The Role of Fairtrade Certification for Wages and Job Satisfaction of Plantation Workers

Katharina Krumbiegel, Miet Maertens and Meike Wollni

World Development, 2018, vol. 102, issue C, 195-212

Abstract: Worker welfare and employment conditions in the agri-food-producing and processing sectors in the global south have become an increasing concern for consumers. Sustainability standards, such as Fairtrade, play an important role in agri-food markets of horticultural produce and may be a tool to address these concerns. However, so far the implications of Fairtrade certification for extrinsic and intrinsic employment factors of hired labor on large-scale plantations remain hardly understood. In this paper we assess its effect on workers’ hourly wages and their level of job satisfaction with primary survey data from 325 randomly sampled workers from eight different export-oriented pineapple companies in Ghana. We apply a linear, linear mixed model, and instrumental variable approach to take into account the multilevel characteristics of our data and possible selection bias. Our findings show that both hourly wages and job satisfaction are indeed higher on Fairtrade-certified plantations. Factors of increased job satisfaction are likely driven by higher wages, permanent employment contracts, training opportunities, company services such as medical care and paid leave as well as established labor unions on Fairtrade-certified plantations.

Keywords: Fairtrade certification; horticultural employment; worker wages; job satisfaction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X17303133
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: The role of Fairtrade certification for wages and job satisfaction of plantation workers (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:102:y:2018:i:c:p:195-212

DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.09.020

Access Statistics for this article

World Development is currently edited by O. T. Coomes

More articles in World Development from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().