There is no doubt that power is held in the hands of the few rather than the many; it is also beyond doubt that this power is largely held by large corporations fuelling their wealth and power at the expense of those poorer. Yet as a lowly campaigner who wishes to seek international justice, there can either seem to be no way in which to pull these companies into ethical rein, or there can be too many. Since I seem to have stumbled across the latter, I thought I might make a little comparison between those that I can think of:

1. Fairtrade  (Bottom-Up)
2. Worker Rights Consortium (Top-Down)
3. The Forest Trust (Cleaning the System)
4. RBS and Ditch Dirty Development  (Legal & Financial Pressure)

I hope you won’t mind the rather uninspired terminology I’ve used; it’s much too late to come up with some excellent cultural references, and to be honest, I probably wouldn’t get them myself… So, back to the comparison!

1. The Fairtrade Foundation

There are many good things about fairtrade, especially the fact that it uses a bottom-up approach where the raw material producers are fairly waged for the goods that people in the West buy. However, the structure itself has flaws:

• Firstly, the fact that it remains a consumer choice, means it is still operating within a framework which allows for big corporate mismanagement.
• Secondly, it prides itself on being ‘corporate’ - so much so, that it has accenture auditing and consulting upon its IT networks.
• Thirdly, it works with companies that are otherwise known to have committed mass unethical practice (such as Nestle) and rather than entirely reforming the way in which the actual produce for that company is currently collected, the company merely changes its suppliers to become fairtrade. This means massive job losses in certain areas and growth limited to smaller communities.

I cannot say that fairtrade is evil, because it is clearly not. It is changing the method in which we buy our goods, and encouraging so-called ethical consumerism, which is much better than unethical consumerism, but it is still consumerism.

2. Worker Rights Consortium

I was reluctant to see the benefits in the WRC system initially, largely because I had spent much of my life boycotting different clothes shops and generally avoiding buying anything (except books, which don’t count, by the way). My primary concern was that most people bought clothes from clothing chainstores rather than through their university. However, the beauty of running a campaign in solidarity with the affected peoples and the beauty of actually being able to help solve their problems made me think again - hence Nishma the Buy Right C.A. was born.

However, there are some concerns:

• This is not a long-term solution tackling the actual causes of the problems, but a short-term solution - like a police force which puts to justice, but has little support from the council/government.
• If the university is not supplied by a particular company, we cannot boycott them - like Topshop. Basically we can’t target high-street retailers.
• Interest comes and goes. Some universities may start off with an excellent, interested and eager team, but in forthcoming years, after those students graduate, these may slowly disappear, whether the infrastructure is there to support it or not.

There is power to be held by universities buying contracts, especially larger contractors. The fact that the student body works so well with the workers is absolutely marvellous! Add in the bonus package of winning against the Russell Corporation, and you’ve never seen such a smile on Reyna Martinez’s face before!

3. The Forest Trust

After speaking with Scott Poyntree, the current director of the Forest Trust, I felt a sense of refreshment after the disasters of Copenhagen (COP-15). The Forest Trust has primarily worked with (dirty!) companies to remove their reliance on illegal logging. They work through the supply chain, improving efficiency and transforming current foresting areas to sustainable forests, thus complying the foresting processes with the FSC requirements and working towards their FSC accreditation. Of this, the organisation only receives 2% of the profits of the product. The product retains its low price because of improved efficiency and the removal of extra middlemen.

What is of more interest is that Scott will be pursuing other systems of manufacture soon, including the production of shoes - removing the carcinogenic fast-drying glue that is currently being used in China and seeking alternatives. His approach would ultimately be to create a total ethical supply chain for a corporate organisation.

If you are like I am, I was incredibly sceptical because it seemed like an (almost) perfect solution - without my some of my socialist ideas intervening. However, the system works quite well.

• Firstly the NGOs conduct research, produce a report and try and create a big uproar about it.
• Activists get involved and create a very negative image for the brand.
• The brand becomes concerned with their current image.
• The brand contacts The Forest Trust.
• The Forest Trust conducts some basic research & then negotiates with the company.
• They complete the work, working with the current supply chain rather than shifting the procurement to another area.
• They continue to monitor the supply chain.

There are of course massive problems from a socialist perspective:

• The company continues to make masses of profit at the expense of the people who work lower down on the supply chain (even if they are paid a fair wage); thus, the West still retains the power.
• Secondly, there are job cuts as efficiency is improved, and those illegally logging would lose funding, even if they are (for legal reasons) unable to work on the FSC accredited properties.

However, as Scott argues, this seems to be a much faster solution to tackling climate change than trying to ask political leaders to sort out corporations, especially as corporations are guilty of these problems in the first place. And, as controversial as this may be, we can’t make every business leader into a criminal - everyone has different ethical priorities.

4.  RBS & Ditch Dirty Development

Having not really been entirely involved in the DDD campaign, it’s a little more difficult for me to discuss. I think the grassroots campaigning element, and more importantly, the legal challenges aspect of the campaign have been of particular strength.

The campaign has moved away from trying to destroy the companies actually destroying indigenous lives and increasing their emissions through destruction and exploitation, to where the real dirt comes from - money from investment banks. With Britain’s Oil & Gas bank almost caving in due to its high risk investments, and the government desperately catching its fall in an attempt to stop an oil spill crashing all over the UK, RBS has neatly fallen into campaigners hands.

This campaign has challenged policies of ‘free market’ renationalisation, clearly pointing out the irony of the free market economic policies the government pretends it believes in. Of course, this is only an added in bonus and not the aims of the campaign at all. However, there are massive inconsistencies between the ideology that governments are piping through media and their actions which desperately needs to be challenged!

I think the strengths really lie in the shift away from campaigning against the company - i.e. “Stop Esso!” - to looking at who is fuelling the problem in the first place. The integrated campaigns relating to e.on & Kingsnorth, Tar Sands & Indigenous Rights, have broadened the reach of this campaign. Add this to the connections that People & Planet have developed with PLATFORM and WDM, this method has worked.

However, once again, the legal challenge has quietened the activism of the campaign. More people are just waiting on court decisions, quickly crossing RBS off as a successful target. If legal challenges are to be successful, the main office does need support and that doesn’t seem to be there any more… Maybe everyone is much too disillusioned by Copenhagen though.

Also, maybe the process needs to be seeing RBS investments from both sides - bad-mouthing the companies accepting the RBS funding as well as the fact that RBS is funding them. I see a massive scope for development which is always a good thing in a campaign strategy.

The Conclusion

I’m not really sure where I stand on this list of comparisons. I think each one has its problems and its solutions, and that all work effectively to tackle the concerns from different angles. If we are to continue to try and make our world a little more just, we need to keep supporting all of these campaigns and head towards a future that accepts that no one problem always has only one solution.

Tags: ddd, Fairtrade, forest trust, long, strategy, wrc

This entry was posted on Friday, March 12th, 2010 at 1:58 am and is filed under Buy Right, Campaigns, Corporate Power, Environmental Issues, Key Issues, Trade & Economic Justice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.