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Fri, August 10, 2007 09:06:46 PMFrom:
Global Exchange - Back to School with Fair Trade!
Subject:
Back to School with Fair Trade!
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 Back to School with Fair Trade! |
CONTRIBUTE TO GLOBAL EXCHANGE |
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The back to school season is here!! As students and teachers prepare for the school year, far too few know that the marketplace bringing us everything from the food in our cafeterias to the pencils in our classrooms, rests on the backs of workers who barely make enough to send their own children to school. Please help us ensure that our young people and their teachers know about Fair Trade, the system that helps exploited producers escape this cycle of poverty and support their families with a living wage.
Announcing the FREE Fair Trade College Care Package Giveaway! Fair Trade businesses have joined together to create a FREE Fair Trade College Care Package, available when you spend $20 or more at the Global Exchange Fair Trade store (while supplies last!). This fabulous freebie is filled with Fair Trade goodies, gifts, and educational resources about Fair Trade, including chocolate, coffee and crafts. To receive your FREE care package, visit Global Exchange's Online Store, and simply enter the phrase "Send me my free College Care Package" in the customer comment box during checkout. Who's Behind this Awesome Giveaway? The FREE College Care Packages are available thanks to the generous contributions of these participating Fair Trade businesse: Batsiranai Craft Project, Equal Exchange, Fair Trade Sports, One World Projects, Peace Coffee, Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates, Tibet Collection, and World of Good. Plus a special thanks goes out to these participating organizations: Coop America, Fair Trade Federation, Fair Trade Resource Network, Global Exchange, and TransFair USA. To learn more about these businesses and organizations and how to contact them, visit our Online Store Is it Possible to Calculate a Living Wage? By Tex Dworkin Introducing the Fair Trade Wage Guide If Fair Trade is "an equitable and fair partnership that works to provide artisans and farmers with a living wage for their work," then what does a living wage mean? And how do you calculate it, given cultural differences and variations in economic conditions throughout the world? Introducing the Fair Trade Wage Guide, a free web-based artisan wage calculation tool designed to create a global standard for the payment of fair wages within a local context. The goal of this tool is to provide artisans and buyers with user-friendly access to wage and pricing information. At the click of a button, this web tool generates a localized price analysis of wages paid to artisans in comparison to international living wage standards. To use the tool, you simply answer a series of questions about price, material costs, and production time. Once all the answers are entered, it converts 'artisan per piece payment' to a 'daily wage,' and then compares the daily wage to international economic indicators providing advice on how to increase wages to meet living standards. Data entered into this tool become the common denominators among artisans living all across the world. Currently, artisans are unfairly compensated for their work both by buyers and by themselves. On one side, you have price-gouging buyers offering artisans prices so low for their wares that the artisans' costs for materials and time far outweigh the price they're being offered. On the other end, you have artisans who charge whatever price they think they can get for a product, often undercharging for their own goods in the process. While the word 'fair' is a relative term, by creating a tool to quantitatively determine what 'fair' means a common language is created; one that can be understood by Fair Trade artisans, buyers, and consumers alike. Behind the Wage Guide The World of Good: Development Organization started the Wage Guide project in 2005. Its success relies on the cooperation of key players in the Fair Trade industry, including members of the Wage Guide Advisory Board, working together to create a tool that is effective for everyone. World of Good: Development Organization sees itself as the catalyst to starting the development of the Wage Guide, but hopes to transfer its ownership to a third party organization in order to truly develop the tool objectively on a global level. A Work in Progress Currently in its beta stage, this calculation tool is not without its criticisms. The daily wage calculation is based on a 40 hour per week work schedule, when in fact work schedules vary greatly from one producer to the next. And with so much emphasis on production time, what repercussions will there be for the quality of products and traditional production techniques? Some fear that by simplifying the process of pricing, you are stripping away many of the crucial ingredients inherent in Fair Trade partnerships. While this tool may be able to calculate a fair wage in the local context, what happens to other less measurable Fair Trade criteria, such as providing financial and technical assistance to producers? One thing is clear: as the Fair Trade market expands, as we hope it will, a standardized methodology for determining a living wage will become essential to ensuring workers are truly compensated fairly. On Track to a Fair Trade Craft Label As Charlotte Opal, co-author of the book Fair Trade: Market Driven Ethical Consumption, believes: "the Fair Trade Wage Guide is exactly what the handmade fair trade movement needs to bring it to the next level of maturation." If the Fair Trade Wage Guide is successful, many hope the next step could be a Fair Trade craft product label as well as an auditable trail for each Fair Trade transaction. Having a label to clearly identify Fair Trade craft products in the open market with a auditable trail would make it much easier for conscious consumers to shop wisely. Check it Out! Do you know an artisan or buyer who could benefit from this Wage Guide? Check out the Fair Trade Wage Guide Thanks, as always, for your hard work on behalf of peace and justice, Global Exchange |
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