If a 38-year-old single mother from South Africa can do this, it is our duty to try to ensure that Tesco is kept to its word:
Ms Baartman took on the might of the UK retailing world when she highlighted the plight of farm workers at Tesco’s annual shareholders’ meeting in London.
In front of more than 500 onlookers the fruit packer, who is paid 46 rand (£3.49) per day, made an impassioned plea to one of the best-paid executives in the City, Tesco’s chief executive Sir Terry Leahy. Her wages just scrape the legal minimum set by the South African government earlier this year, but are less than a man would earn for the same work.
Ms Baartman confessed she was risking her job by speaking out. She works on a farm in the western Cape that supplies Tesco with fruit during the country’s four-month growing season.
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David Reid, Tesco’s chairman, said the supermarket’s ethical trading team had visited South Africa but had found no proof to back up the allegations made because both ActionAid and Women on Farms, a South African pressure group, will not name and shame the farms concerned. He promised to “personally guarantee” to protect Ms Baartman from any backlash from her employer if it managed to “expose any bad practice”.
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