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Short Summary |
Tesco recently announced record profits of £2
billion. But according to this study by ActionAid in South Africa,
thousands of women casual workers growing fruit on farms accredited
by Tesco are being exploited. Findings showed that farm workers are
paid below the minimum wage, are exposed to pesticides, suffer food
insecurity, and have poor quality housing. Women workers bear the
brunt of more precarious (often informal or seasonal) employment and
are cut off from a range of work benefits (e.g. maternity benefits).
Although Tesco has created voluntary codes of conduct for their fruit
suppliers and supports the Ethical Trading Initiative Baseline Code
on minimum labour standards, ActionAid argues that this voluntary
approach is proving insufficient on the ground and needs to be underpinned
by minimum legal standards at the national and international levels.
The paper calls for a multiple approach to tackling the dominance
of supermarket buyer power in the South African fruit sector, including
strengthening local unions and casual farm worker groups. More specifically
it calls on the UK government to use the current Company Law review
process to place a legal duty on company directors to take account
of the interests of their companies' wider stakeholders - notably
employees, suppliers, local communities, and on the environment -
in their decision-making. |
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