Decent work is based on the principles of freedom, equality, security and dignity. It ensures that workers receive sick and maternity pay, and benefits if they are injured at work. By providing jobs that are stable, fairly paid and that maintain strong health and safety standards, decent work gives workers the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty.
Western governments often claim that supermarkets are helping countries in the developing world by sourcing products from there and creating new jobs. This claim fundamentally overlooks the nature of much of this work and what these jobs actually mean for overseas workers. Millions of people around the world struggle daily to get by on low wages, working under dangerous conditions, with no chance of an improvement in conditions or a way to progress out of poverty. Workers also need the right to organise through trade unions as a means to defend and improve their working conditions. They need decent work, not just any job.
For UK supermarkets to truly pursue a socially responsible relationship with their suppliers, it is essential that the workers producing goods for them are able to realise these conditions. Likewise, regulation of these companies needs to take decent work into consideration when monitoring the relationship between supermarkets and suppliers.
 |  | Clean Up Fashion:
Find out the latest about the injustice and exploitation in the high street fashion industry. |
 | | Growing Pains:
War on Want exposes the human cost of the cut flower industry in Colombia and Kenya producing flowers for British supermarkets. |
 | | Solidar's website:
War on Want is a member of SOLIDAR, a network of social and economic justice NGOs. Solidar is leading the Decent Work, Decent Life campaign, launched in 2007, which aims to raise awareness of the necessity of decent work as a route out of poverty. |
