Poverty Footprint Study on how the Coca Cola - Oxfam America

8 Value chain: Livelihoods
Headlines
The Coca-Cola/SABMiller value chain supports
thousands of jobs in both Zambia and El Salvador, but
the quality of these jobs varies according to their place in
the formal or informal economy.
Workers across most of the value chain earn above
minimum wage, but at the edges of the value chain,
wages are sometimes insufficient to meet daily needs.
Sugarcane workers at the far end of the value chain are
among the most vulnerable actors due to the lack of
formal contractual arrangements to protect their rights
and the low-paid, seasonal nature of their work.
Wages, benefits, job security, labor standards and
additional support services are good within SABMiller’s
bottling plants, but there is an opportunity to improve
communication between management and workers on
some of these issues.
There are significant livelihood opportunities in the
distribution and retail portions of the value chain,
particularly for people traditionally excluded from
employment, and especially women.
The Coca-Cola Company and SABMiller’s investments
in human development, training and access to credit in
the value chain reap significant benefits for individual
stakeholders.
44 Exploring the links between international business and poverty reduction
Ensuring an adequate living, a sustained livelihood,
and a stable and predictable income is an essential
contributor to poverty alleviation in developing
countries. Employment, along with access to
training, research and development, and credit
markets, contributes to livelihoods. Employment can
most effectively reduce poverty if it offers decent,
productive work in conditions of equity, security and
human dignity.
Labor standards in the value chain
The Coca-Cola Company conducts an audit program
to assess whether supplier and bottler workplaces
uphold internationally recognized labor and
environmental standards as outlined in its Supplier
Guiding Principles. The Coca-Cola Company’s audits
cover its bottlers, which many companies would
consider first-tier suppliers, as well as authorized
suppliers to bottlers, which could be considered
second-tier suppliers. By the end of 2008,
The Coca- Cola Company audited 1,818 bottlers and
suppliers globally, out of as many as 4,224 suppliers
worldwide. Additionally, labor audits of first-tier
suppliers were first introduced in Zambia in 2010.