CI work on mobile banking standard ISO 12812

Robin Simpson and Sadie Homer, Senior Policy Advisors at Consumers International report on their work preparing the new international standard on mobile banking.

  

Back in January 2012, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) asked for experts to join the working group preparing a new international standard on Mobile Banking/Payments, in particular asking CI if we could represent the consumer stakeholder group, providing expertise, particularly in the field of consumer protection.

Four years later our efforts have borne fruit in the form of  ISO 12812 Core banking – mobile financial services. It takes the form of an international standard on the general framework for these services (Part 1) and is supported by four technical specifications on specific sectors of the business (parts 2-5 see below).

Achieving an ISO standard was not a smooth passage, two rounds of voting by national standards bodies were needed to gain approval. The second only succeeding on the basis that papers 2-5 do not have full international standard status. Nevertheless, CI felt able to support the final standard but it was not an easy process. Consumer experts encountered resistance to some basic consumer protection issues being included at times, even when they were optional (and bearing in mind that international standards are voluntary).

Ably assisted by experts from our members we fought for limits on how much consumers would be liable for, in the case of unauthorised or fraudulent use of their payment systems. We secured greater transparency in remittances sent between countries and we gained important safeguards on logging transactions and receipts, with electronic logs being kept available. One specific issue that was not considered until our intervention was the treatment of dormant assets, in particular in the event of the death of an account holder.  This is a major issue where consumers do not have an individualised mobile phone contracts, such as in much of Africa.

How worth-while are such exercises? After all, standards are not legally binding, they are voluntarily adopted by companies and cannot be enforced in court. CI expended scarce resources travelling to Paris, Chicago, Boston, also taking part in many teleconferences, and drafting in great detail.  These factors are important considerations. But without our participation the consumer voice would not have been heard at all. The alternative, legislation and binding regulation, can only be applied at national level one country at a time, and legislation may be even slower to develop than standards, if at all. 

Even if it will require another review for our conditions to be fully met, the applicability of this standards is potentially global. And in many countries, the standards adopted today can form the basis of regulation tomorrow. Standards can also be used by consumer organisations as a sound basis to compare businesses and to support those that offer best practice terms to consumers. They can also be used to hold transnational companies to account to provide an equal level of service to all consumers, in all countries they are doing business.

Papers 2-5 will be reviewed in two years’ time and CI would also support a review of ISO 12812, given the speed of development in this sector. At that point we hope to be able to strengthen the standard further and make the case for all parts to be given full International Standard status. The mobile payment and banking sector is fast evolving, and so the standards that keep consumers safe must also move with it. 

You can read more about the Standards here. 

CI’s new survey will help to advance consumer protection where it matters most

With the UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection (UNGCP) scheduled for revision in 2014, next year looks set to be a crucial one for the consumer movement, writes our Director General Helen McCallum.

A new project to map the state of consumer protection around the world will help CI and its members to spur decision-makers into action – both internationally and at the national level. 

The UN Guidelines were a key achievement for the global consumer movement when they were established in 1985. They have since become a key international reference point for consumer groups and governments around the world.

However, the world is a very different place today and modernising the UNGCP is vital if they are to remain relevant to consumers in the 21st Century. For quite some time, CI has been closely involved in these discussions with UNCTAD, the UN agency leading the revisions.

That’s why CI has launched a major new survey of its members in order to assess the level of protection currently afforded to consumers around the world.

We aim to build a comprehensive picture which will not only provide vital evidence to aid CI’s engagement with international institutions, but crucially will also support CI members directly in their efforts to strengthen consumer protection in their own countries.

Surveys are extremely useful for CI as they allow us to demonstrate that an issue is affecting consumers in
many countries and thus requires a global response.

We go to great lengths to ensure that they are also valuable to our members.

For example, CI members often tell us that being able to compare the situations between their country and regional neighbours has been an extremely effective strategy to employ when lobbying their governments.

