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Consultancy, Call for Tender, Baseline Survey: Rights Protection for Enhanced Livelihoods of Workers in Fairtrade Banana Value Chain

JOB SUMMARY
Company	Fairtrade Afr...
Industry	NGO/IGO/INGO
Category	Consulting
Location	Accra
Job Status	Short-term
Salary	GH¢
Education	-:-
Experience	N/A
Job Expires	Jan 22, 2019
Contact	...

Company Profile

Established in 2005, Fairtrade Africa (FTA) is the independent non-profit umbrella organization representing all Fairtrade certified producers in Africa. Fairtrade Africa is owned by its members, who are African producer organizations certified against international Fairtrade standards producing traditional export commodities such as flowers, coffee, cocoa, tea, cotton, bananas, mango, and non-traditional commodities including shea butter and rooibos tea. Currently, the organization represents over 1 million smallholder farmers and workers across 33 countries in Africa.

Our Vision

A world in which all producers can enjoy secure and sustainable livelihoods, fulfill their potential and decide on their future.

Our Mission

To support our members to strengthen their organizations in line with Fairtrade standards.
To improve and increase our members’ ability to access Fairtrade markets.
To empower our members to advocate for their interests and take active ownership of the global Fairtrade system.

WHAT WE DO

Our Strategic Plan 2016-2020 provides a comprehensive long-term outline towards achieving our commitment to smallholder farmers, workers, and artisanal miners. By working within the Fairtrade system and with strategic partnerships through country and producer networks, we will deliver on the following:

Deliver relevant valued services to Fairtrade smallholders and workers
Build, secure, and sustain access to the market for our members.
Advocacy.
Build a strong, settled producer network as part of a global system

WHERE WE OPERATE

We operate four regional networks: Eastern Africa Network (FTA-ECAN) based in Nairobi, Kenya; West Africa Network (FTA-WAN) based in Accra, Ghana and Southern Africa Network (FTA-SAN) based in Cape Town, South Africa. The North Africa & Middle East Network is through partnerships that are coordinated from the secretariat in Nairobi.

Job Description

Call for Tender, Baseline Survey: Rights Protection for Enhanced Livelihoods of Workers in Fairtrade Banana Value Chain

Fairtrade Africa is seeking expressions of interest from qualified research teams to undertake a baseline study with Hired Labour organizations in the banana industry in Ghana. The data collected by the research team will form the baseline study for a new project called “Rights Protection for Enhanced Livelihoods of Workers in Fairtrade Banana Value Chain”.

Interested parties are kindly invited to submit a proposal explaining how they would approach the project and how they meet the requirements in this Call for Tender. Proposals must be accompanied by a project budget and biographies of the members of the research team. Proposals should be submitted to recruitment@fairtradeafrica.net by January 23, 2019. Queries in relation to the proposal or the project can also be sent to the same address.

1. CONTEXT AND BACKGROUND

Ghana is a small player in the global banana market, but exports have increased sharply. Export banana production is concentrated to two companies and they employ around 3150 banana workers. This project emanated from workers’ rights pilot project’s experience and lessons learnt. The studies conducted in the pilot showed that due to fear of losing employment as a result of agitating for rights has created vulnerabilities that limit the exercise of the freedoms. Most workers felt that making too many demand on the company will lead to the company declaring redundancies which in return will affect their work and livelihood. Also despite being aware of their rights, the study found that only 28% indicated that they were able to speak about their rights. Further they indicated that they do not want to join the worker organization because of fear of being victimized if they were to voice their challenges or request for time to attend regular activities of the union.

In addition to the above, supervisory and management positions were noted to be dominated by men while women labour is relegated to specific lower level positions in sections considered as lighter duties. The limited capacity of female workers was attributed to socio-cultural factors as well as very low literacy levels among women workers. Workplace committees reported that women fear to be leaders because their peers will intimidate them due to their inability to read and write. Most meetings were conducted in English and women reported to feel uncomfortable because they do not understand much English. Furthermore, a study on living wage conducted in 2017 revealed that the average worker in the two banana companies is 26% away from the living wage estimate for the area.

It is on this foundation that this project has been put up to ameliorates and improve the situation and shall involve capacity building of local unions, staff/management and advocacy for policy mainstreaming particularly on gender and living wage to improved wages and living conditions of workers in the banana value chain.

Fairtrade Africa has accessed funding from Fairtrade Finland through Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland to implement a project that seeks to improve labour relations for workers in the hired labour setups. The project will especially target workers in two Fairtrade certified farms in Ghana namely Golden Exotics Limited (GEL) and Volta River Estate Limited (VREL).

Project Goal: Project’s goal is to improve working and living conditions of workers in the banana value chain. The purpose of the project is improved employee satisfaction on Ghana’s banana plantations.

