GENEVA - "If she hasn't finished her work quota, she'll have to carry on the next day, and that's when she'll get her day's wage, because she's paid by the job. If everything goes well, she will earn the equivalent of 35 US dollars (32 euros) in a month. The overseers are all men and wage blackmail is part of the arsenal of sexual harassment. In the tea plantations, most of the children living with their mothers don't know their biological fathers. Ironically, the employers are reluctant from the outset to recruit women who have family responsibilities, and pregnancy tests are common practice before hiring."
Accounts like this from a trade unionist in the tea plantations of Tanzania, featured strongly in the four-day colloquium on decent work in agriculture, held in Geneva in September by the ILO Bureau for Workers' Activities (ACTRAV).
According to a report distributed at the symposium, the extent of child labour and discrimination against women - who now make up half of the labour force there - are major concerns in Asia's agricultural sector. Significantly, everywhere, the slice of national income generated by agriculture is smaller than the proportion of the labour force engaged in it.
As ILO Director-General Juan Somavia told the workers' symposium, "those who produce the world's food often don't earn enough to put a meal on the family table. They form the majority of the people known as the working poor."
If the international community is serious about fighting and eradicating poverty, or even about halving it by 2015, then the rural sector must become a priority. "We must fight for jobs, sustainable incomes, and activities that produce such incomes. This is about promoting real opportunities, not charity," Somavia insisted.
But how did things get to this state? According to Juan Somavia, "the present globalization model treats labour as a commodity. But it isn't a commodity. This model is unjust and it won't solve the problems."
Production monopoly
According to the working paper distributed at the symposium, the ten biggest companies in agriculture control about 80 per cent of a world market valued at 32 billion US dollars. But while the companies' profits are rising, the prices paid to the producers are continually falling. ILO agricultural expert Ann Herbert points up the contrasts: "While a kilo of arabica coffee fetched US$4 dollars for the producers in 1970, today it earns them US$1.42. A peasant farmer gets US$0.14 per kilo of instant coffee, which sells at US$26 in the supermarkets." The drop in commodity prices has, of course, hit agricultural wages even harder, as well as the living and working conditions of farm labourers.
The lack of trade union freedom is also the cause of many problems. A survey organized just before the symposium by the ILO Bureau for Workers' Activities is illuminating: 52 per cent of workers' organizations in some 35 countries state that their officers or members have been harassed. Job blackmail is commonplace. So are dismissals. And, as the situation in Colombia shows, murders are not a rare occurrence.
Social dialogue - an investment
"What governments and companies must understand is that when trade union freedom is denied, the nation is impoverished, because it has to do without its most valuable resource for development." These words from the ILO Director-General went down well with the assembled trade unionists, but also with representatives of international organizations, UN agencies, financial institutions and even employers.
There were few employers at the symposium, which was aimed mainly at trade unionists, but one, representing multinational Chiquita during the debate on social dialogue, did not take issue with the Director-General's remarks. "We can't envisage a profitable business that does not have a good reputation on human rights," he declared. The multinational employs more than 20,000 people, mainly in Latin America. Many of them are union members. Since 1998, Chiquita has been embarked on a "corporate social responsibility" drive. The concept enabled the International Union of Food and Agricultural Workers (IUF) to open up a breach in the banana sector, since it led to the first-ever global framework agreement in the banana business. In the agreement with the IUF, Chiquita undertakes to respect fundamental rights at work. It also acknowledges its responsibilities on occupational health and safety, a key concern in agriculture which holds the world record for deaths due to accidents at work: 170,000 per year.
Adopted in 2002, an international Convention on Health and Safety in Agriculture came into force in September 2003. Convention 184 has so far been ratified by three countries. As the working paper stresses, the fight against child labour in agriculture should include promotion of Convention 184. Article 16 of that standard sets a minimum age of 18 for work which, by its nature and the conditions under which it is performed, constitutes a threat to the safety and health of adolescents. And child labour, most often in its "worst forms", is endemic in agriculture. In fact, each year 12,000 youngsters die on the land. Nor, of course, does the exploitative situation faced by more and more women leave their children unaffected.