When we choose to purchase a product that bears a certification label-- like a yogurt with a Fair Trade stamp-- we may assume that the workers and environment along the supply chain were respected in the product’s development. We might even pay more for the product based on this assumption. But the social auditing and certification industry-- and it is an industry-- behind such certifications do not always have the impacts we might expect.
It is becoming increasingly clear that social auditing and eco-social certification schemes that are not worker-driven rarely change conditions for workers; often distract consumers and the general public from real labor concerns, including labor disputes; deceive consumers about the ways in which products they buy are produced; and, as a consequence, further entrench harmful practices.
This post uses Fair Trade USA’s recently-launched Fair Trade Certified Dairy label as an example of how social auditing and certification programs that are not worker-driven all too often end up as greenwashing and/or fairwashing schemes and fail the workers they are ostensibly meant to protect.
The Emergence of Social Auditing
The anti-sweatshop movement in the 1990s and early 2000s revealed systemic abusive working conditions in supply chains and pressured brands to clean up their practices. Social audits emerged alongside other voluntary corporate social responsibility measures to address abuses in supply chains in the absence of increased regulation.
Under social auditing programs, brands and/or factories hire private auditors to monitor and review their compliance with social standards, in a similar fashion to financial audits that are based on financial standards. Social auditing standards incorporate local labor and minimum wage laws as a baseline but often exceed the level of protection the law requires. Social certifiers offer consumer-recognizable certifications to businesses in certain industries and work with external auditors who check for the certifiers’ criteria (or that of a separate standard setter). However, as Maria Hengeveld wrote in a stunning expose of fast fashion social auditing for The Nation in 2019, social audits differ from financial audits in two fundamental ways: they are voluntary and market-driven. Additionally, most are not created or led by workers. This deeply impedes their ability to change conditions for workers.
Fair Trade USA
In the structurally unsound barrel that is eco-social certification, Fair Trade USA (formerly Transfair) is a particularly bad apple. The certifier watchdog and advocacy group Fair World Project categorizes Fair Trade USA as a label to “approach with caution” based on its record and structure.
Earlier this month, Fair Trade USA launched its “Fair Trade Certified Dairy” program. Chobani, Fair Trade USA’s first dairy program client, is now selling products that bear the label. The rollout comes despite dairy worker opposition to the program, as a distraction from actual worker demands, and before a final dairy standard has even been released.
Workers & Rights Groups Oppose Fair Trade USA’s Dairy Standard
Farmworkers and unions and labor and human rights organizations have opposed Fair Trade USA’s entry into the US dairy sector since it began to explore opportunities in 2019. Workers have called on farms in the northeastern United States instead to become part of the Milk with Dignity program, a worker-driven model inspired by the successes of the Fair Food Program (FFP) in the tomato industry in the southeastern United States. (The FFP is a groundbreaking worker-driven social responsibility program that arose from the Campaign for Fair Food. The FFP is recognized as the social auditing and certification “gold standard” for “empowering rights holders to know and exercise their rights.”)
During Fair Trade USA’s flawed public consultation on the dairy standard in the latter half of 2020, CAL joined over 30 other organizations to sign onto a letter to Fair Trade USA’s CEO Paul Rice expressing serious concerns about the consultation process and the effectiveness of the proposed standards, which would be lifted from other sectors, including where they have failed workers.
In the dairy sector, Fair Trade USA’s proposed standards are even weaker than those in other sectors. They omit the environmental standards (Module 4) applicable elsewhere. This is especially troubling in an industry that produces large amounts of pollution that contributes to climate change-- in 2015 dairy farming produced about as much carbon dioxide as aviation and shipping combined-- and negatively impacts health.
Many of the dairy standards, like Fair Trade USA’s Agricultural Production Standard (APS) criteria in other industries, do not apply on “small farms.” Fair Trade USA classifies farms employing up to five permanent workers and 25 total workers at any time as “small.” Many US dairy farms would fall into this category. According to industry analyst IBIS World, the average number of workers on US dairy farms is 3.7. But the low numbers shouldn’t fool us. Dairy farmworkers are subject to widespread abuse and, because many are undocumented immigrants, they are often unable to assert their rights.
Unless Fair Trade USA’s final dairy standard significantly differs from the APS requirements for other sectors— and the certifier indicates that only a “minimal set of changes” will be made— the following are examples of APS criteria that do not apply on “small farms.”
Fair Trade USA notes that for such farms, these criteria are “optional and are not required (immediately or in the future)”:
Provision of acute medical care for workplace injuries (Objective 3.2.1.b)
Safe buildings on site (Objective 3.2.1.d)
Maintaining records of workplace accidents (Objective 3.2.4.b)
Provision of six days of vacation and three days of sick leave per year (Objective 3.3.3.b)
Voluntary and non-excessive overtime requirements (Objectives 3.4.2.a, 3.4.2.b, and 3.4.2.c do not apply to small farms)
Clean sanitary facilities with handwashing stations (Objective 3.6.1.c)
Safe and sanitary housing, where provided (Objective 3.6.2.f)
Access to information about workers’ rights under the standard and information about Fair Trade USA’s Complaints Procedure (Objectives 3.7.1.a and 3.7.2.c)
A grievance policy (Objective 3.7.2.a)
Non-retaliation against workers who use grievance or complaints procedures (Objective 3.7.2.d)
Fair Trade Dairy Certification Undermines Ongoing Organizing Efforts
The Workers’ Center of Central New York has called on Chobani to resume conversations related to freedom of association rights on New York dairy farms for years. Although some Chobani products now bear the Fair Trade Certified Dairy label, the company still has not meaningfully engaged with workers on this issue.
Rights groups identify certification-amidst-dispute as a pattern for Fair Trade USA. In the most egregious case, Fair Trade USA certified a Fyffes melon operation in Honduras in 2018, despite more than a decade of documented labor rights abuse, including union busting. (Fair Trade USA de-certified the operation seven months after certifying it, in the wake of a campaign led by workers and NGOs.)
A final dairy standard has not been published
While Chobani products have been sold with the Fair Trade Certified Dairy label for weeks now, the final standard that the label is supposed to represent has not yet been published. This leaves major questions about what standards are being followed, and what changes will actually be made for dairy workers in Chobani’s yogurt supply chain. Even since the label’s debut, workers on New York farms apparently participating in the Chobani and Fair Trade USA’s pilot dairy program are reportedly unaware that they are working on certified farms and have not seen any impacts on practices on their farms.
The Bigger Picture
Eco-social certification schemes and social audits are proving time and again to be illegitimate and ineffective where they are not worker-driven and worker-led.
Fair Trade USA’s dairy standard is opposed by the very people it purports to protect and is unlikely to raise standards on small dairy farms unless it drastically changes. The certification scheme distracts from actual worker demands and was not even published before products sold with the label hit the shelves. It appears that for Chobani and Fair Trade USA, other goals-- like marketing and label expansion-- take priority over changing conditions for workers. If that is the case, Fair Trade USA’s truly lacks legitimacy as a social certifier.
Governments are slowly responding to the issue of human rights and labor rights abuses across supply chains that social auditing and certification programs initially developed to address. With the emergence of cross-industry mandatory human rights due diligence models around the world, there is hope that the heyday for voluntary and market-driven auditing and certification schemes may be coming to an end.
Avery Kelly is a Staff Attorney at Corporate Accountability Lab.
