EU campaigns tackling corporate power in the food system
In Europe the retail sector is the most consolidated part of the supply chain, and thus civil society organisations responses to corporate power in the food system have, in many cases, focused on tackling supermarket consolidation and buyer power. Some examples of campaigns in Europe are detailed below.
The Breaking the Armlock Alliance
Civil society groups in the UK have organised and created a forum to share and identify new strategies to challenge the increasing power of supermarkets. In September 2003, 16 groups representing farmers, environmentalists, workers and consumers agreed to work as an alliance under the banner of the ‘Breaking the Armlock Alliance’. In the short term, this new alliance agreed to focus its efforts on campaigning for a law, which would put the Supermarket Code of Practice into statutory (legally binding) form. In addition the Alliance have called for an independent regulator to help ensure compliance with the Code. Although the Alliance recognised that structural remedies such as a cap (an upper limit) on market share would be the most effective way of preventing further concentration, it acknowledged that it would be politically very difficult to achieve such legislation. On the other hand it was felt that a statutory code was a ‘winnable’ goal, given that a voluntary code had already been introduced and that it had been widely recognised that this voluntary code was not working.
In May 2006 the Office of Fair Trading, following pressure from a number of civil society organisations concerned with supermarket power, refered the supply of groceries by retailers in the UK to the Competition Commission (CC) for a market investigation. Read The Grocery Market - The OFT's reasons for making a reference to the Competition Commission. The Commission is due to release its Provisional Findings in September 2007 and publish its final report in February 2008. Read the Commission's Emerging Thinking (published January 2007) and selection of working papers and third party submissions to the Inquiry.
Tescopoly Alliance
The Tescopoly Alliance was launched in June 2005 to highlight and challenge the negative impacts of Tesco’s behaviour along its supply chains both in the UK and internationally, on small businesses, on communities and the environment. The campaign also advocates national and international legislation needed to curb the market power of all the major British supermarkets. It is currently encouraging members of the public to make submissions to the Competition Commission Inquiry.
The Tescopoly Alliance represents a diverse group of organisations from large international NGO's to unions and small pressure groups, embracing a range of issues from homeworker's rights to the decline in small independent retailers. Members include Banana Link, National Group Homeworkers, GMB, War on Want, nef (the new economics foundation), Friends of the Earth, Women Working Worldwide and the Small and Family Farms Alliance.
Lidl campaign
A major campaign has been started by Verdi, a German services union which represents retail employees and the largest trade union in Germany. The campaign aims to support Lidl employees, and exposes abuses of working conditions by publishing a “Lidl Black Book,” with accounts by employees and others affected by Lidl’s business practices. The campaign also links with civil society organisations to raise awareness of the impact of “cheap” products on workers and social and environmental standards.
Verdi's campaign has focused on exposing the working conditions of Lidl's workers in other European countries and publishing a follow-up European-wide Black Book on Lidl in Europe" in June 2006.
Anti-globalisation group Attac has also set up a campaign in Germany against Lidl, supported by agricultural and development organisations as well as by Verdi. The campaign calls for fair prices, better conditions for employees, and greater transparency of the company. The campaign is a decentralised grass roots network of groups, co-operating with other organisations.
ActionAid's 'Who Pays?' campaign
Who is paying the real cost of supermarket price wars? Thanks to rapid growth in recent years, Tesco, Asda, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons now control over 70% of the UK groceries market. Increasingly, if producers overseas want to get into the UK market, they have to deal with supermarkets. Supermarkets are using the enormous buying power that comes with their dominant position to force farms and factories in poor countries to lower their prices, deliver goods ever faster and at shorter notice. The pressure on suppliers to deliver more for less is passed on to workers in the form of low wages, job insecurity and poor working conditions.
Worker Responses to the Corporate Food System
The struggle for workers’ rights, living wages and social welfare is a crucial element in the challenge to the growth of corporate power in the food system. The processes of economic globalisation in recent decades mean that the working and living conditions of millions of agricultural, food processing and distribution workers throughout Europe are increasingly linked to the conditions of their counterparts in other continents.
The increasing consolidation in the food supply chain places severe pressure to reduce costs through the entire chain. For example, a recent Oxfam report, Trading Away our Rights, shows how big brand companies and retailers in the fashion and food industries are using their power at the top of global supply chains to squeeze their suppliers. In turn the suppliers demand from workers longer hours at faster work rates while working conditions and job security worsen.
Farm Workers - By the late 20th century, organising workers employed in industrial agriculture had become more and more difficult, as people work in greater and greater isolation - or in small groups – on the ‘agrochemical frontlines’ of modern agribusiness. Much of the technological progress in European agriculture has meant food production is less and less labour-intensive. In these circumstances it is very difficult for workers to respond collectively to the socio-economic pressures on them. They have become the bottom of retail ‘supply chains’, rather than the vital and skilled input at the base of our food system.
Migrant Workers - As agribusiness has become more and more globalised and as the power of the big food retailing companies has grown, Europe’s agricultural workforce has become increasingly fragmented. A growing proportion of labour is now supplied by migrant workers from North Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia and even Latin America. Many are illegal migrants who dare not organise openly. The racism and exploitation which these migrants attract from employers and sub-contractors is finally becoming an issue to which European society is being forced to respond.
The violence against migrant workers in the horticultural production areas of Andalucia (Spain) and the deaths of 20 Chinese cockle pickers in North West England have become the focus of campaigning. British trade union, the TGWU has successfully campaigned for legislation against unregulated subcontracting in agriculture
International Solidarity and Action
The European Banana Action Network (EUROBAN), which comprises trade unions, alternative trade and other civil society organisations in 13 countries, joined with the IUF (link to banana companies or general site www.iuf.org), Latin American banana workers' unions and Caribbean small farmers to organise a first (1998) and second International Banana Conference. One of the outcomes of bringing together the transnational fruit companies, governments, civil society, scientists and retailers is a Declaration (link to www.ibc2.org) which sets the path for collaboration within the sector over the multiplicity of economic, social, environmental and trade policy issues for the coming years.
This is just one example of organising being done in Europe that focuses on workers outside of Europe. Workers are also collaborating with other groups to introduce supermarket legislation to curb supermarket power.
