3071-The political economy of new slavery

230 Modern Slavery and Fair Trade Products
Fair Trade: system reproduced
Fair Trade helps to prevent or alleviate slavery and slave-like conditions
of employment in local projects. Its objectives are more profound than
those aimed at codes of practice for MNCs and their subcontractors,
such as the ETI. Fair Trade is a partnership between the buyer and supplier,
and joint initiatives in developing countries start from the needs
of the supplier’s community. This is in contrast to ETI-type initiatives
that are dependent on the power exercised by supermarkets/Western
buyers to bring about change in their supply chains. Such strategies
may make the lives of people even worse, since working in extreme
conditions for little money in the end may be a better option than
having no income whatsoever. For example, when Reebok closed one
of its factories where working hours were longer than 72 hours a week,
The Economist labelled this ‘corporate social irresponsibility’:
Doug Cahn, the company’s head of human rights, talks about values,
fairness and principles, with all the zeal of an anti-corporate lobbyist.
He presents the news that Reebok has just decided to withdraw business
from a subcontracted factory in Thailand as a proof of corporate
caring. The reason: the 400 or so workers employed there to make
shorts and shirts were working for more than 72 hours a week. It is
responsible to press for better standards, but the supply of good jobs
matters too. Workers at this Bangkok factory were paid above the
minimum wage, with health-and-safety rights that few local manufacturers
would offer...Since the most ethical way to do business
is to attract investment and offer more people a way out of peasant
labour, perhaps this practice should be relabelled corporate social
irresponsibility.
The Economist, 2002
Fair Trade attempts to help people out by offering them better alternatives
and not just closing down the available ones. It attempts to create
socio-economic conditions where families would be less vulnerable to
offers from human traffickers to sell their children, and would instead
be able to send them to schools.
Michael Barratt Brown, writing about Fair Trade, says the following:
What then would be the nature of a ‘fair trading’ system in the world?
What has to be challenged? And to answer that question one has to
ask first how the world economy has come to this condition where