Part of the This Stuff Matters campaign from ethicTrade

What is a sweatshop?
A sweatshop is a term with strong negative connotations for a place of production, usually a factory, where employees work for very low wages and for very long hours. Minimum wage laws are usually ignored and child labour often utilised.

Aren’t sweatshops a thing of the past?
Unfortunately not. Whilst there was a sharp decline in sweatshops during the 1950s, they are now more prevalent than ever and are still on the increase. This is largely because many companies – and not just the large multi-nationals – are manufacturing their products in less economically developed countries where they can ‘employ’ very cheap labour with minimal fear of reprisals. By lowering manufacturing costs they are able to market their end-products to consumers at more competitive retail prices whilst simultaneously increasing their profit margins.

Who are the workers?
According to feminist.org, 90% of people who work in sweatshops are women, and most of these are between the ages of 15 and 22. Their wages of the equivalent of 7-25 pence per hour are nowhere near enough to meet the cost of living. There has been a lot of evidence that suggests women in sweatshops are often subjected to sexual harassment and corporal punishment by their male bosses. Very often they are not even allowed to take toilet breaks few breaks during the 10, 12 or even 14 hour shift. Unpaid overtime, unsafe working conditions, no annual holiday and no maternity leave completes the picture.

Why do they work there?
Frequently these women have been tempted in to signing working contracts with the company in return for promises of a better life in a foreign country like the USA. They are even so convinced that working for this company will improve their lives that they pay the company initial fees to be allowed to work for them! Because they earn so little money it can often take years of working for zero pay to settle this debt with the company.

What must we do?
Buy fair trade. Fair trade products are not limited to just coffee and bananas, though obviously these are good too. With a tiny bit of effort, you can buy your clothing, toys, gifts and home furnishings all from companies that have proven themselves to have an ethical supply chain. This will leave you free to boycott those companies that still use sweatshop production.

Some companies strongly suspected to still use sweatshops to produce some goods:
Primark
Topshop
Asda (Walmart)
Adidas
Nike
Mark’s & Spencer’s
Next
Ralph Lauren
GAP
DKNY
Converse

The list goes on, but these should give you some idea of how prevalent the issue is. There have been several high-profile investigations and reports in recent years, exposing these companies’ unfair working practices, but real change will only happen when we all stand up and say we will only buy products that have been made by workers who are paid fairly and treated fairly.

With Fairtrade Fortnight just around the corner, ethicTrade asks if – slap bang in the middle of a worldwide recession – fair trade is even realistic?

For two weeks each year, The Fairtrade Foundation runs a campaign to raise awareness of fairtrade; introduce the concept to people who aren’t familiar with it, and try to encourage consumers to think about where the products they buy have come from. If you aren’t aware of Fairtrade Fortnight, which this year is 27th February – 11th March, you can read more about it here.

This year, they are encouraging us all to ‘Take a Step’ for fair trade. The step you take can be switching to fair trade coffee, running a fundraising event for the Foundation, or just showing off your Fairtrade sticker to promote the cause. We’d encourage you to have a think about anything you can do to take a step for fair trade in the next few weeks!

But at this time of economic hardship for the UK as a whole, can the average consumer genuinely take a step for fair trade in any real sense? It’s great to put up a sticker, promote the movement and get people thinking, but at the end of the day there needs to be a wholesale swtich to fairly traded goods being the norm….doesn’t there?

Well, yes. Of course, that would be ideal, and our aim here at ethicTrade is to make ethically produced products the norm in the general marketplace rather than the exception. But as the old adage goes, “The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.” (Please note, we do not condone the consumption of elephants in any way!) We often hear that fairly traded goods are always more expensive and – whilst consumers would love to buy them – money is tight and they just can’t afford it.

Well firstly, I’m pleased to say that not everyone considers this to be so. Research conducted in 2010, just as the recession was starting to bite, found that sales of Fairtrade goods had risen by 40% to an estimated retail value of over £1 billion compared to 2009. On top of this, there are now over 500 Fairtrade towns in the UK, including our own partner Chesham 4 Fair Trade, and over 70,000 registered Fairtrade campaigners. So even in a recession, it seems clear that people are still becoming increasingly aware of where their purchases come from and the people that produce them.

Secondly, one of our aims is to break the perception that ethical products are necessarily more expensive. Take one of our men’s beanie hats. These cost you £8.99 – a standard high street price for a beanie hat – and are as ethical as it gets, made by skilled artisans in Nepal who are paid a fair price for their goods and use that income to supplement their lives as subsistence farmers. You can find hundreds more examples of great value, ethical products on our ethical shopping website.

Our other aim is to start widening consumers’ understanding about the type of products that you can buy ethically. We promote over 700 products and none of them are coffee, tea or chocolate! There really is a huge range of homeware, gifts, jewellery, clothing, stationery and crafts out there that have been ethically produced and are helping to lift people out of poverty.

So is fair trade realistic in a recession? Most definitely. Lots of people clearly think it is as demonstrated by the study mentioned above, and with just about every product you could want available ethically at a good price, there really is no excuse!

So once you’ve been to http://www.fairtrade.org.uk/ and taken a step there, why not have a look at ethicTrade.com, and see if you can take just one step more….