Blog
Preparing a Fair Wage Paper for Publication
One of the goals of the Fair Wages Project was to use the work to teach one of the trainees, T. Mary Rani how to prepare a professional paper for publishing/presentation. Mary Rani is being coached in that process by Aparna Massey of Cedar Woods Consulting Group, Dehra Dun. The first work was to sort through the data, identify what was missing and then design data collection forms for fresh data, especially end line data.
Mary and her counterpart in Delhi Madan Lal, worked together to collect the endline data and Mary is now back with Aparna working on the final paper.
Asked how the work was progressing Aparana wrote:
" MESH has been following Fair Trade practices with disabled and leprosy affected artisans. One of the vital factors of Fair Trade is Fair Wage. However, it has been observed by MESH that its long term suppliers are yet to rise out of poverty, in the way MESH had hoped for. A new tool used by MESH, The Fair Wage Calculator could help artisan groups to understand whether their labour rates are enough to lift them out of poverty. A professional paper is being prepared about MESH Fair Trade Project.
The process involved -
Collection of baseline data in 18 groups which investigated various product making stages, per piece wages and per day wages for each stage of product making was carried out by Mary/MESH from February 2008 to July 2009 in South India and May and June 2010 in North India . Against the same parameters end-line data was collected from September 2009 to June 2010 in North and South India. An additional questionnaire was administered to the artisans of the 18 groups to record details of their personal information, employment information, employment benefits, benefits for women and provision of any other additional benefits from March 2010 to June 2010. The data collated in the form of baseline, end-line and additional questionnaire is now being interpreted statistically by Mary of MESH, mentored by me, Aparna Massey of Cedar Woods Consulting Group.
A report will be generated in the form of a research paper."
A boost to their efforts came in the form of a request from Fair Trade Forum India for MESH to be part of a Fair Wage Policy Workshop on July 30th 2010. Mary made a presentation to the workshop entitled “Fair wage implementation by MESH: Issues and Challenges”.
Mary and her counterpart in Delhi Madan Lal, worked together to collect the endline data and Mary is now back with Aparna working on the final paper.
Asked how the work was progressing Aparana wrote:
" MESH has been following Fair Trade practices with disabled and leprosy affected artisans. One of the vital factors of Fair Trade is Fair Wage. However, it has been observed by MESH that its long term suppliers are yet to rise out of poverty, in the way MESH had hoped for. A new tool used by MESH, The Fair Wage Calculator could help artisan groups to understand whether their labour rates are enough to lift them out of poverty. A professional paper is being prepared about MESH Fair Trade Project.
The process involved -
A report will be generated in the form of a research paper."
T. Mary Rani (L) and Aparna Massey
A boost to their efforts came in the form of a request from Fair Trade Forum India for MESH to be part of a Fair Wage Policy Workshop on July 30th 2010. Mary made a presentation to the workshop entitled “Fair wage implementation by MESH: Issues and Challenges”.
