It takes around 140 work steps to make a shirt, from growing the cotton to sewing the last button. A correspondingly large number of people are involved in the production: farmers, dyers, spinners, and seamstresses. Many of them work under dangerous conditions and earn less than they actually need to live.
The efforts of fair trade show how difficult it is to improve the conditions along the textile supply chain. It took him five years to bring the first products with the Fairtrade textile standard onto the market this week. It covers all industrial stages of processing, from ginning the fibers to manufacturing. One of the first products is the VfB Stuttgart merchandising collection. “That means better working conditions for the many people who are involved in the cultivation and processing of the cotton,” said Rapha Breyer, who is responsible for textiles at Fairtrade Germany. The products are made in India, where Fairtrade has put a lot of work into building a supply chain with a number of companies in which all workers should receive a living minimum wage within six years.
That would be a big step forward and no other standard goes that far. However, the on-site implementation is decisive. And there are currently sobering results for fair certified cotton from India, the raw material of the textile supply chain. Fairtrade cotton has been around since 2005. NGOs have now identified serious deficiencies in the working conditions of those who grow it, such as paying below the statutory minimum wage and child labor.
Activists complain that women field workers do not enjoy fair prices
One of the central arguments with which fair trade promotes itself is fair prices for producers, sums up Sabine Ferenschild from the non-governmental organization Südwind, summarizing the results of an as yet unpublished study by the Center for Labor and Research and Action that is beneficial for Indian workers begins. “The investigation has shown that the field workers have not yet participated in the fair prices.” The survey interviewed 269 workers from four cotton factories in three states, mostly day laborers. 204 of them worked for Fairtrade farms that grew organic cotton.
India has a complicated minimum wage system. In addition, there is a minimum guaranteed work of 100 days per year at fixed daily rates for the rural population, which in some states is below the legal minimum wage. The wages of the employees in the Fairtrade companies were to a large extent below both limits. In all companies, workers had observed child labor in the fields, in some cases also by children who did not belong to the family and “who worked significantly longer than the law allowed”.
This is what the new Fairtrade label for clothes looks like.
(Photo: Siva Pavi / obs)
Fairtrade has already reacted to the first study results. A spokeswoman said on request that the certifier Flocert had been commissioned with an investigation. Should the results prove to be true, the producer organizations could make improvements; if this does not happen, the certification will be withdrawn. In addition, training courses should raise awareness of child labor and Fairtrade standards.
But Fairtrade admits that it is extremely difficult to change the conditions of cotton farmers. Small farmers depend on helpers in the harvest season. However, it is said that they could “hardly pay” for this. The consequences are often inadequate wages for the harvest workers or the use of children.
The fundamental problem had become public a few years ago with the fall of Dominican smallholders who exploited Haitian harvest workers. Since then, Fairtrade has tightened its standards. Cooperatives that employ ten workers for a month or more would have to report them to the certifier Flocert, officially employ them and pay statutory minimum wages.
Only a small part of the cotton comes from Fairtrade production
However, these conditions only apply to the more demanding Fairtrade standard for producer organizations and not to the weaker standard. This does not include any criteria on wages, contracts or freedom of association. However, the largest proportion of cotton certified as fair in India comes from farms with precisely this weaker standard: in 2019 it was 77 percent of a total of 41,447 tons of cotton. Only 23 percent of the corresponding cotton came from smallholder cooperatives.
The weaker standard should enable more companies to join the system. After a certain period of time, companies should switch to the more demanding Fairtrade standard, demands Sabine Ferenschild from the non-governmental organization Südwind. In the past, there was a requirement of six years for the transition from contract cultivation to cooperative, according to Fairtrade. “This requirement was softened because the majority of producers could not live up to it.” This shows the tension in which Fairtrade moves: a demanding standard that cannot be implemented will not change the conditions in cotton cultivation.
There is also a huge problem with the spinning mills. Indian cotton is currently in demand, also because many companies are now sourcing the raw material from India instead of China, due to the forced labor of the Uyghurs in the main cultivation area of Xinjiang. The producers of fair cotton in India also benefit from this.
Fairtrade expects these companies to be able to sell their entire harvest as fair-certified cotton. That was not always the case in previous years. Spinning mills and ginning companies in particular benefited from the massive price increases. “They buy up the cotton, hold it back and then sell it at the best possible time,” says Fairtrade. There is a flaw in the system here, says an entrepreneur who sources fair organic cotton. It doesn’t make sense if a company pays more for the fair organic cotton, but the money seeps away in the spinning mills instead of reaching the farmers. Some smallholders in India are now selling their fair-certified cotton to buyers from other companies who pay more.