German Retailers' Working Group at World Banana Forum
The conference took place in Rome from 11 to 14 March 2024. Meike Dalchow, Kaufland, and Felix Strauß, ALDI SOUTH Group, represented the German working group for the joint banana project and took part in various discussion rounds on the topic of social sustainability and sustainable procurement practices in the banana sector.
Both emphasised the added value of pre-competitive cooperation, which allows for the collective gathering of learning experiences alongside all relevant actors in the supply chain and based on that developing long-term scalable solutions for the banana sector. They emphasised the importance of establishing pre-competitive sector approaches in order to minimise the additional effort and complexity for producers and other partners in the supply chain. The working group considers responsible purchasing practices, fair prices and strong trade union work to be key elements in achieving and sustaining living wages in the long term. These topics were also repeatedly emphasised by other participants in the discussion at the World Banana Forum (WBF).
In order to address the challenges in a constructive and collaborative manner with all stakeholders, the representatives of Kaufland and ALDI SOUTH advocated for strengthening and structuring the dialogue in the WBF. The working group sees great value in implementing jointly coordinated pilot projects to test practical approaches with a small number of supply chain partners and then, based on the lessons learnt, to develop internationally coordinated industry approaches within the framework of the WBF.
Representatives from INA (GIZ) also contributed to discussions on living wages and decent work. They welcomed the general sectoral support for the topic, underpinned by the recent adoption by the Governing Body of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) of the outcome of the expert meeting on living wages and the positive votes on the "EU Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence" (CSDDD) by the EU Council and the Parliamentary Committee in the same week. It is therefore no longer a question of whether living wages are an important issue, but rather the exact form and implementation. Responsible purchasing practices and strong collective bargaining agreements negotiated by workers' unions play a central role. INA promotes these two topics within the working group, as well as within the framework of the WBF and through the collaborative project "Setting Adequate Wages" together with the ILO.