Fairtrade Certification, Labor Standards, and Labor Rights: Comparative Innovations and Persistent Challenges

Fairtrade International is the primary social certification in the agro-food sector, working to promote the wellbeing and empowerment of farmers and workers in the Global South. Although Fairtrade’s farmer program is well studied, far less is known about its labor certification. Helping fill this gap, this article provides a systematic account of Fairtrade’s labor certification system and standards and compares it to four other voluntary programs addressing labor conditions in global agro-export sectors. The study explains how Fairtrade International institutionalizes its equity and empowerment goals in its labor certification system and its recently revised labor standards. Drawing on critiques of compliance based labor standard programs and proposals regarding the central features of a beyond compliance approach, the inquiry focuses on Fairtrade’s efforts in promoting (1) inclusive governance, (2) participatory oversight, and (3) enabling rights. I argue that Fairtrade makes important, but incomplete, advances in each domain, pursuing a worker enabling compliance model based on new audit report sharing, living wage, and unionization requirements and its established Premium Program. While Fairtrade pursues more robust beyond compliance advances than competing programs, the study finds that like other voluntary initiatives, Fairtrade faces critical challenges in implementing its standards and realizing its empowerment goals.