A study by researchers at London University in England has
found that fair trade for products such as coffee may not be fair to the very
people consumers intend to help.
For example, they found that 30 per cent of the fair-trade
workers in Ethiopia earned less than 60 per cent of the median wage while 95
per cent of the commercial companies’ workers earned as much as, or more more
than, the median wage.
The best-paid workers were producing non-fair-trade
commodities, the researchers report.
They spent four years and 1,000 days in Uganda and Ethiopia looking
into the lives of workers; their data covers 1,700 respondents.
Their study has been published by the School of Oriental and
African Studies at London University.
The report is another reminder that it's not enough to simply spend money on charities; you need to check out their performance.
