2y ago

Starbucks: slave and child labour found at certified coffee farms in Minas Gerais

reporterbrasil.org.br Starbucks: slave and child labour found at certified coffee farms in Minas Gerais

An exclusive investigation reveals cases of illegal deductions from employees’ wages as well as lack of toilets and protective equipment in properties that hold the seal of ‘ethical acquisition’ granted by the multinational. Workers’ representatives point out flaws in audits

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Hasn’t Starbucks had multiple instances of these sorts of headlines? I feel like nothing really happens about it
- Standard corporate cycle. Use illegal/slave labor, get caught, media tour oopsie, pay fine aka cost of business, everyone forgets, repeat
  Owners/ceos need to be held accountable so they actually care what is happening
  
  While I generally agree that C-levels need to be held accountable, I fear that will just lead to paid patsies taking the fall. I think the board of directors should be held accountable.
  
  Maybe the company should face jail time. Aka no business allowed so only expenses may show up on the PnL for a given time.
  
  Owners/ceos need to be held accountable so they actually care what is happening
  This. Until someone with real power is actually held accountable for the shit they purposefully or passively allow, nothing will be done about it as long as long as it remains profitable.
  
  everyone forgets
  Do we? I will never forget Starbucks uses child slaves. What good does that do?
  
  The whole coffee industry does, well at least 95%. It’s just the whole economy of Africa needs better standards. ( not their fault, they need to be paid more )
  
  Don't shop there. It's the only thing they care about. And tell people you know or can influence via social media or other means.
  
  I haven't gone to a Starbucks for years and I don't even know anyone that does lol
  
  Starbucks will not have wanted to be using slaves, they only pay the workers 2¢ on the cup anyway. It is a fairly minor expense in the greater scheme of things.
  What it is, is an emergent risk in extended labour chains (or "cascades"). Particularly prevalent in harvest work. At some point your supply chain transparency breaks down, how ever many steps of outsourcing deep that might be.
  Unsurprisingly the gangmaster not actually paying his workers is likely the lowest bidder, so in the cruellest sense of the "free" market, every company wants to use slave labour. But to a global business with at least some accountability, this is a massive fuck up in oversight.
  You could think of it as stochastic slave trading, if you wanted to over-intellectualise it. Certainly oligopsonies generate market pressures that strongly incentivise the emergence of modern slavery and labour abuse in the supply chain.
  
  This is just apologia for Starbucks' core capitalist nature.
  At some point your supply chain transparency breaks down, how ever many steps of outsourcing deep that might be.
  No? If you restricted your purchasing to people growing coffee in specific areas with a high degree of oversight and frequent audits, this wouldn't happen. The coffee would cost (them) a lot more, of course, but it's certainly possible to do this.
  The point is an oligarchy could incentivize high worker wages and ethical business practices through lots of mechanisms, the primary one being "pay more money for your supplies." They don't. We should be burying all these companies in the grave.
  
  Yeah, no it isn't. If anything it's an indictment of that nature. However it is a mechanistic explanation of how these conditions emerge in supposedly legitimate supply chains. It's very common, unfortunately.
  You're correct that the largest purchasers of certain high-value crops can use their stranglehold to improve conditions; a lot of them claim to do so and use this in their own media campaigns. That's why this is such a fuck-up for a company like Starbucks versus, say, a small Scottish berry farm.
  
  I'm no corporate shill, but the verification and constant need for reverification must be pretty challenging to enforce.
  
  Especially when you don't actually care.
  
  Exactly. They likely give some half ass attempt but given that the supply industry is rife with slavery, and people still buy coffee, they don't lose sleep over it.
  Coffee itself is a highly substituteable good, making a tragedy of the commons scenario for those who try to ethically source their beans

21 comments