Ship of Fools: Modern slavery

Thread: Modern slavery Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

The PM's deep concern over slavery

What stirred me here is this paragraph part way through. Not Cameron, but a spokesman.

quote:
Following the disclosures that CP Foods supplied British supermarkets including Tesco, Morrisons, Aldi, Iceland and Co-op, Cameron's spokesman said on Wednesday it was up to consumers whether they chose to eat prawns that had been produced through the work of slaves.

Asked whether supermarkets should stop stocking seafood linked to forced labour, the No 10 official said: "Decisions that consumers make, they are for individuals … Consumer standards and retail standards and social responsibility is often driven by consumers and rightly so."

(ellipsis the Guardian's)

Posted by Gareth (# 2494) on :

To be fair, the PM really shouldn't say anything that might be interpreted as a criticism of a large UK company. I mean, something might happen.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

The comments are pretty good - though the usual anti-grauniad trolls are there, they are much less obvious than usual.

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

Oh for fuck's sake. What an idiotic and wankerish thing to say. It can only be up to consumers to choose if consumers are empowered to know. The reason that free markets don't work like that is because customers DON'T have perfect information on which to make their decisions.

The whole reason a company can get away with selling the results of slave labour is because the packet doesn't say "MADE WITH SLAVE LABOUR" on it.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

I posted this in the TICTH thread.
Not because I don't think it deserves a thread of its own, but because when I posted similar about chocolate, it was depressing. People did not seem to care.
Will this change anything? I hope so, but I don't know.
We are such a fucked up species.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

Sorry I missed that - I hadn't seen the reports then, but it was the blasé reaction of No 10 that finally pushed me.
Not much good writing to my MP - he's one of them. But I think I'd better, anyway.

Posted by Raptor Eye (# 16649) on :

Where does exploitation start? Who is a slave, and who isn't?
We're given a child labour image in one sentence, and a 'vital to the family, choice of making money' in the next.

It is ridiculous to expect people to make choices when they have no or little information, both about the product itself and about the economic realities of the source country, and so a shrug of the shoulder 'what are you going to do?' response arises in me and then makes me feel guilty.

I do care, so I should buy Fair Trade, check out sources, and campaign for better conditions for workers in every country of the world, not only my own.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Where does exploitation start? Who is a slave, and who isn't?
We're given a child labour image in one sentence, and a 'vital to the family, choice of making money' in the next.

Our demand for cheap goods, our demand for more profit, our demand for improved stock performance our demand for more, more, more. People in the third world could have better conditions, better pay and keep their opportunity and we could still have cheap goods. The cost difference to the consumer for ethically produced goods would be pence on the final price, if we forced the issue. And the wealthy would still be wealthy.
Greed and apathy. Such lovely bedfellows.

Posted by Gareth (# 2494) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Where does exploitation start? Who is a slave, and who isn't?
We're given a child labour image in one sentence, and a 'vital to the family, choice of making money' in the next.

It is ridiculous to expect people to make choices when they have no or little information, both about the product itself and about the economic realities of the source country, and so a shrug of the shoulder 'what are you going to do?' response arises in me and then makes me feel guilty.

I do care, so I should buy Fair Trade, check out sources, and campaign for better conditions for workers in every country of the world, not only my own.

"so I should buy Fair Trade..."
Meanwhile other sources say that to achieve the same good result, you need free trade, and fair trade requires the subsidies that are the causes of all the problems in the world.

Posted by lilBuddha (# 14333) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Gareth:

Meanwhile other sources say that to achieve the same good result, you need free trade, and fair trade requires the subsidies that are the causes of all the problems in the world.

Fair trade requires subsidies because it is small enterprise.

Posted by Belle Ringer (# 13379) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Where does exploitation start? Who is a slave, and who isn't?
We're given a child labour image in one sentence, and a 'vital to the family, choice of making money' in the next.

In the chocolate world, lots of kids are kidnapped and sold by the kidnappers into slavery. That doesn't raise any questions about whether it's really slavery or not!

Chocolate & child slavery

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
Where does exploitation start? Who is a slave, and who isn't?
We're given a child labour image in one sentence, and a 'vital to the family, choice of making money' in the next.
Our demand for cheap goods, our demand for more profit, our demand for improved stock performance our demand for more, more, more. People in the third world could have better conditions, better pay and keep their opportunity and we could still have cheap goods. The cost difference to the consumer for ethically produced goods would be pence on the final price, if we forced the issue. And the wealthy would still be wealthy.
Greed and apathy. Such lovely bedfellows.

