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Boycotts and workers’ rights

Crowd protest, one banner reads "I'm not lovin poverty wages"
Fast food strike and protest for a $15/hour minimum wage at the University of Minnesota, 2015. Photo by Fibonacci Blue, licensed under CC BY 2.0, from Flickr.
Jasmine Owens
By
Jasmine Owens

Do boycott campaigns help or harm efforts to improve working conditions?

Boycott campaigns can be used to improve conditions for workers. But many campaigners believe boycotting can also do more harm than good – for example, by imperilling workers’ jobs or undermining attempts at company negotiations.

In this article we highlight times when workers’ rights boycotts have had a positive impact, outline the main criticisms levied against the campaign tactic, and consider whether boycotting could play a bigger role in workers’ rights campaigns in the future. 

How can boycotts support workers?

Effective boycotts can pressure companies into addressing poor practices. They are easily understood by the general public and can result in vast amounts of support for campaigners, as well as causing reputational damage to companies.

Our article about effective boycotts explains in more detail how boycotting can be an especially effective campaign tactic.

Here, we highlight a few examples of boycott campaigns that have been used to improve conditions for workers. 

Examples of successful workers’ rights boycotts

In the 1960s, grape workers in Delano, California, who were mostly migrants, routinely worked in abusive conditions for very low pay. Workers were not afraid of backlash from management because working conditions were already so poor, and so they called for a boycott of grapes from California.

Co-founder of Ethical Consumer, Rob Harrison, says this campaign was one of the first times that the support of buyers was mobilised effectively to improve conditions for workers. “Workers had close to nothing to lose and were already hungry.”

It had a massive impact, running over many years. For example, in California in December 1965 the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) called for a boycott of Schenley Industries, the second largest grape grower in the region and a well-known brand for selling liquor.

That boycott resulted in the company’s sales dropping significantly by April 1966. Eventually the campaign brought the company to the bargaining table to sign a historic labour agreement with the NFWA.

For many years in Immokalee, Florida, workers faced extreme labour exploitation, ranging from forced labour and physical abuse to underpayment. Workers formed a group called the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and launched a campaign to target big brands who bought from the abusive farms they worked at.

The workers designed their own workers' rights code of conduct and enforcement mechanism, and demanded that big brands sign a legally binding agreement saying they would adhere to these.

But the brands initially did not agree. From 2001 to 2005 the workers called for a boycott of Taco Bell, saying it would continue the campaign until the company committed to signing the agreement. It gained mass publicity, and students, churches, and a whole range of other communities joined and expressed support for the boycott.

Eventually Taco Bell gave into the demands, resulting in a pay increase for workers’ and an enforceable code of conduct. This programme is now considered the ‘gold standard’ in supply chain workers’ rights mechanisms, and the boycott campaign was integral to its success.

The coalition continues to use boycotting as a campaign tactic today: it’s still calling for a boycott of food chain Wendy’s, until the brand joins their workers rights programme too. 

The global campaign against Nike in the 1990s was so successful that it has become a lesson in how activists can force giant corporations to improve their practices if they get enough bad press.

Facing abysmal working conditions within Nike’s supply chain, trade unions in Indonesia decided to call for a boycott of Nike until workers got a fairer deal. Ethical Consumer and a range of other organisations formed a European coalition to develop a strong and coordinated boycott campaign.

Nike eventually made some significant changes, such as:

  • acknowledging that it had a responsibility for workers in its supply chain
  • committing to auditing, and
  • publishing more transparent information about conditions faced by supply chain workers.

Nike still faces criticisms for workers’ rights issues and auditing has proven to be largely ineffective, but these changes nonetheless show that a massive corporation like Nike can be forced to respond.

Other sports brands also improved their practices to be aligned with Nike’s – potentially afraid that, otherwise, they might be targeted by campaigners next. The campaign therefore pushed up standards across the sportswear industry.

A further example is the Fruit of the Loom boycott. In 2009 the company Russell Athletic, owner of the clothing brand Fruit of the Loom, shut down one of its Honduran factories soon after workers there unionised.

Under pressure from student campaigners over 100 universities in the US, UK and Canada boycotted the company, by dropping licensing deals under which Fruit of the Loom made university merchandise.

According to student campaign group People and Planet, this was the largest garment boycott campaign in history. The boycott campaign resulted in Fruit of the Loom reopening the factory, and the workers’ jobs being reinstated.
 

Risks with workers’ rights boycotts

Nonetheless, a lot of campaigners are critical of using boycotting to address workers’ rights issues. Indeed, our list of active boycott calls shows that boycotting is far more common for human rights and animal rights campaigns than it is for workers’ rights.

Here we explore some of the most common risks and fears related to workers’ rights boycotts, which mean that it isn’t often used as a campaign tactic. 

