Teaching materials

This resource has been produced as a starting point which allows students to examine ethics in business through a variety of activities.

The 1840s have gone down in history as ‘the hungry forties’.  A number of medical men in Rochdale stated that the labouring classes were unable to obtain wholesome food in sufficient quantity to maintain them in health.

Newspaper reports from the 1840s show that sugar and rice cost 12 pennies per pound, pure milk was too expensive for any working person to buy, and the milk they tried to sell to working people was too watered down to be worth it.  Beer was cheaper than tea and was drunk all too often in place of tea.  Only a few families ate meat more than once per week and few people ate fruit unless it was stolen.  Only potatoes were cheap enough for everyone and cabbages, potatoes, bread and beer were the staple diet of working people.

As well as being expensive, much food had substantial impurities.  Flour was commonly adulterated with ground beans, plaster of Paris and ground bones.  Some sugar was found to be half salt.  Tea was supplemented with tree leaves, iron filings and other minerals or chemicals.

Then, in the early 1840s, 28 working people founded the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society.  A store was opened where goods could be sold free from adulteration, weighed and measured accurately and honestly and reasonable prices charged.  Although initially, the store sold only 5 items, it was filled with hope.  What they lacked in experience, the members made up with enthusiasm.  From the mutual efforts of those humble workers grew an idea that today serves the needs of over 800 million members worldwide – an idea based on ethics.

According to Ethical Trading Initiative ethical trade became a growing issue during the 1990s because companies with global supply chains – in particular those in the clothing and food sectors – were coming under increasing pressure to ensure decent working conditions for the people who produce the goods they sell. A number of NGO (non government organisations) and trade union campaigns raised consumers’ awareness of poor working conditions in factories and farms in developing countries – factories and farms that produced goods for leading companies in Europe and North America.

As a result, a growing number of companies have decided that they can no longer turn a blind eye, and have adopted some form of ethical sourcing policy to address growing public concern over supply chain labour issues. Pressure on companies has been maintained as NGOs and trade union organisations, both large and small, and both in developing as well as developed countries, have continued to campaign on these issues. Moreover, corporate investment companies are increasingly screening their investments according to a range of social and environmental criteria, including a company’s efforts in addressing supply chain labour conditions.

Together, these trends are making it more and more difficult for companies to ignore ethical sourcing issues.