FAIR TRADE

Large multinational enterprises manage the trading of raw materials in underdeveloped countries for incredibly low prices, and consequently exploit their populations.

This exploitation takes form in different ways.

First of all, these multinational firms look only to maximize their profits.  In order to obtain the lowest prices, they make poor producers in different countries compete with one another.

In many cases, the same social classes that rule the government in these countries need to favour the exportation of their products in order to obtain prestigious merchandise from developed countries, and to pay off their pending debts.    In order to do so, they keep their selling prices as low as possible while turning a blind eye to the inhumane exploitation of poor and oppressed people at the hand of a few rich landowners, businessmen and industrialists. 

This exploitation includes long work hours that can reach up to 16 hours a day, scarce security measures for accidents and illness, illegal hiring of farm labourers at low wages, bullying, child labour and ridiculously low wages and benefits.

Although it seems unreal, in some cases the work conditions are worse than slavery as told and documented by a number of people who suffered such abuses.

In the end, the monetary exchange between developed and underdeveloped countries is manipulated by international finance in order to devalue the goods imported from these poor countries.

The principle of Fair Trade is to guarantee fair prices to producers in underdeveloped countries for their goods and labour.  This happens by paying a higher price for their goods and eliminating local and international middlemen who impose strangling brokering commissions.

Fair trade, in turn, translates into higher prices for private consumers in the West.

The conscious purchase of such products is a gesture of solidarity and brotherhood toward oppressed populations and represents the will to change the current social and economic international order.

Furthermore, there is a close friendship and cultural exchange between the small producers and the people from the exporting countries, and the organizations that import, process and distribute their products in the “West”.