Fair trade generally translates to reasonable wage, favorable working conditions and environmental protections in the production in cooperatives. Trust is very important in jewelry and fair trade practice upholds trust in jewelry procurement and trade. I recommend that jewelers should totally comply with fair trade practices in order to respect and meet human rights especially children’s rights. Fair trade practice enables the organization to be vigilant on child labor policies by not employing children to work[1]. Incorporating the fair trade practice into the jewelry business enables the jewelers to formalize and organize the standards which enable them to bring safer working conditions, fair labor rights, and strong jewelers’ associations that have the power to demand for their rights. This approach is unique and very effective. It is firm to face its challenges and focuses in bringing change.
Fair trade helps to avoid conflict. Laws and regulations have been implemented by the USA Security and Exchange Commission, in order to ensure transparency. Some international initiatives as well have emerged to join and ensure that jewelry trade is reliable, maintained and flows smoothly without any hiccups[2]. Jewelers should adopt fair trade practices and as well use ethical diamonds in their trade. It is essential that Jewelers conform and adapt to those standards even when changes are made since fair trade takes into consideration the fact that in large businesses it is easier to adjust to significant changes while growing business requires extra aid. Nobody would want their jewelry to contribute to conflict; fair trade practice is the best way to achieve this.
However, on the other hand it can be disadvantageous to comply with fair trade. Jewelers should not conform to fair trade because the manufacturing of jewelry is very difficult to mold into fair-trade cooperative design. Currently, greatest purchasers of jewelry seek for overall cost of their inventory purchase. When jewelry manufacturers produce jewels that are of the same quality but at a lower price, the greatest purchasers obviously buy the affordable jewels[3]. Thus making it even much burdensome to stick by the standards of fair trade practice as it is difficult for the suppliers to fit in. They will be force to focus on profitable practices rather than sustainable practices which harms the environment.
Fair trade practice poses a lot of challenges when it comes to defining fair price. According to jewelry producers and supplies, fair price pay is not that essential to them. But rather view it as an expense and liability[4]. Jewelers want to maximize their profits and the fair price introduces by fair trade limits them from achieving their targets. In the real world, fair trade is bias as it limits jewelers in trade, without taking into consideration the varying costs of production from different organizations. For this reason, I prefer that jewelers should not comply with fair trade at all.
Both the need for jewelers’ to conform to fair trade practice and the need not to conform to fair trade practice gives an indication that we need to ensure that unethical practices are dealt with. Rather than emphasizing on cheap product, we should instead consider working conditions of the workers producing the products we use. Actually, lower prices take advantage of the employees. Even though fair-trade undertakings are sometimes imperfect, they also significantly aid a lot in avoiding free market exploitation.