Common risks and fears around workers' rights boycotts

Some campaigners warn that if a company’s sales drop because of a boycott, it might be forced to lay off workers or drop their hours because it can’t afford to pay them.

For example, in Spain, workers pick fruit and vegetables in dire conditions (often working excessively long days in intense heat and earning less than minimum wage). Much of the produce then ends up on UK supermarket shelves.

Spanish workers’ rights organisation Jornaleras de Huelva en Lucha, however, doesn’t want people to boycott produce from the region. Its spokesperson Ana Pinto believes if people boycott Spanish produce at a large scale, it could result in people losing work. Many are migrants on temporary visas, and a drop in hours can mean not having enough money to live on.

We couldn’t find any examples of workers losing their jobs as a result of a previous boycott campaign, except for at a Sodastream factory in West Bank, Palestine. This boycott was called because the factory operated in an illegal Israeli settlement, and therefore focused on human rights issues rather than working conditions.

Stephen Lerner is a campaigner who worked on the successful boycott call in the US in the 1960s aimed at improving conditions for grape growers (see above). Lerner says, “Companies will always say that a boycott will destroy the company and require mass layoffs” and “is hurting the very people it’s claiming to help”, but he doesn’t find this argument convincing.

For this reason, he says, it’s very important to have a strong worker core at the centre of a boycott campaign – to challenge these claims by companies and show that boycott campaigns led by workers can be used to improve working conditions and rights. 

Some people fear that management will be extra harsh in their response to workers who call for a boycott, instead of more common campaign tactics like joining a union, striking or organising a demonstration.

Exploitative companies often fire workers for far more conventional and widespread forms of campaigning: just joining a union is enough to get many workers fired. So the idea that there are some types of protest that companies are accepting of, and others which are a red line, is a bit of a myth.

Workers are probably in the best position to know what campaign tactics are most risky in their situation, as well as making a judgement about the level of risk they are willing to take. So it is important to listen to workers’ experiences. Anna Bryher, campaign lead at garment workers’ rights group Labour Behind the Label, says, “We have found repeatedly when talking to unions and workers in supplier factories that they ask us not to boycott, but to engage.”

Before boycotting a company for workers’ rights related reasons, it makes sense to check if workers have spoken out about this, and to ask them their view, for example via their representative trade union. Going against their wishes and boycotting anyway could likely disempower workers further.

A sudden call for a boycott might be harmful if it isn’t thought through – for example, if a boycott campaign targets a big brand which buys from an exploitative supplier, and this results in the brand ending its relationship with the supplier. By ending its relationship, the brand loses all the influence it held over the supplier – meaning campaigners and workers can’t make use of it to improve conditions.

Anna Bryher of campaign organisation Labour Behind the Label says it’s important for their campaigning work that big brands keep sourcing from suppliers where workers’ rights aren’t being respected, so that they can work together to improve conditions there.

Campaigners therefore must clearly say what their aim is when they call for a boycott of a big brand – specifying that they don’t want the relationship to be severed with the supplier.

We didn’t find any evidence to suggest that brands are more likely to stop sourcing from a supplier when boycotting is involved compared to other campaign tactics. They might be just as likely to drop the supplier when a news article exposing conditions at the supplier is published. 

How to launch a successful workers’ rights boycott?

1. Centre workers.

Strong boycott campaigns have support from workers, and are led by their experiences and demands.

2. Target a well-known brand.

Boycotts are unlikely to generate publicity or have financial impact if the public isn’t familiar with the brand name.

3. Combine it with other campaign strategies.

Boycotting is one tool in a broader campaign toolbox. 

Ethical Consumer’s take: Should we use boycotts more to support workers’ rights?

In this article we’ve explored some examples where boycotts have caused improvements in conditions for workers, and the key risks and fears that help explain why boycotting isn’t used more often.

Co-founder of Ethical Consumer, Rob Harrison, has written about boycotts since the magazine was founded in 1989, when the boycott of Apartheid in South Africa was at its peak.

Harrison says, “It feels fair to say the mainstream trade union movement is probably uncomfortable with boycotting in a way that is not necessarily evidence-based. The evidence gathering could be stronger around the use of boycotts and workers’ rights.”

He highlights how positive buying is the flipside of boycotting, and that there’s a lot of support for this approach. For example, buying Fairtrade certified products is a way to support companies that make more of an effort to uphold workers’ rights, and buying this necessarily means avoiding other companies that haven’t put that same level of effort in.

In recent decades, companies have come to realise that customers want them to respect workers, and many publish social responsibility reports explaining the steps they are taking to protect workers’ rights. While spending power isn’t the only way improvements can be made, it’s a crucial piece of the puzzle when it comes to understanding what can motivate companies to do better, and to ignore boycotting and positive buying seems like missing a trick.

Harrison says, “There could be more joined up thinking about the nature of how consumers can support workers’ rights. It’s somewhat untapped”.

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