The results of this survey will allow members to identify examples of good practice in consumer protection in similar countries and demonstrate to their governments what is possible in a comparable national context.

It might also help highlight any areas where progress has been made, granting consumer rights advocates the opportunity to congratulate their government and hopefully encourage them to do more. 

And, of course, the results will support members on World Consumer Rights Day 2013 as they draw attention to the most urgent consumer protection issues in their country as part of next year’s theme: “Consumer Justice Now!”

Why surveys create consumer rights successes

By taking part in global surveys, CI members are committing precious time and resources, something that we are acutely aware of.

These exercises are vital to our work, ensuring that CI’s policy and programmes truly reflect the priorities of our membership and the concerns of consumers everywhere.

Recent surveys have, for example, helped us to better understand the business models our members operate and to identify strategic areas to focus our efforts to build strong consumer organisations.

Perhaps most importantly, they have played a key role in many of our greatest recent successes.

To take just one recent example, information provided by members about the problems faced by consumers in financial services was instrumental in enabling CI to convince the G20 to take action on the issue.

As a direct result of this, international standards and guidelines are being developed that can be used to advance financial consumer protection at the national level - where it really matters.

Similarly, the reason it is so important to ensure that the UNGCP are fit for the modern age is that they will act as a highly effective instrument to encourage national governments to pass laws and implement policies that strengthen consumer protection.

CI’s members are its ‘eyes and ears on the ground’, and without their experience and insight we would simply not be able to fulfil our mission to champion consumer rights internationally.

I would like to thank our members in advance for their help. We really couldn’t do it without you!

Super marketing: Does Asda have an unhealthy influence?

Supermarkets budget big for advertising - but reporting of a gaffe by Walmart-owned Asda this week suggests that they can wield influence to ensure the news is all good too, writes CI’s digital editor Vik Iyer.

Asda’s head of communications Sian Jarvis got herself into trouble during an interview when she acknowledged two thirds of Asda checkouts were ‘guilt tills’  - or to put it simply, they are tills filled up with unhealthy confectionary.

The term is often used within the industry – but nonetheless for campaigners who question the supermarkets’ desire to improve nutrition and healthiness it was a great story – a major issue in the UK this week, with supermarkets announcing an agreement on the use of traffic light food labelling.

CI tweeted the Daily Telegraph’s version of the story on October 24 – but just a few hours later it had mysteriously vanished.

Later a new story on Asda appeared, which was far more positive for the retail giant.

So I got curious and googled ‘Daily Telegraph Asda’. What popped up first was a negative story about both Asda and Tesco’s own brand bottled water coming from the mains supply.

But the next few stories read more like press releases. They included the launch of an Asda credit card,  new shop openings  and brand revamps.

Yet a search on ‘BBC Asda’ revealed the supermarket had been involved in a high profile employment tribunal and milk protests.

It should be said there were also stories about job creation and a product launch.

When we look at how the Telegraph covers other supermarkets, the results are more interesting still.

Of the top six Google results, the Telegraph’s coverage of Sainburys produced three negative stories, including claims that it is in the hall of shame (strong stuff?)  over supplier payments plus coverage of the Sunday trading debate.

And Tesco doesn’t fare too well either.  Its fine for hiring foreign workers illegally, profit problems and the possibility of it leaving the US  all figure highly in the search results.

Now you might say Tesco’s had a bad time. But from those search results, Asda was the only chain who got product launches into the news pages of the Telegraph.

We can’t say for sure what influence supermarkets have over the news agenda (or, specifically, the nature of the relationship between Asda and the Daily Telegraph), but the signs do point to consumers getting incomplete information about what they buy.

What we can say, is the disappearance of that Asda gaffe story helped the retail giant avoid paying the price for a slip which reaffirms the need for tough guidelines to keep us healthy all over the world.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership threatens hard-won consumer rights in Asia and the Americas

CI’s Jeremy Malcolm looks at how the Trans-Pacific Partnership is dismantling a slew of consumer rights from intellectual property laws to food labelling to labour standards.

