14 October 2005

A South African campaigner today launches a bid to win new support for thousands of women who claim they face poverty wages and dire conditions growing fruit for leading UK supermarkets.

During her London visit Fatima Shabodien, executive director of the Women on Farms Project, will meet activists as pressure mounts on the British government to toughen legislation against corporate abuse. Talks with the groups ActionAid, Friends of the Earth and representatives from the Tescopoly campaign, will examine directors’ responsibilities as the DTI reviews company law. Under the title 'Green Apples, Labour Blues', she will also speak at a major food conference on Monday (17 October) amid global moves to mark World Food Day.

Ms Shabodien will address the 'If Food Could Talk' conference, arranged by journalists and campaign groups to consider the social, welfare and environmental issues behind the food chain. She will tell how casual women:workers in South Africa, supplying fruit to UK supermarkets, claim they:

• receive poverty wages – sometimes only 35p an hour, below the legal minimum wage.
• lack entitlement to sick or maternity leave.
• live near the farms in slum housing, with cardboard walls, sleeping on floors, without water or electricity.
• suffer daily from hunger.
• must buy their own boots and uniform.

The food conference comes at a time when the leading British supermarkets face growing pressure to address the pay and conditions of casual workers who supply their produce. Rotten Fruit, a report published by ActionAid in April, claimed that casual women workers picking fruit in South Africa were paid poverty wages, exposed to pesticides and denied basic employment rights.

Tens of thousands of women are increasingly employed as a 'reserve army' of part-time labourers to pick and pack fruit, such as apples and pears, in South Africa for export to Europe.

More than 3000 people have signed ActionAid’s campaign 'loyalty card', which mocks Tesco’s Clubcard, and sent them to their MPs, demanding stricter controls on the directors of UK-based multinationals.