The Human Costs of Coffee
The second article for Assignment 11 is entitled "Children: The Other Side of the Coffee Tour." It seems ideally suited for a Baron's Four I's analysis. Still, there is plenty of room for discussion about what exactly are the "Issues", who are the "Interests", what are the important "Institutions", and what "Information" is relevant.
Defining Terms
Recall that the Four I's are defined by Baron as follows:
- Issues are "the basic unit of non-market analysis and the focus of non-market action."
- Interests include "the the individuals and groups with preferences about or a stake in the issue.
- Institutions include "government entities such as legislatures and regulatory agencies as well as nongovernmental institutions such as the news media and public sentiment."
- Information "pertains to what the interested parties know or believe about the issues and forces affecting their development."
Of those who used the Baron framework for thsi article, there was widespread agreement on the major issue. As shown below, almost every one mentioned the exploitation of child labor along with a host of other broader economic, social, and cultural problems.
- " the usage of child labor in very bad working conditions"
- "Malnutrition, safety and health problems, and wages..."
- "abusing children"
- "child labor"
- "pay, working conditions, and living quarters"
- "the usage of child labor to work in very bad conditions.
- "Child and old labor, low wages, poor living and health conditions"
- "child labor, low-wage labor, saftey and health conditions in the workplace."
- "Child labor; poverty, high unemployment and illiteracy
- "low wage labor."
- "Child labor-social problem"
There was less consensus, however, about who the Interests and Institutions are. At the end of the article were the names of four organizations. Given the above definitions, you should have been able to classify them accordingly:
Interests:
COFFEE KIDS: An international nonprofit working with local organizations to improve the lives of families in coffee-growing communities. Programs range from economic development to health care to providing scholarships for schooling. The website has links to project profiles, coffee facts, and community solutions.
US/LEAP U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project
A nonprofit organization that runs a variety of campaigns to support rights for workers in Central and South America. Their efforts largely support workers employed directly or indirectly by US companies. Click on the coffee link to find out how they are urging corporations to ensure that coffee growers who supply them are paying their workers a decent wage with decent working hours.
Institutions:
THE UN WORKS PROGRAMME
Its "Department of Public Information" has developed programs to "end child labor around the world."
THE INTERNATIONAL LABOR ORGANIZATION, International Labour Office
They are currently sponsoring IPEC (International Program on the Elimination of Child Labour) to help phase out child labor on Central American plantations. The program includes social rehabilitation and protection to help the region's 800,000 children working in agriculture.
Although there could be some discussion about whether or not the last two organizations might also be considered Interests, no one should have missed including these four groups in one or the other category.
Information
Several of you had trouble identifying the role of "Information" in this article. Here are some the better answers:
"Information is related to what the public already knows and what they should know about this issue. These four I’s are what drove this non-market issue to arise. This non-market issue might affect the child labor using companies’ profits. This can cause a lot of problems for these companies; this can be seen through Nike’s experience with a very similar incident (use of child labor in non-favorable working conditions). Some of the customers would stop buying from these coffee places after they know that they are using child labor. In this case, they would be using their buyer bargaining power as a result of the non-market issues that arose from the use of child labor."
"Once the corporations that buy coffee know about such working conditions they could influence the owners of such plantation to improve there working conditions and pay or they won’t buy form them anymore."
"At the end of the coffee tour, Emily's teacher said," These children have nothing and nobody to speak for them. If I speak out, I will not be allowed to bring my students here. Please go back to your countries and speak for them." From this statement we can conclude that most of the public are not aware of these issues regard the farmers. The country is prohibited anyone to talk about it or discuss it. Hence, there is no enough information available for interest group unless they go and observe the real circumstances."
"Institutions, such as the UN for example, are aware of the Child labor issue and situation in third world countries. Their job would be to make sure the laws are enforced, and have regular checks of their own to ensure compliance of the local governments. Moreover, the information on the websites of the institutions should help local governments to set laws and enforce them."
"The consumer wouldn’t feel good drinking its coffee and knowing that a 3 year old child suffered while he picked coffee!!"
In short, you should have recognized that what the interests know about the issue of child labor is limited by their ability to actually observe it first hand. Clearly this is very hard to do given the remoteness of the abusive practices from the institutions that have responsibility for regulating child labor. Observation is also complicated by the fact that the growers apparently go to great lengths to hide the abuses. Consider how close the author was to the children and how she would have never known of their exploitation if not for the work of the two volunteers. I tis not hard to imagine that without a permanent physical presence, institutions like the UN can not realistically be expected to be able to put and end to these labor practices.
You might also note that the inability to get accurate information prevents the creation of new interests and makes more difficult the work of the existing ones. Without information the interests can't determine to what degree the issues are being resolved. Added to that is the problem that the people being exploited are the ones with the best information but also the ones least willing or able to share it.
Finally, one thing we have to keep in mind is the nature of the data or information being provided to us. It is a narrative, written by one caring soul, about the what she observed in one of 60,000 coffee plantations in Guatemala. The information that we do not have is, perhaps, as important was what provided. While no one would argue that what she observes falls well short of humane and decent treatment, without more information about the practices at other coffee plantations, we can not be sure if problem is as stated. We can not know whether the events described are widespread or isolated, if they are getting better or worse. And if we don't know that, we also can't know if actions taken here and elsewhere are makign difference. All that I do know is that taste that all this leaves in my mouth is one more bitter than burnt coffee.