 

As a global organisation, much of the work that Consumers International (CI) does for and through its members is done at the international level. By setting consumer policies that apply to many countries, we ensure that no country is left behind when best practices are being set. (A good example of this is our work on the ISO 26000 standard on social responsibility.) 

But rather than being a race to the top, sometimes globalisation can be a race to the bottom, in which national laws to protect the public interest are sacrificed on the altar of free trade.

An example of this is found in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), an intergovernmental agreement currently under negotiation that threatens to reduce hard-won health, privacy, consumer protection, environmental and labour standards in 11 negotiating countries around the Asia Pacific region.

Here are just some of the areas of the TPP text that are of concern to consumers:

Food and labelling

The existing trade disciplines of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) already limit national and consumer sovereignty when it comes to food. For example, under WTO rules, the European communities were punished for prohibiting imports of beef from cows laced with hormones, because the health risks of the use of artificial hormones on cattle had not been scientifically established.

As a result, Europe was ordered to compensate the United States for the lost imports of hormone-laced beef that European consumers didn't want! Under the TPP, American industry is asking for even tougher powers to limit other countries from regulating products such as genetically-modified food, pesticides and additives.

Intellectual property

Perhaps the most controversial chapter of the TPP, the intellectual property chapter, would also elevate intellectual property protection and enforcement standards above the already-high levels set by the WTO, to the detriment of consumers.

For example, many countries will be required to extend their length of copyright protection by 20 or more years, resulting in works from early last century being locked out of the public domain for decades. Parallel importation will also be restricted, allowing global firms to profiteer.

An Australian parliamentary study shows that such restrictions increase the cost of music downloads in that country by more than 50% compared to the USA.

The right to bypass digital locks in order to exercise fair dealings with copyright works will also be curtailed, and both civil and criminal penalties for copyright infringements will almost certainly balloon.

Investor-state dispute settlement

Under investor-state dispute settlement rules proposed for the TPP, big business can sue governments in an international commercial tribunal, for introducing new laws - such as consumer protection laws - that damage their businesses.

For example, the tobacco giant Philip Morris is currently suing Australia under a similar free trade agreement between Australia and Hong Kong, over Australia's introduction of a law requiring plain packaging of cigarettes.

Even though Australia's High Court already rejected the Philip Morris claim, the company is still pursuing its case in the international tribunal. Unsurprisingly, Australia has rejected an ‘investor-state disputes settlement provision’ for the TPP - but the USA is still insisting upon it.

E-Commerce

The TPP is proposing to adopt and strengthen the problematic APEC cross-border privacy rules, which were developed without adequate input from consumer or privacy groups. These rules provide a streamlined process for the exchange of consumers' private information across borders, possibly into countries where privacy protection is significantly more lax. 

As part of this, TPP is proposing to outlaw government policies that require consumers' information to be physically hosted on local servers. The intent is to allow web companies from the United States to host such private data, even though US law notoriously allows warrantless wiretapping and surveillance of its citizens.

This unnerving practice will now extend across the region if this TPP proposal makes it through.

Consumer groups shut out

There are probably many other areas of the text that are of concern to consumers too. But we can only say "probably", because the text has not been released. We only know what we do about the agreement because two of its 20 chapters have been leaked, and from public statements by negotiators and lobbyists. 

In particular, the US government has claimed that the "Competition" and "E-Commerce" chapters both include text on consumer protection, and there also exists a chapter on "Financial services" that is doubtless of relevance to consumers. Yet CI, and all other consumer organisations, have been denied access to these texts, whilst cleared corporate lobbyists have been allowed to see them.

CI’s involvement

CI attended the most recent meeting of the TPP negotiators in Virginia, USA, earlier this month with our member ODECU from Chile, where we were allowed a token 10-minute presentation slot, and a table from which to distribute publications.

