Among the key findings in the report: “Workers describe indicators of forced labor on certified farms without detection. This report gathers testimony on a farm that carries dual FTUSA and EFI certification. Workers describe conditions that check off nearly every one of the ILO’s indicators of forced labor.”

Farmworker on EFI and FTUSA-certified farm: “I do not feel that there is trust enough to put in my complaint because I know that I am going to suffer retaliation tomorrow.”

A new report from Corporate Accountability Lab details the myriad failures of the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI) and Fair Trade USA in the Mexican produce industry, and calls for solutions that include Worker-driven Social Accountability (WSR) and binding agreements between buyers and worker organizations to guarantee the basic human rights of farmworkers. This comes on the heels of a similar investigative report released late last year revealing systemic human rights violations on farms certified by EFI and FTUSA, whose produce eventually ends up on grocery store shelves in the US and on countless families’ dinner tables across the country. Combined, these investigations contribute to a growing consensus among academics and human rights experts that traditional corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs and multi-stakeholder certification schemes like EFI and FTUSA are woefully ineffective and stand in the way of more effective worker-driven solutions proven to be capable of delivering much-needed labor rights protections on participating farms. 

This new report, entitled “Certified Exploitation: How Equitable Food Initiative and Fair Trade USA Fail to Protect Farmworkers in the Mexican Produce Industry,” is based on “over two hundred interviews with workers,” whose first-hand accounts “helped shape the findings of this report, with the testimonies and perspectives shaping a narrative that belies the claims of both brands and certifiers.” Further, the report “situates the workers’ words within the context of the rollout of these certifications within the fresh produce industry and current research into the ways that such multi-stakeholder initiatives fail to protect human rights.”

We highly recommend reading the report in its entirety. In the meantime, here below are some of the key findings: 

Certified Exploitation: How Equitable Food Initiative and Fair Trade USA Fail to Protect Farmworkers in the Mexican Produce Industry

By James Daria and Anna Canning 

• Ethical certifications are failing to address regulatory gaps through weak standards and poor enforcement. Through an in-depth examination of certification standards as well as Mexican labor law and ILO conventions, this report shows how ethical certifications fail to raise the bar for farmworkers regarding wage and hour law as well as breaks and other benefits to which they are entitled. Further, standards are routinely disregarded and poorly enforced, in part because workers are not provided with training to know their rights, either under law or in the certification standards. Thus, although both EFI and FTUSA standards prohibit them, there are widespread violations of the freedom of association and collective bargaining, sexual harassment, wage theft, and retaliation on certified farms.

• Certifications help obscure the fundamentally exploitative dynamics of the agro-export industry. Multi-national fruit and produce companies have greatly expanded their operations in Mexico’s San Quintín Valley. Certifiers have facilitated this expansion, helping recover from the brand damage of repeat food safety incidents and labor abuse scandals. Yet these certifiers’ labels paper over the fundamentally exploitative reality: by shifting production, workers earn as much in a day as a minimum wage worker in California would earn in an hour—and certifiers enable brands to market this as “fair” and “equitable.”

• Multi-stakeholder initiatives support corporate power and undermine worker organizing. This report closely examines the development of EFI certification in particular. While major U.S. farmworker organizations were involved with their founding, the multi-stakeholder model is not delivering the promised gains for workers. Instead, this report examines the ways that the stakeholder representation model fails to protect rights-holders (farmworkers), and undermines their organizing. Together, these certifications represent the development of parallel corporate-friendly soft law, granting employers still more power over their workers in the name of addressing labor shortages and professionalizing the workforce.

• Joint-body committees fail to address power imbalances which drive abuses. Both EFI and FTUSA depend on their “Leadership Team” and “Fair Trade Committees” respectively to implement their programs, resolve disputes, and aid in the disbursement of premium funds. Yet testimonials from workers show that, in the case of Fair Trade Committees, workers are often not even aware of their existence. EFI’s Leadership Teams are thoroughly criticized by workers who participate as being impotent to resolve issues for workers and stacked with the bosses’ allies and family members. Instead of empowering workers, as the program claims, the impact is the opposite.

Coalition of Immokalee Workers
110 S 2nd St
Immokalee, FL 34142
United States

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