Global Policies for Temporary Workers in Agribusiness — Conclusion

The global dimension to the expansion of Chilean fruit is an aspect we have explored in relation to production and exports, but which also has potentially important implications for the temporeras themselves. Whilst the temporeras are a heterogeneous, marginalised group of workers, they are at the same time integrated into a global market. Despite fragmentation at the point of production, within Chile there is increasing concentration in the export sector. At the retail end within many developed countries to which they export, there is also a tendency to increased control along the supply chain by large supermarkets. This is a phenomenon which has taken place in the agro-food system generally as globalisation has proceeded (Ward and Almas 1997). Since the mid-1990s in many northern countries there has been an increased consumer awareness of the problems of poor labour conditions among export workers in developing countries. An anomaly of globalisation is that, whereas national democratic governments such as Concertacion in Chile have failed to act in the interest of seasonal agricultural workers, foreign multiples are increasingly moving towards introducing codes of conduct to protect labour standards among their ‘third world’ suppliers.