Whilst this is a pitiful excuse for public engagement, the meetings have provided a useful mobilisation point for civil society, and are an occasion for well-connected NGOs to arrange informal private meetings with negotiators. (CI attended such a meeting in Virginia.)

The next TPP negotiation meeting will be taking place in New Zealand from 3 to 12 December 2012, and we are again inviting interested CI members to participate, with coaching and support from CI.

If you are interested in hearing more, and are from Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States or Vietnam, contact me or Farooq Ahmed Jam from CI's Office for Asia Pacific and the Middle East. 

We will provide you with a detailed briefing document that we have prepared, and put you in touch with your country's negotiators. 

Even if you can't attend the next negotiating session, there are still many ways in which you can have an impact, such as talking with your negotiators, and linking up with other NGOs in your country who are already engaged in TPP advocacy.

With the agreement slated for completion in 2013, now is the time for CI members from the Asia-Pacific region to defend themselves against the TPP's many threats to consumers.

Is your ISP telling the truth?

Jeremy Malcolm, co-author of CI’s new publication aiming to help consumer organisations campaign for better broadband, on why we need to take on the ISPs. 

 According to CI's global research on broadband conducted with 20 of our members last year, Internet service providers (ISPs) are keeping consumers in the dark when it comes to quality and value. 

To be more specific, they commonly misadvertise the Internet speeds they provide, with “up to” speeds being claimed that do not represent anything like the actual average speeds that users can expect to experience in practice.

Baffled by the figures

Consumers are also confused by download caps, fair usage policies and other terms and conditions that are disclosed only in the “small print” of their agreements with their ISPs, if at all. 

Even if a particular ISP provides all of this information in a fair and understandable manner, the consumer who is shopping around for a new broadband connection will need to be able to compare it with what other ISPs offer – but is $30 per month for an 8Gb ADSL plan with a 20Gb cap better or worse than 30c per day for a 3G plan with a 50Mb cap? The consumer is likely to have no idea.

Keeping consumers locked in

Moreover, once a consumer signs up to a contract with their ISP, the ISP will do everything within its power to stop them from leaving, by locking them in to a long-term contract. This is done in one of two ways:

•  A broadband contract typically runs for between 18 months and 2 years - and often rolls over automatically to be extended even longer! In some cases, a “free” device or “free” installation is used as a sweetner. But many consumers, if offered the choice, would rather bear those up-front costs in exchange for the freedom to switch providers on a month's notice.
•  Providers will often bundle several products together, sometimes for a “discount” rate. The consumer who is unhappy with one of the components of that bundle may find themselves stuck with it, because they do not wish to lose other bundled items. This too locks them in to a single provider, limiting choice and competition.

To help solve these problems – misstatement and confusion about the terms, conditions and capacities of Internet services, and the “locking in” of consumers to long-term commitments – CI has published Holding Broadband Providers to Account: A Consumer Advocacy Manual.

Campaigning for better broadband

The manual is designed to help de-tangle these issues for consumer organisations creating consumer-facing campaigns around broadband services.

Amongst the recommendations made in the manual is the promotion of a standard Broadband Disclosure Statement. This sets out the most important variables in a standardised, easily understood and comparable form, including speed, reliability, service limits and conditions, pricing and other information such as privacy policy. 

We have created Take a look at the sample Broadband Disclosure Statement illustrated here completed for a fictional ISP called iStall. 

CI's A2Knetwork.org microsite contains a downloadable version of this form in several formats, along with an expanded version which adds additional measurements, and more detail of the conditions that apply to bundling of products, and consumer privacy.  You can use these as models for ISPs in your country to adopt voluntarily, or for regulators to specify as an industry standard.  

A second measure that our broadband manual recommends is the campaign theme, “Don't Lock Me In!”.  Consumers are best served by a competitive market for Internet services, and forcing consumers into long term contracts or to accept an inflexible bundle of products can distort that market, giving them a poorer deal.   

