October is Fair Trade Month, and the marketing pressure is on to encourage shoppers to choose fair trade certified products. As a recent email from Fair Trade USA, the main U.S. based fair trade certifier put it, “By choosing Fair Trade Certified goods, you directly support farmers, fishers, artisans, and workers around the world, empowering them to thrive in fair and safe conditions. You empower them to improve their lives and their communities.” But a new report, published by CAL and written by Anna Canning and James Daria, shows a different reality behind the marketing.
Far from being “empowered” by distant shoppers, or “thriving in fair and safe conditions,” workers on Fair Trade USA and Equitable Food Initiative certified farms in the San Quintín Valley in Baja California, Mexico have likened themselves and their conditions to “slavery of the 21st century.”
This post introduces the report, Certified Exploitation: How Equitable Food Initiative and Fair Trade USA Fail to Protect Farmworkers in the Mexican Produce Industry, and its key findings.
Years of Research Back Findings: Fair Trade USA and Equitable Food Initiative Fairwash Labor Abuses
Certified Exploitation draws on years of ethnographic fieldwork, including over 200 interviews by co-author and anthropologist James Daria with workers, labor contractors, community leaders, activists, and union leaders in Mexico’s San Quintín valley.
The findings from this fieldwork are gravely concerning. Workers on both Fair Trade USA and Equitable Food Initiative certified fresh produce plantations report widespread violations of freedom of association, low wages, wage theft, forced overtime, and rampant retaliation against those who speak up against abuses. Certified Exploitation examines how private certification standards and their implementation fail to address the wage structures that lock workers into precarity, facilitating exploitation. It also examines how the joint worker-management committees that underpin many of Equitable Food Initiative’s claims of worker empowerment fail to empower workers. Instead, in workplaces rife with cronyism and retaliation, rank-and-file workers report being disillusioned and dis-empowered by these structures.
“Enslaved:” Shocking Details of Working on a Dual-Certified Plantation
Certified Exploitation details the experiences of a group of migrant workers on a San Quintín plantation certified by Fair Trade USA and Equitable Food Initiative. These workers had their identity documents confiscated, pay withheld, and were housed in isolation, all while being compelled to work long days – all indicators of forced labor under international standards. One of the workers, called Pablo (pseudonym), summed up how it felt in a word: “enslaved.” Through pressure applied by the independent union Sindicato Independiente Nacional Democrática de Jornaleros Agrícolas (SINDJA), Pablo and fellow workers eventually had their documents returned and received least some wages returned. But, as the report explains, Pablo is still owed back wages and there is no evidence that things changed for subsequent groups of workers.
Pablo and his fellow workers had picked cucumbers that were certified by Fair Trade USA at the time this research was conducted. Today, if you happen to know where to look, you can see that the Fair Trade USA certificate issued for cucumbers, organic pumpkins, and organic mini-peppers grown on that plantation was “terminated” as of March 2023. However, other crops grown at this plantation remain certified by Fair Trade USA and Equitable Food Initiative, including Fair Trade USA certified conventional and organic blueberries for Driscoll’s, and Equitable Food Initiative-certified raspberries and strawberries.
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights lay out guidelines for companies, spelling out a responsibility to do due diligence and assess their supply chains for risks, to address those risks, and then to remedy any harms caused by those human rights risks that they failed to preemptively address. This report shows how far the certification model falls short of meeting such human rights responsibilities. For example, Pablo never got the remedy he is owed; he was still owed back wages when the research for this report concluded. The supplier in question may have lost its certification for the one crop (although its not clear why)but it continues to sell other crops as ethically certified. As such, there are no apparent market consequences to the supplier, and none for the brands who sell that supplier’s crops.
Fair Trade USA, Equitable Food Initiative Certifications Undermine Worker Organizing
There is a growing body of research showing how eco-social certifications and the audits that are intended to ensure compliance fail to protect workers. Certified Exploitation builds on those findings. By channeling workers into worker-management committees and failing to address violations of freedom of association, these certifications actually undermine worker organizing. In the case of certification, something is not better than nothing.
Furthermore, by stamping products made in abusive conditions with claims to be “fair” and “ethical,” these certifications mislead consumers, blunting the actions of those who might choose to spend their money elsewhere.
Download the full report or read the executive summary, including recommendations for companies and certifiers to start addressing the root causes of the abuses chronicled in the pages of this report.
Anna Canning is the Director of Communications at the Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network. She is a co-author of the report, Certified Exploitation: How Equitable Food Initiative and Fair Trade USA Fail to Protect Farmworkers in the Mexican Produce Industry.
This post is also available in Spanish.
Watch the recording of the report launch and discussion with the authors here.
