Corporate Responsibility and Labour Rights

Chapter 17

Code monitoring in the informalFair Trade sector: the experience ofOxfam GB

Rachel Wilshaw

This chapter explains why Oxfam embarked in 1997 on a pioneering initiative to monitor its Fair Trade partners in a developmental way, through a framework for documenting and improving labour standards. It gives an account of the monitoring of 75 producer organizations working in the ‘informal sector’ (producer collectives and small enterprises providing work on a piece rate basis). It identifies the main findings, illustrated with extracts from actual monitoring reports. From this experience, lessons are drawn which are relevant to code monitoring ...