We recommend that consumer groups advocate for a maximum contract term of 12 months, and that the components of service bundles should be separable without significant financial penalty.

What can you do to help in the fight for fairer, more transparent and accessible broadband services for consumers?

•  If you are a consumer of broadband, contact your local Consumers International member. Amongst the CI members working on our campaign “Holding Broadband Service Providers to Account” are IDEC from Brazil, Consumer Council of Fiji, the Kenya Consumers Organization, Colectivo Ecologista Jalisco from Mexico, ADEC from Senegal and Consumers Korea.
•  If you are a consumer advocate yourself, we have prepared a variety of resources that you can use to campaign on the above themes. In addition to the consumer advocacy manual itself, you can download template designs for posters or postcards from our A2Knetwork.org microsite, which are ready to customise with your name, logo and website address. Our Consumer in the Digital Age network also exists to provide CI members with advice and support.

Are consumer groups heading for extinction?

Following the CIVICUS World Assembly, CI’s Luke Upchurch reflects on the relevance of consumer groups in a changing civil society.

 

Last week’s three-day CIVICUS World Assembly in Montreal, Canada was a heated, energetic affair, reflecting a civil society movement grappling with its place in a rapidly changing world.

This year’s event brought together civil society organisations from across the globe to look at defining a new social contract. Following Rio+20, Occupy, the Arab Spring and the EU/US economic crisis, many of the organisations present at the event were questioning the role and relevance of traditional civil society organisations - something the consumer rights movement itself must do.

As consumers turn to user-generated sources of information about products and services; as single-issue groups take on traditional consumer rights issues; and as online activism challenges the conventional thinking around what constitutes action, our movement is left wondering what it can offer the next generation of consumer rights advocates.

Replace ‘consumer’ with ‘citizen’ and this is a problem facing civil society groups at large, not just those concerned with consumer rights. As one delegate, @BonnieKoenig, tweeted:

NGO / CSO leaders need to be open to dramatically changing their own organizations & operations to stay relevant. #civWA
— Bonnie Koenig (@BonnieKoenig) September 6, 2012

“NGO/CSO leaders need to be open to dramatically changing their own organizations & operations to stay relevant.”

This theme of relevance and effectiveness was an unofficial thread throughout the event, and, despite the strong sense of camaraderie, delegates were often polarised in their response to it.

Many believe that the answer was to work more closely with corporations, to find mutual solutions in places where governments have so hopelessly failed. Others believe that direct action is the only way to effectively tackle social, political and environmental injustice. 

Ingenuity

And everyone has an opinion on the mix of top-down/bottom-up solutions required.

As with most things, perhaps the answer lies somewhere in between. We need energy, ingenuity, and determination to force change from below, and the consensus-building, multi-stakeholder approach that can open up global-scale change from above. 

This is certainly the case with sustainable consumption. I spoke on a panel that considered both the international and local-level changes needed to move us away from unsustainable patterns of consumption and production. 

While we need governments to incentivise green investment, and corporations to choice edit the bad stuff out of the commodity chain; we also need to change social norms and values at the individual and local level. These are just some of the pre-conditions necessary for the mainstreaming of sustainable consumption.

Many of the younger CIVICUS delegates - who volunteered some of the most constructive ideas for change during the event - would no doubt question this seemingly laboured approach. As @alexjamesfarrow tweeted during the event: “#Youth are losing patience with this conversation. If we don’t change radically, #civsoc orgs today will be dinosaurs tomorrow.”

Alex may well be right, and he articulates it well in this video blog. But I believe traditional civil society organisations, including consumer rights groups, do have a unique role to play.

Digital campaigning

Just take a look at the Big Switch online campaign by UK consumer group Which?. They were able to use the collective bargaining power of nearly 300,000 consumers to negotiate huge savings from energy suppliers - a campaigning principle that can, in theory, be applied to anything, yet relies on the good name and campaigning expertise of a national consumer group to be effective. 

