Quote:
Originally Posted by Astrocat
If you can read all about it then come back and honestly say that you find all of that acceptable, then so be it.
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Of course I would like for people to earn a decent wage. I think that goes without saying. Bear with me through this next bit - I do a for and against thing...
Against:
1. It is patronising imperialism to suggest that we know best and other countries can't manage their own laws.
2. If you interfere in the free market too much, it starts to build levels of inefficiency into the system.
3. It is none of our business. People everywhere struggle to make a living.
4. The more rights you give people, the less likely they are to keep their job. This is why France and Germany have such high rates of unemployment; their socialist style employment system means that employers try to employ as few people as possible.
5. There is also the obvious point that the companies that sell the produce only get the business because they keep their costs right down; hence the wages have to match. If they upped the wages, another company elsewhere would potentially get the business instead. This is the same the world over, and British farmers are no different. That's capitalism.
6. Pre-globalisation, many of these low paid workers wouldn't have had any work at all, or it would have been even worse.
I think that is a fair summary of the supermarket position, and is of course the stark financial reality.
For
Having said all that, fair trade is a great example of a consumer-driven campaign to help out other people and demonstrates that we really can make a different by setting up campaigns.
One of the goals of this campaign is to get restaurants to say where their food comes from, and that encompass Fair Trade and so on.
The problem with the Fair Trade system is that it immediately segregates the food, rather than building it into the mainstream system. Ideally the supermarkets would bring it in wholesale into their premium ranges. For example, one might expect the Sainsbury's Taste The Difference range to use better quality ingredients sourced from more 'ethical' companies. They already use free range eggs across the line, so this isn't unachievable.
The real problem is not the supermarkets; they are just an easy scapegoat. It is a reasonably typical modern blame dodge.
The real problem is the consumers - the people who buy the goods. Supermarkets are just businesses who will sell what people want. If they make themselves less competitive and more expensive, people will just shop elsewhere.
People spend far less on their food now, as a percentage of income, than ever before. They expect cheap food. Until that attitude is changed, or people start buying the Fair Trade goods in sufficiently large numbers then it will never change.
I hope that one of the effects of this campaign will be to make people far more aware of all aspects of the their food.