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Sinchana Adiga posted an update
Daily HR APAC News
Starbucks and Nestlé under the spotlight for labour practices in China
China Labor Watch, a New York-based human rights group, says that coffee farms in Starbucks’ and Nestlé’s supply chains in China are not living up to the multinationals’ ethical standards, sometimes using children as workers, and mandating excessive hours and lax safety standards to meet targets. A new report investigated 26 farms that form part of the Starbucks and Nestlé supply chains in the mountains surrounding Pu’er city, traditionally a tea-producing region of southern Yunnan province that now produces about half of China’s homegrown coffee beans. China Labor Watch said it found evidence of what it called labour injustices that directly violated the companies’ claims to ensure ethical sourcing and robust health and safety standards. The malpractice manifested itself in “ghost farms,” often family-run plots of land that informally supply the larger estates that have been certified by Starbucks or Nestlé. This enables the estates to meet their quotas while keeping labour violations out of sight. Farmworkers are paid according to weight picked, meaning they often work from dawn to dusk, seven days a week, during harvest to earn as much as possible during peak season. The alleged violations of the companies’ standards in Yunnan underscore the increasing scrutiny that multinationals operating in China face to demonstrate that their local supply chains are free of labour violations and human rights abuses.