Which comes back to what I was saying. I, for one, am quite happy to pay more for a better product - better in lots of ways, including this one. When presented with the choice, that's exactly what I do. The problem is that much of this information is buried. And of course it's buried - the last thing the people at the end of the chain selling us stuff want is for us to find out there were nasty things happening earlier in the chain.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

In the UK, a surprising number of products can be bought fair trade - the more usual fruit and fruit products, tea, coffee, chocolate, but also gold, flowers, wine, footballs, clothes, charcoal, rubber - more here from the Fairtrade Foundation. The fact that fairtrade alternatives are available does rather suggest that the normal methods of production are most likely to be exploitative.

It's worth looking around and enquiring because in my experience although you are paying more for fairtrade products they are usually good quality versions of the goods. (Although Fairtrade coffee when it started did give fairtrade a bad reputation, things really have moved on now.)

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

This was featured on the radio this morning.

Rome meeting on slavery

[ 15. June 2014, 07:58: Message edited by: Penny S ]

Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

As a start the French owned Carrefour company has stopped buying CP Foods products. Looks like some big, bad, corporations are more socially aware than our Prime Minister.

Posted by Penny S (# 14768) on :

I'd better nip over to Calais for my shopping!

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
The fact that fairtrade alternatives are available does rather suggest that the normal methods of production are most likely to be exploitative.

It's supposed to suggest that, yes. Doesn't mean it's actually true in all cases. It's a well known marketing strategy to say something good about your product, and thereby imply that rival products that haven't said the same thing lack that quality and are inferior to yours.

But that's an assumption in the consumer's mind, based on fallacious logic.

The fact that one product is Fair Trade certified does not mean that some other product would not meet the Fair Trade criteria. It might. It might not. All you know for certain is that the product has not been Fair Trade certified.

It's all in at least one early episode of Mad Men.

[ 15. June 2014, 11:32: Message edited by: orfeo ]

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

Some of the products surprised me - but it doesn't take much digging to find that the footballs for the World Cup are made in Pakistan. Because football is an image driven industry, child labour was banned in factories, which is causing different problems. The child labour might have gone, but the poverty wages have not.

Fairtrade wines are trying to address labour abuses in South Africa, Chile and Argentina, but the quality is patchy.

I could pull apart any of the things I listed but the fairtrade companies work for years to get things up and running effectively - Divine Chocolate for example.

[ 15. June 2014, 11:51: Message edited by: Curiosity killed ... ]

Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :

It's worth pointing out that the Fairtrade model is best at securing a fair base price for small producers.

If you are able to afford a little more, taking the examples of coffee and chocolate for example - you'll find that the best products are frequently not Fairtrade. That's not because they or their suppliers don't care, but because they are producing a premium product that sells well above base price, and does not compete in the bulk supply market place. In turn they are paying their suppliers for a premium raw material which itself sells at way above Fairtrade prices.

A couple of UK examples would be Has Bean Coffee and Duffy's chocolate. They both care a lot about conditions at their suppliers as well as the quality of their product. This is a bit specialist, but worth being aware of.

Conversely, there are some things like cheap clothing that are so questionable that ensuring you are getting an ethically made product seems almost impossible.

Posted by Curiosity killed ... (# 11770) on :

There are fairtrade clothing ranges out there: People Tree, Traidcraft, Ethletic, Arthur and Henry to name a few more mainstream. A couple of others than I used, Bishopston and Adili have closed in this recession, although Adili looks as if it's about to revive.

Posted by Honest Ron Bacardi (# 38) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Curiosity killed ...:
There are fairtrade clothing ranges out there: People Tree, Traidcraft, Ethletic, Arthur and Henry to name a few more mainstream. A couple of others than I used, Bishopston and Adili have closed in this recession, although Adili looks as if it's about to revive.

Oh, indeed. It was the bargain-basement, cheap throwaway fashion end of the market I was really referring to there.

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

My goodness that's a lot of links for a limited return.

- orfeo, half-thread participant, half-cranky host who has to follow every damn link.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

A more close home example of slavery. It exists in all of our countries in some manner.

There are more slaves today than were seized from Africa in four centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. (National Geographic).

"[her] odyssey began when she was 17, fresh out of school in Chisinau, the decayed capital of the former Soviet republic of Moldova. "There was no work, no money," she explained simply. So when a friend—"at least I thought he was a friend"—suggested he could help her get a job...[she]was now a piece of property and, as such, was bought and sold by different brothel owners ten times over the next two years for an average price of $1,500."

There is also agricultural worker slavery, factory worker slavery and others. It is in Canada, the USA and Europe. The link to the article above goes on to describe how "immigration" is facilitated by people who then enslave the people. Unfortunately the full text is not available online. I have the actual magazine. This is capitalism at its worst excess.

Posted by sabine (# 3861) on :

In the US, there is a good organization of people who work in food harvesting, the Coalition of Immolokee Workers (based in Immolokee, FL). See
ciw-online.org for more info.

They started the Fair Food Movement which has resulted in several corporations signing on to not purchase food unless the growers can be verified not to be involved in human trafficking. They also coordinate protests around the country.

sabine

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