Another UK consumer group, Consumer Focus, has produced an excellent guide to how consumer groups can use digital technology to campaign and is well worth a read. 

At the policy and advocacy level our experience is vital too - it has been all too easy for governments and industry to say that the consumer just does not care enough about sustainability. 

But with no enabling infrastructure in place, and unsustainable products and services crowding the marketplace, it’s all but impossible for consumers to make green choices in many countries. 

Changes must be in step with each other: consumer rights groups must be there push for sustainable alternatives, and to ensure politicians and businesses do not hide behind nascent consumer demand. 

Whatever role consumer rights groups play, more often than not our biggest advocacy asset is trust - the trust that our members, supporters, and subscribers hold in our opinion, and the authority this affords us in the eyes of governments and business. 

As younger ‘consumer citizens’ are looking elsewhere for action on consumer rights issues, our movement needs to look at new ways to retain and earn that trust. Our future may well depend on it.

Lack of transparency is the path to corporate corruption

As recently highlighted in CI’s new report on supermarket supply chains, consumer organisations can play a vital role in holding corporations to account. However, this job is not made easy when companies disclose too little about their policies and operations. Guest blogger Angela McClellan from Transparency International explains the importance of corporate transparency and the right of consumers to be informed.

Holdings, subsidiaries, affiliates and entities—this is the landscape of modern corporations. To the consumer, they are opaque, complex entities and seeing what lies behind them is never easy.

Information on multinational corporations and their operations is often inaccessible or incomprehensible, leaving the average consumer confused and in the dark—a clear violation of the consumer’s right to be informed.

In addition, as the recent banking scandals have demonstrated, lack of access to information also means a lack of accountability, which creates an enabling environment for, as Transparency International (TI) puts it, “the misuse of publicly entrusted power for private gain”. In other words: corruption.

Whether it is interest rate manipulation such as in the alleged Libor affair at Barclays or multi-billion dollar money laundering such as accusations against global subsidiaries of HSBC, corruption can take many forms.

But in all cases, corruption damages public trust, undermines corporate credibility, and hurts the consumer who pays the price for a lack of sound risk management and individual bankers gambling for personal gain.

TI recently released its Transparency in Corporate Reporting study in which it assesses the country-by-country reporting, organisational transparency, and disclosure of anti-corruption programmes among the 105 largest companies in the world, based on publicly available information.

Its methodology is based on the assumption that companies which disclose this information have less to hide. The more transparent companies become, the less space there will be for shady deals and private enrichment.

Together, the companies surveyed in this report are worth more than 11 trillion USD and play a vital role in the global economy, wielding enormous political leverage. Not only that, but many are household names that touch the lives of people all across the world, carrying an important social responsibility.

The impact of these companies and their actions goes beyond investors or shareholders and has a profound effect on the individual, the consumer and the worker. Our report sheds a negative light on financial companies, described as the least transparent. This is particularly worrisome given that the financial sector has received copious amounts of public funds through bail-out programmes in recent years.

To avoid the continuing privatisation of win and socialisation of loss, consumers and other stakeholders, including investors, shareholders, tax payers and regulators, need sufficient information to be able to assess the risks to which they are exposed. Country-by-country financial reporting enables citizens in host countries to hold their governments to account on contracts, tax exemptions as well as on the use of received revenues.

Organisational transparency is necessary to shed light on the network of interconnected subsidiaries and affiliates that may be incorporated in diverse jurisdictions, including secret jurisdictions with low tax regimes. And finally, the disclosure of anti-corruption policies is key as it indicates a corporate commitment to protecting against corruption.

Corruption is a risk for multinational corporations as much as it is for governments and consumers. It distorts markets, undermines economic growth and perpetuates social inequality. This affects each of us. Companies may recognise this but must now more than ever unequivocally commit themselves to measures to prevent corruption.

