In its latest report, “Law of the Jungle – Responsible Palm Oil Purchasing in Finland” the self-appointed Finnish business watchdog Finnwatch said there are serious deficiencies in oversight of Neste Oil’s certification processes for its international raw material suppliers. Finnwatch investigated the employment practices of a number of palm oil producers, all of which had been certified.
According to the NGO, palm oil producer IOI Group pays wages that are below the minimum wage, seizes workers’ passports and has prevented them from joining unions.
“Working contracts require labourers to work up to 10 or 12 hours a day. Wages are based on the number of bunches of oil palm seeds that workers can gather in a say, and there is no compensation for overtime work. Many workers don’t even make the minimum wage,” said Finnwatch chief Sonja Vartiala.
Penniless and in debt, workers have no way out
More than four out of five workers on IOI plantations are migrant workers from Indonesia, Bangladesh and Nepal. Nearly all of the labourers interviewed by Finnwatch had taken on debt or sold property to pay their passage to work in Malaysia. IOI deducts a recruitment fee directly from the labourers’ wages, reducing the size of their pay packets.
“Several workers told us that they had been conned and that they wanted to return home. But they are penniless and in debt and so they have no other alternative but to continue working on the plantations,” Vartiala said.
Finnwatch said that many of the findings brought to light in its report correspond to forced labour and human trafficking as defined by the International Labour Organisation ILO.
The majority state owned Neste Oil as well as the coffee and cocoa company Paulig Group have launched an investigation into the reported violation with a view to rectifying the situation.
All of the oil palm plantations investigated by Finnwatch were certified by the sustainability watchdogs the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification organization. However the report is highly critical of the certifiers and suggests inadequate monitoring of the labourers’ working conditions.