[[link removed]] [link removed] [[link removed]]A promotional poster for a November 18, 2019, march in New York City demanding Wendy’s verify its claims of social responsibility in its suppliers’ greenhouse operations. The claims made in the Corporate Accountability Lab’s (CAL) lawsuit filed last month against Hershey’s and the corporate social responsibility giant Rainforest Alliance — after CAL “documented hazardous child labor on Rainforest Alliance certified farms in Côte d’Ivoire” — demonstrate the risk of relying on social audits like those of Wendy’s.
Corporate Accountability Lab: @Hersheys Stop hiding behind misleading labels like @RnfrstAlliance, while profiting off of the backs of children and refusing to pay farmers a fair price. #LivingWages #FairPay #LaborRightsAreHumanRights
Imagine you live in a community where crime, including violent crime, is commonplace.
Armed robbery, kidnapping, sexual assault, all occur on a regular basis, yet there is no actual police force on the ground to protect you, or even a 911 line to report crime in real-time. The only way to bring a crime to the authorities' attention is through a once-a-year visit to the community by a small team of investigators who may or may not speak your language. And on these annual visits, the investigative team only manages to speak to a handful of people, making the chances of your complaint being heard exceedingly small, and the probability of justice being done smaller still.
Would you feel safe? Would you consider the protections adequate?
All the while, the authorities in this imaginary community claim that crime is not a problem, and even run ads promoting the city's spotless crime record.
Would you be frustrated?
Workers on West African cocoa plantations have faced crime on their jobs, including violent crime, for generations. From child labor and widespread wage theft to modern-day slavery, the labor abuses exposed in the cocoa harvest on the plantations that supply the worlds' giant chocolate companies are as well-documented as they are egregious. The seminal documentary "The Dark Side of Chocolate," [[link removed]] CNN's expose "Chocolate's Child Slaves," [[link removed]] and the book "Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet," [[link removed]] comprise just the tip of the iceberg of hard-hitting journalism cataloging the crimes against cocoa workers and the corporations that profit from their labor over the past two decades.
The uncovering of these widespread abuses in the cocoa industry in the 1980s and 1990s caught the chocolate industry unprepared for the intense wave of criticism, and the resultant consumer backlash, that followed. In response, many of the leading chocolate corporations turned to the well-known leaders in the burgeoning field of Corporate Social Responsibility, certification programs including Rainforest Alliance and Fair Trade, to audit plantations in their supply chain. The logos of these trusted certifiers began to appear on chocolate products on retailers' shelves across the US and Europe, reassuring consumers that the workers who harvested their cocoa enjoyed strong and effective protections.
From the point of view of the chocolate corporations, their CSR partners accomplished their mission. Consumer concerns about labor abuse were allayed.
But from the point of view of the workers themselves, little or nothing had changed. The abuse never stopped.
Over on the CIW site today, we break down what this groundbreaking legal case says about the failure of CSR and traditional auditing to protect workers' human rights, how these claims mislead consumers who want to buy ethical food, and what sets the Fair Food Program and Worker-driven Social Responsibility apart.
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Coalition of Immokalee Workers
110 S 2nd St
Immokalee, FL 34142
United States
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