In a stern report titled “Not In This Together”, Oxfam dissects how supermarkets have experienced the Covid crisis. In essence: high profits meant big dividends for shareholders and bonuses for top managers, but the vulnerable workers in the supply chain took the hit. Oxfam’s advice: keep a closer eye on abuses among producers and suppliers.
Supermarket Scorecard
In Oxfam’s view, supermarkets are the example ‘par excellence’ of how the Covid crisis has increased inequality worldwide. The NGO presents some staggering figures: the coronavirus has already wiped out a total of 3,700 billion dollars (about 3,100 billion euros) in income, with women and young people often hit hardest.
This immense sum stands in stark contrast to the profits that supermarkets and their owners and/or managers were able to put in their pockets over the same period. Oxfam looked at a selection of international supermarket groups, compiled in its “Supermarket Scorecard”. These include listed giants such as Tesco, Walmart and Ahold Delhaize, and private chains such as Aldi (Nord and Sud) and Jumbo.
According to Oxfam’s calculations, the listed companies in this scorecard saw their market value increase by 85 billion euros in the period from March to December 2020. They paid out 123 per cent higher dividends, totalling 18.8 billion euros. Among unlisted companies, it is more difficult to find exact figures. However, Oxfam notes that the Aldi family Albrechts and the Schwarz family (owner of Lidl and Kaufland through Schwarz Group) saw their assets increase by 37 and 30 per cent respectively in less than a year. Disclaimer on this data: these figures are not from an independent source but are directly for the records of Oxfam.
Tesco on top, Edeka below
The British supermarket chain Tesco comes out best in the Supermarket Scorecard, although with a total score of 46 per cent this is a relative figure. At the very bottom, the German chain Edeka dangles. Of the supermarkets active in the Benelux, Lidl scores best with a 32 per cent score, good for fourth place in the ranking. The full list can be found on page 32 of Oxfam’s integral report.
The organisation is calling supermarkets, and more broadly on governments, to step up their efforts in investigating supply chains to better detect and deal with malpractices in response to this report. This call did not fall on deaf ears: in a similar audit in 2019, Albert Heijn already committed to working harder in the field of human rights. As a result of this edition, Jumbo also made commitments to map out gender inequality in the supply chain.
Ahold Delhaize notes that it is not appropriate to reduce the cause and solution of the problems to the profits that the supermarkets make. “There are many parties in the food chain, and we are at the far end of it. It is not as simple as saying that we can solve these problems with last year’s finances. These are global problems”, is what is said to the Dutch national broadcaster NOS.
