The way UK supermarkets do business with developing countries is locking women workers into appallingly low pay and dangerous conditions, ActionAid reveals today. 

Workers are being trapped into a cycle of poverty and insecurity as a result of UK supermarkets’ demands for lower prices and constantly changing to orders, according to the report, Who Pays?  

"The big four supermarkets are increasingly eager to prove their ethical credentials to their customers. In reality the supermarkets’ ever-growing profits are boosted by the scandalously low wages and appalling conditions suffered by the women who produce the food and clothes we buy every day," said Claire Melamed, head of trade and corporates at ActionAid. 

ActionAid researchers found that:

In Costa Rica: banana price wars between UK supermarkets have meant that women working on plantations that supply Tesco, Asda and Sainsbury’s are forced out of regular work into casual piece-rate jobs for lower wages. Wages are so low – as little as 33 pence an hour - that women have told ActionAid they cannot afford to take time off when planes spray dangerous pesticides onto the plantations.

In Bangladesh: young women work for as little as five pence an hour to make clothes for Asda and Tesco while being forced to work long hours, up to 14 hours a day for weeks on end.

In India: pressure from UK supermarkets  to drive down prices has led to an explosion in black market cashew nut processing plants where women earn as little as 30 pence a day and suffer permanent damage to their hands from corrosive acids. 

ActionAid is calling for the UK Government to introduce an independent watchdog that would hold supermarkets to account for their actions overseas. Even the industry’s most effective voluntary code, the Ethical Trading Initiative, has not delivered the sweeping changes needed.

Claire Melamed said: "The supermarket giants have proved unwilling or unable to police themselves effectively. The government needs to think very hard about the kind of corporate image UK PLC wants to portray – and if it isn’t one of exploitation and hardship then it must step in now."

ActionAid is also asking the Competition Commission to recommend an independent supermarket regulator as part of its ongoing inquiry into the UK grocery market  

Download the report at www.actionaid.org.uk/whopaysreport