Ergon Update April 2011
What does the Ruggie framework mean for ethical trade?
The recently-published ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework drawn up by the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative on Business and Human Rights, Professor John Ruggie, has attracted considerable attention. While human rights challenges are often seen as most acute for large extractive companies, the framework is also explicitly applicable to private sector actors in respect of their supply chains. Blogging on the ETI’s website, Ergon’s Steve Gibbons considers the potential impact of the framework for ethical trade. His analysis emphasises the importance of new proposals related to the development of non-judicial mechanisms designed to resolve grievances.
Understanding wage levels in tea plucking
Ergon is advising and supporting a new collaborative project looking at developing an effective and transparent system to measure wages of workers in the tea sector against appropriate national and international benchmarks. Specifically the project aims to develop a ‘wage ladder’ including benchmarking of statutory wages, actual wages paid and benefits received, and wages necessary for sustainable livelihoods. The project will focus on Malawi, Indonesia and Assam, India and is backed by Oxfam Novib, the Ethical Tea Partnership, the Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) as well as Unilever and the standards bodies FLO, UTZ Certified and the Rainforest Alliance. Ergon will be undertaking the wage research and helping to co-ordinate country-level research. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it is leading on this work at Ergon.
The project has been formulated amid increasing interest among ethical trade practitioners in finding practical ways of making living wage aspirations meaningful. In agriculture, the World Banana Forumhas a working group on Distribution of Value tasked with agreeing ‘a practical methodology for approximating "living" or "decent" wages at plantation/farm level’ which has published an initialmethodology. In the garment sector, the Asia Floor Wage Campaign is seeking to define a living wage across seven Asian sourcing markets. The Netherlands-based Fair Wear Foundation has also calculated wage ladders for its priority countries, while the Fair Labor Association (FLA) has also promoted work on 'fair wages'.
Impact of economic crisis on decent work
Ergon is starting work on a new research project for the European Commission (DG Employment) about the impact of the global financial crisis on decent work in major emerging economies and repercussions for EU labour markets. The first part of the study will consider how the crisis has affected employment and decent work in Brazil, India and China and how policy-makers have responded. The second part will be carried out by our partners at the Institute of Employment Studiesand will focus on the economic consequences of these global developments for employment in the EU. For more information, contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
