In December 2022, five large Belgian chains joined the initiative that had already been launched by retailers Lidl, Aldi Sur y Norte, Kaufland, Rewe, DM, and Tegut in Germany, to ensure a living wage for workers on banana plantations.
Thus, Colruyt, Delhaize, Aldi, Jumbo, Lidl Belgium, and Lidl Luxembourg have committed until 2027 to bridging the gap between the salary banana workers are receiving and the salary they should receive to face the cost of living.
“We celebrate that there is more awareness about what needs to be improved and that there are initiatives to find solutions to the challenges faced by the banana sector,” Marike De Peña, who chairs the Latin American and Caribbean Coordinator of Small Producers and Fair Trade Workers (CLAC), told DW, alluding not only to the wage gap but also to the set of factors that have led to the banana sector's crisis.
These factors include the shortage of fertilizers due to the war in Ukraine, the loss of markets, climate change, the rise in input and transport prices, as well as the effects of the pandemic and the Fusarium plague, all of which have caused EU imports to fall by 3% in 2022.
“We know that this is a joint problem,” the president of CLAC stated regarding the initiative. "However, these calculations do not include small producers. Half of the producers at Fair Trade are small producers and half are large,” stated De Peña, who represents Fair Trade for Latin America and the Caribbean.
At the moment, data is being collected to determine what the gap is using a calculation tool developed by GIZ, the German cooperation agency. The goal is to analyze the data of companies that export fresh bananas, which have more than five hired workers.
"It's not that we lack data," De Peña stated. “We know the cost of having a sustainable production that includes paying living wages. If you raise wages but don't increase the price of bananas, won't you have even less money for production or to guarantee decent work?” she asked in reference to informal work.
Source: dw.com