHAT CAN BE DONE wages are low and workers are passive, companies have been free to choose poverty wages and poor labour conditions for their workers. According to the International Trade Union Confederation, more than 50 percent of workers are in vulnerable or precarious work, with 40 percent trapped in an informal sector where there are no minimum wages and no rights. 327 In today’s global economy many sectors are organized into global value chains, including industrial manufacturing, such as clothing and electronics, and agricultural trade in commodities like sugar and coffee. Within these, multinational companies (MNCs) control complex networks of suppliers around the world. They reap enormous profits by employing workers in developing countries, few of whom ever see the rewards of their work. The prevalence of ‘low road’ jobs in profitable supply chains has been confirmed by three recent Oxfam studies of wages and working conditions. The studies found that poverty wages and insecure jobs were prevalent in Vietnam and Kenya, both middle-income countries, and wages were below the poverty line in India and below the extreme poverty line in Malawi, despite being within national laws. 328 A separate set of three studies of wages in food supply chains in South Africa, Malawi and the Dominican Republic, commissioned by six ISEAL members, found that minimum wages in the relevant sectors were between 37 to 73 percent of an estimated living wage – not nearly enough for food, clothing, housing and some discretionary spending. 329 FIGURE 10: Minimum wages as a percentage of estimated living wages (monthly) 330 100 Minimum wages as a percentage of estimated living wages (monthly) 80 60 40 20 72.9 40.2 36.5 0 South Africa Grape Sector Dominican Republic Banana Sector Malawi Tea Sector Some argue that low worker wages are a result of consumer demand for low prices. But numerous studies have shown that even significant wage increases for workers of apparel products, for example, would barely alter retail prices. 331 Oxfam’s own study found that doubling the wages of workers in the Kenyan flower industry would add just five pence to a £4 ($6.50) bouquet in UK shops. 75
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