ActionAid’s report ‘Who Pays? – How British supermarkets are keeping women workers in poverty’ looks at the darker side of the supermarket revolution.

'Who pays?' explores the supply chains that link the products we see on supermarket shelves to the people in developing countries who produce them.

The report looks in detail at the cases of some of the poorest workers in supermarket supply chains in Costa Rica, India and Bangladesh and shows how supermarket pressure means that they are being denied even their most basic rights. Read the full report.

What we want
ActionAid is calling for…

The UK government to:

• Establish an independent supermarkets regulator that:
  – monitors relationships between supermarkets and suppliers along the whole food chain, including suppliers based overseas
  – enforces new rules to ensure fair competition between supermarkets and their suppliers– finds remedies for any breaches that are discovered, and has the power to enforce its rulings
  – addresses issues as they arise, and has the power to review the rules on a regular basis to account for changes in buying practices
  – operates a strictly confidential complaints procedure for suppliers
  – operates a legally enforceable dispute procedure.
• Extend the scope of competition policy to enable effective monitoring and regulation of UK companies’ buying practices in key sectors, at home and overseas.
• Use other areas of policy and law, including company law, to make UK companies more accountable for the impacts of their buying practices on workers and producers in developing countries.

Supermarkets to:

• Publicly commit to ensuring that the internationally recognised rights of all workers in their supply chains are respected.
• Publicly acknowledge the damaging impacts of buying practices on workers and suppliers, and take concrete steps to address them.
• Do not respond to the exposure of poor working conditions in supply chains by ‘cutting and running’. Work with each other, suppliers, trade unions, local civil society groups and governments to improve