Oxfam carried out their investigation into "Understand Wage Issues in the Tea Industry" by researching wage levels of tea pluckers in Malawi, Assam (India) and West Java (Indonesia) and comparing them to the average wage for the rest of the country and the World Bank extreme poverty line.
The World Bank extreme poverty line is based on average households with average numbers of earners within that household. The extreme poverty line is currently set at a household living on less than $1.25 a day (US dollars).
Their research found that in all three countries, tea pickers were paid the national minimum wage.
The most interesting finding in the Oxfam research was that tea pickers working on estates certified as Fairtrade International, Rainforest Alliance or UTZ Certified were not paid a higher wage than the workers who picked tea on non certified estates. This does not meant that they didn't gain from other benefits but that they are not paid a higher wage.
My questions then is; where does that extra money you pay for the "Fairtrade" label go to? Unfortunately it is most likely tied up in paperwork or swallowed by certain governing bodies.
This does not really seem very fair if you ask me. If I fork out extra for my tea, I have a lovely image in my head of the tea pickers who are directly benefiting from my decision to be a more "ethical" consumer.
Recently some big tea players have left Fairtrade certification because things had become to difficult to maintain and they knew that their money was not reaching the people who mattered.
Tea farmers and estate owners have come out to say that it costs them too much money to maintain the certification and perhaps that money could be better spent in improving the working conditions.
So is fair-trade all a marketing ploy? I don't want to go that far. I'm sure that there are other benefits to the tea pickers but I do find it shocking that they do not get paid a higher wage.
So what can you do as an ethical consumer?
I would recommend researching how the tea company you buy from sources their tea. Do they source it themselves or use a middle man? Do they buy from large estates or small tea gardens? Look out for pictures of the company employees with tea pickers and read reviews of products. It's hard to be 100% certain because everyone uses marketing to their own advantage so you just need to trust your own judgement and not be distracted by labels.
For Chinese tea sourced directly from small tea farms have a look at the LuLin Teas range of Green teas.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Hannah_McGimpsey
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