The help of civil society and individual consumers can make an enormous difference. Most corporate reporting is purely voluntary and companies may not see the need to increase their transparency.

Therefore, we need to remind companies and governments that we, as consumers and tax payers, do indeed care and want access to information. Using the data from the Transparency in Corporate Reporting, we can demonstrate to companies that what they have been doing so far against corruption is not enough to ensure that consumers are protected.

Through tweeting, blogging and campaigning, we can show that we will hold companies to their commitments and monitor their operations. We can show that we will hold them accountable.

Angela McClellan, Senior Programme Coordinator in TI’s Global Outreach and Campaigns Department, coordinates TI’s advocacy work on issues relating to the Group of 20 leading economies.

Your chance to quiz the top people in the consumer rights movement

CI’s Head of Communications, Luke Upchurch, on what to expect from the CI President’s Webinar

CI’s very first President’s Webinar – which I will be hosting on 7 June at 12:30 GMT – is a unique opportunity for CI member organisations, and the public at large, to put questions to those at the very top of the global consumer rights movement.

To coincide with our Annual General Meeting and the launch of our new Your Rights, Our Mission: Strategy 2015 materials, we’re seeking to meet our objective of using web technologies to strengthen relations with our members.

But more than that, I see this as a genuine chance to hold the CI President and Director General to account for the future direction of our international movement.

It’s the chance for all to hear why we are focusing our advocacy efforts on areas such as Financial Services, Food, and Consumers in the Digital Age; what we plan to do to promote Consumer Justice and Protection around the world; and how we hope to empower our members so that they can perform as more effective organisations.

It is also the opportunity to ask the tough questions too. These are austere times for many non-profit organisations, and, like others, CI has to make tough decisions about where to focus limited resources – decisions that should rightfully raise questions and answers.

The webinar is an open opportunity to explore all these areas, and more. I’ll be putting a selection of your questions to CI President Jim Guest and CI’s DG Helen McCallum, so please email Webinar@consint.org to register with us and secure your place.

If you want to pose a question, you can do this when you register, during the Webinar itself, on our Facebook event page, or via twitter at @Consumers_int using #CI2015. We’ll try and touch on as many of your issues as we can.

I do hope you will join us.

Pineapple workers: dignity in the face of oppression

Anna Cooper of Banana Link talks about her experiences meeting workers in Costa Rica.

I arrived in Siquirres in the South Atlantic coast of Costa Rica, with my Banana Link colleague Iain Farquhar, after a long and slow journey of multiple planes, taxis and buses. We were welcomed by the friendly and familiar faces at the SITRAP office – our base during the Consumers International case study research.

Tom, Felicity, Anna, Jenny, Carlos

Despite working for Banana Link for a number of years on issues along banana and pineapple supply chains, I arrived with what seemed like a daunting number of questions about the realities on the ground in the Costa Rican pineapple industry. It was exciting to think of what lay ahead in the next two weeks, after which these questions would all be answered - hopefully!

The first week was spent travelling round the plantations and communities in the Atlantic coast, visiting workers and community activists in their homes, at plantation accommodation or at the local trade union offices. Carlos Arguedas, the SITRAP Health and Safety Officer, was our devoted and dependable guide.

Many of the workers lived with their families in very basic housing made out of wood and corrugated iron with mud floors. Some did have concrete houses but generally only when the wives were working too, bringing in two incomes into the household. Some of the bachelor workers – mainly Nicaraguans who had left their families to come and work in Costa Rica – lived in accommodation provided by the company.

The interviews with workers were very open – they all had their own story to tell and different information about the working conditions on the plantations depending on their role, how long they’d been there, whether or not they were union members etc.

It was quite difficult to find women workers that were prepared to talk to us; there was a lot of fear amongst workers who were worried that if they spoke to us and the company found out, then they may lose their jobs. However, we luckily managed to find a number of workers who were glad of the opportunity to speak out and share their experiences of working on the plantations, in the knowledge that this information would get back to the consumers in Europe who are buying the pineapples they produce.

