ECAS 2013

There is a growing body of literature that analyzes the implications of private food standards for developing countries. Most of this literature has focused on the trade effects of standards and on the effects for exporters and producers. Very few studies have looked at the effect of standards for workers in export supply chains - although this is especially important for poverty reduction. This paper analyzes the effects of private standards in horticulture export supply chains on the largest group of people affected: those participating as wage laborers. We focus on the effects of GlobalGAP certification, which is the most important private standard in African horticulture exports. We combine information from exporter interviews, secondary export statistics and a panel of household survey data from the main horticulture export zone in Senegal, Les Niayes. Using cross-section and panel data analysis, we estimate the effects of GlobalGAP certification of exporter-producer companies on the employment conditions of workers in these companies. We find that GlobalGAP certification creates important benefits for workers in the form of higher wages and longer employment periods, while contract security is not found to be better in certified companies. We put forward different explanations for the mechanism through which these effects on employment conditions could emerge, of which improved competitiveness of certified firms and the increased need for worker training are argued to be the most important ones.

This paper explains the rationale behind a research project on Fair Trade, Employment and Poverty Reduction in Ethiopia and Uganda; briefly summarises the methodology; and introduces initial findings from two rounds of a large quantitative survey and from more than 100 detailed working life biographies of rural wage workers. The authors argue that neither the champions of Fair Trade nor its most vocal detractors have shown much understanding of the mechanisms and distributional implications of certified coffee (Ethiopia and Uganda), flower (Ethiopia) and tea (Uganda) production and trade. The paper shows how some of these mechanisms operate and what their distributional outcomes are, while also arguing that it is impossible to understand Fair Trade, or the cooperatives through which it often works, without embedding the analysis in the wider political economy of local and national contexts.

This paper seeks to understand how certification schemes translate into working experiences by comparing experiences of women employed in a Fairtrade to a Rainforest Alliance certified tea plantation. It further links the workplace and household levels to investigate how women's paid employment has impacted on household dynamics and structures and whether standards can help empower women workers. This paper draws from in-depth interviews with 238 women workers employed by a 'best practice' firm within the Kenyan tea industry.

Given the prominence of standards in recent campaigns and literature on export crops, one would expect them to have stimulated changes in the lives of workers. Yet, recent studies have found that, while standards have been successful in facilitating outcomes (e.g. by tackling health and safety issues), they have had limited impact in tackling process rights. Outcome standards offer opportunities for compliance without having to upset the status quo, thereby challenging neither embedded labour relations nor social norms. Process rights however, involve workers and workers' organisations getting a seat at the table when negotiating for rights, a significantly different process from current labour relations and which has the potential to challenge the social norms that underlie the production process. Outcome standards offer limited opportunities for incremental changes while process rights offer opportunities for transformative change and empowerment.

By drawing from women's accounts of their experiences and their conceptualisation of empowerment, this paper concludes with recommendations for targeting value chain interventions via certification schemes in order to enhance outcome standards and process rights.