The objectives of this MFA Impact Programme Banana are:

To promote the fair treatment, non-discrimination, and equal opportunity of workers
To establish, maintain, and improve the worker-management relationship
To promote compliance with national employment and labor laws
To protect workers, including vulnerable categories of workers such as children, migrant workers, workers engaged by third parties, and workers in the client’s supply chain
To promote safe and healthy working conditions, and the health of workers and
To improve the incomes of the workers

Project Outcomes (Improved working conditions)

Project Outputs

Enhanced awareness of gender rights and equality by management, supervisors and workers
Enhanced awareness of labour rights, including protection against forced labour by management and workers
Enhanced understanding of gender mainstreaming by management, supervisors and workers
Strengthened capacity of workers to organize in participatory structures - trade union committees, gender committees and Fairtrade Premium Committees
Greater understanding and commitment by companies towards achieving a living wage
Enhanced negotiation skills of workers

2. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The aims of this study are:

To establish the current status (a benchmark) for the sampled Fairtrade certified farms with respect to the project indicators to enable monitoring and progress evaluation in the future.
To conduct a gender analysis of Fairtrade banana chain and propose project response to the identified issues.
Collect data on workers with disabilities, identify activities that people with various disabilities can perform and gender work audit (especially activities that are suitable for women).
To come up with the product (banana) and POs specific context analysis with respect to workers’ rights issues and propose actions to address the identified issues.
To obtain data on remunerations (wages and in kind benefits) of workers and the level of poverty among workers in the two plantation.
To collate data on issues about sexual harassment (determine the presence and level) and the various forms of harassment and discrimination workers encounter in their line of work and make recommendations on grievances procedure.

3. SCOPE AND METHODS

3.1 Geographical scope of the study

The MFA Impact Project banana will be focused on workers of the two banana certified organisations located in the Asuogyaman district in the eastern region around the south Volta basin. Since some of the data to be collected is of sensitive nature, the research team is also required to indicate in their methodology how they propose to collect this data.

3.2 Methodology

The baseline study should adopt a mixed methods approach, integrating quantitative and qualitative methods to ensure that data collected can be communicated, explained and contextualized. It is expected that the research team will combine (worker) household surveys with in-depth interviews and focus-group discussions.

The baseline study shall use the Fairtrade Hired Labour Theory of Change (ToC) as it´s conceptual framework while specifically addressing the programme M&E framework as well as the project logical framework. Interested researchers may contact m.morden@fairtradeafrica.net for any clarification.

3.3 Sampling Strategy

A final representative selection of HL organizations will be made against an agreed set of criteria between Fairtrade and the selected research team. The team also has to propose how to ensure that a sufficient number of individual workers participate in the study so that the results can be considered to be representative of the wider body of workers and statistically significant. The target organisations and their number of workers are as follows:

Organisation Number of workers

Golden Exotics limited	2500
Volta River Estate Limited	650

Some of these data may be available at the level of the management/staff of the producer organization, while others will need to be collected through a worker level sample survey or focus group discussions.

3.4 Indicators

The study will need to include project specific indicators, selected gender and Hired Labour MEL Framework indicators. Further indicators specific to the requirements of this study will be identified by the research team in collaboration with Fairtrade Africa MEL and the MFA team.

4. OUTPUTS

The expected project outputs to be submitted to Fairtrade Africa are:

An inception report detailing the methodology, work plan, research ethics and protocol to be followed
Detailed narrative report in a format agreed between the research team, Fairtrade Africa MEL and the MFA Impact programme. The report should have clear graphical presentation and narrative discussions.
The report should provide detailed analysis of PO specific issues as well as an overall synthesis of findings and observations / learning on key themes outlined in this ToR.
Executive summary, giving a clear overview of the principal findings per country presented in a concise manner.
Recommendations for how Fairtrade can deepen impact for workers, including recommendations for both policy makers as well as for the Fairtrade Africa.
PowerPoint presentation summarizing the main findings and key recommendations as well as a presentation for the project sites and a presentation of overall key results.
Photographs and/or video footage from the research with consent forms of people photographed
- NB**. At risk and or vulnerable people will not be photographed.
All raw data and interview protocols collected through the research process are made available in an agreed format to Fairtrade Africa MFA team and MEL, allowing for future analysis on the data.

Required Skills or Experience

5. CONSULTANCY TEAM EXPERTISE

The project will be awarded to a recognized research institution which can propose a research team meeting the following criteria.

Fluency in English and local language preferably Twi or Ga-Adangbe or Ewe
Experience of conducting impact assessments, baseline studies or other types of programme evaluation or research
Research experience in the areas of gender, living wage, workers’ rights, forced labour and capacity building.
Previous experience in the banana value chain will be an added advantage.
Expert knowledge of evaluation techniques, participatory research methods as well as of quantitative methods
Ability to present data concisely and clearly
Demonstrable policy on research ethics including protection and respect for privacy
Understanding of Fairtrade principles, key tools and approaches will be an advantage
Disclosure of conflict of interest

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