On return to the UK I then had the mammoth task of writing up the case study research into a full technical report - I won’t bore you with the details of this bit! The report was then used to inform Consumers International and the Guardian filmmakers in preparation for the filming trip to Costa Rica in June.

I returned to Costa Rica with the Guardian journalist, Felicity Lawrence, and the film director, Tom Pearson (both pictured) – all of us with worries of torrential rain in the middle of the Costa Rican monsoon season! I was really looking forward to seeing everyone again back in Costa Rica, this time with the very different role of assisting the filming trip on the ground and doing the translation for the journalist and director.

We had ten days to make the film and luckily this time, due to the previous research done in March, we had a pretty good idea of the people we needed to visit and the questions we needed to ask to get the right footage for the film.

This time the experience in Costa Rica was very different – rather than sitting down with workers and community activists for a few hours to talk about their story in their own time, everything had to be much more precise and well planned. The task of language translation therefore seemed to also be one of cultural translation too; mediating the laid back and relaxed tempo of Costa Rican life with the fast and exact demands of UK film production! Thanks to the unwavering support from our local guide, Carlos (pictured), the filming trip was a real success and an amazing experience to be a part of.

Looking back, the most inspiring part of the research and filming process for me has got to be the people I met in Costa Rica – the workers, their families, trade unionists, community activists – all with their own story to tell. Many of them had suffered life times of poverty and repression but their dignity, morality and generosity in the face of these struggles was a powerful reminder of the strength of the human spirit, and one I will never forget.

Costa Rica will pay the price for cheap fruit

The Guardian's Felicity Lawrence on making Pineapples: Luxury fruit at what price for Consumers International.



While making our film about the pineapple industry in Costa Rica, I interviewed the buyer of one of the major European supermarket chains, who wanted to remain anonymous(they usually do).
He was worried that the most intense production of pineapples is based in Costa Rica's flat Atlantic region where the humidity is highest and pests on the monoculture plantations are the most troublesome. They need more pesticides there than the farms in the hilly, more windy area further west, but without the same economies of scale and with the extra distance from the port, it's more expensive to produce where the environmental cost is lower.
When it came to growing bananas, he wasn't sure Costa Rica was even the right country from an environmental point of view. The humidity of the region meant that 54 agrochemical treatments are typically needed in a cycle compared to only 14 or 15 in parts of Ecuador where the climate is less favourable to the sigatoka fungus that is ravaging the crop around the world.
Agrochemicals are an issue for pineapples too. Clearing old pineapple plants after harvest so that you can replant the next crop again is done fastest and mostly cheaply with very high doses of paraquat. Paraquat is banned in Europe because it is so acutely toxic. Some Costa Rican plantations avoid it – notably those with Rainforest Alliance or Fairtrade certifications, but they then have to plough in the old stalks and wait for the plant matter to decompose. Time is money and if no one will pay a premium for your efforts, it's harder to justify.
Other environmentally beneficial techniques don't come cheap either: buffer zones between the edge of plantations and water ways, protection of rainforest areas, making sure workers who spray agrochemicals only do so for a couple of hours at a time so that they are not out sweating in the heat and therefore more exposed to toxic effects – all these things cost money.
One of the greatest problems is that the transnational traders' and retailers' power outstrips the government's ability to regulate. Costa Rica is more stable, democratic and ecologically minded than many developing countries, which is precisely why it is so attractive to foreign investors, yet its environmental laws remain weak and have barely kept up with an industry that has seen explosive growth.
And, of course, the situation isn't helped by price wars that are driving producers towards the kind of industrial agriculture that takes a heavy toll both on the environment and on the lives of those who live and work in the plantations' shadow.

This blog first appeared on the Guardian's Green Living blog. Find out more about the CI's work on Corporate Social Responsibility.