How does Fair Trade promote higher earnings for workers?
This pilot aims to promote higher earnings for workers through the Fair Trade pillars of INCOME and EMPOWERMENT. For every Fair Trade Certified™ shirt, pants, sheets, or towels, the workers that stitched it earn a Fair Trade premium of up to 10 percent of the cost of the garment. Then all the workers get a choice, to earn a cash bonus or to invest together in a community need. This direct payment is the best and way to ensure that workers benefit. A prominent anti-sweatshop activist once said, “The most fundamental criterion for sweat-free status should be that workers have a collective voice in the determination of their wages, benefits and working conditions – in other words, real power in their workplaces, and a democratic process for determining how to use that power.” http://lrights.igc.org/projects/conference/conferencepercent20backgroundpercent20paper.pdf We agree, and we have written the standards for this pilot test to help workers find their voice and their power in the workp
