The Bodyshop Essay

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THE BODYSHOP English cosmetic retailer The Body Shop has been ordered by a Brazilian court to pay more than US$ 431,000 (£218,000) to settle labor claims against it by three former employees of its "Fair Trade" project in the Amazon Rainforest. They claimed they had been unfairly dismissed and sued the company for back wages and other financial considerations. Ms Raimunda Gaya, acted as general cleaning helper for the Mebengokre Indians' Hospital at Redenção City in Pará State; Mr Paulo Miranda was hired as pilot who often ferried Dame Anita Roddick, the founder of the company, on her trips into the Amazon; Mr Saulo Petean acting as consultant for the Body Shop, lived with the Mebengokre* Indigenous Peoples from 1990-1996, before he was fired. Since 1990 The Body Shop has maintained a controversial commercial relationship with the Indians. The company provided the villages of Aukre, Kapot, Mekrangnoti and Pykany with logistical support and funding to produce Brazil nut oil and beaded wristbands handmade by the Mebengokre women to be sold in Body Shop stores worldwide. In return, the Body Shop featured the Indians on its brochures, annual reports, and marketing promotions generating extensive media coverage. Dame Roddick, who sold her company to the L'Oréal Group in March, once called the venture "Trade Not Aid". But a number of human rights groups have charged the company for disrupting the local culture and commercially exploiting the Indians, as relatively little money flowed back to the Mebengokre. In 1996 the two Brazilian anthropologists, Iara Ferraz and Rubem Almeida, and an English sociologist Pat Stocker, commissioned by Body Shop, wrote a scathing 56-page report documenting the history of tensions between the Body Shop and the Mebengokre Indigenous Peoples. The Body Shop had denied that Ms Gaya, Mr Miranda and Mr Petean had ever been

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