Real Life in The Body Shop

national | worker & community struggles and protests | feature Monday December 19, 2005 19:48 by Anonymous

From the Newswire:
Having worked in a Bodyshop in Dublin for almost 5 weeks during the year, I was disgusted and appalled at how they treat their staff and mislead the public into thinking that they are environmentally friendly, their products not tested on animals and are for fair trade. Working there was a real eye-opener.

Related Links:
In 1998 London Greenpeace, the anarchist/ecological group two of whose members were dragged through the courts by McDonalds in McLibel, Britain’s longest ever libel trial, ran a educational campaign against ‘green consumerism’ in general and The Body Shop in particular, for more details see: What's Wrong With The Body Shop
London Greenpeace Response to Body Shop Statement
FAQ on the Campaign

Having worked in a Bodyshop in Dublin for almost 5 weeks during the year, I was disgusted and appalled at how they treat their staff and mislead the public into thinking that they are environmentally friendly, their products not tested on animals and are for fair trade. Working there was a real eye-opener.

The head office would mentally harrass my manager if the UPT was not at least an average of 2 per day. UPT stands for units per transaction and was the number of items sold per customer. Therefore staff were continuously pressurised into selling at least two items per customer. This would require you to hassle people coming into the shop into buying products they probably didnt even need.

If you go into any Bodyshop, you will notice that the layout of the shop is so that accessories will be on a shelf below the main products so as to help in selling. One thing that really disgusted me was that at the tills, 'Make Poverty History' bracelets were sold, and if a person came to the till with only one item, we had to encourage them to buy a bracelet too. This wasn't in the name of helping people in poverty (although I personally don't agree with the Make Poverty History campaign), but was to increase the UPT average. If on a day the UPT was well over 2 staff would be allowed take a product at a certain price home. These incentives were used to manipulate staff into selling as much as possible.

At the beginning of everyday there would be a UPT target set for staff to meet, sometimes 2 or 2.1 or 2.2. No one ever seemed to question why head office were pressurising us into raising the UPT, but it obviously was to increase profit. If other branches had a high UPT, this would add even more pressure onto us to raise our UPT. So it was all about competition and selling as much as possible.

Another fact I found out was that there used to be a label on Bodyshop products saying 'not tested on animals', but now if you check out any product it will say 'Against animal testing' which I believe is the Bodyshop trying to cover itself, because it has been found that some of the ingredients in their products have been tested on animals, although not directly by the Bodyshop.

If you go into the Bodyshop you will see signs on the walls with words such as Fair Trade, Human Rights, Activism, but only a small number of ingredients of their products are actually bought through fair trade. Its also very vague how much the Bodyshop is paying these farmers from Third World countries for their ingredients. And if the Bodyshop is so much into human rights, why do they violate the rights of their workers in Ireland??

Another point is the environmental friendly image the Bodyshop gives. Most Bodyshop products are made from plastic that will never degrade only if continuously recycled. But how many people who buy Bodyshop products are going to recycle the plastic packaging? Claiming to be environmentally friendly is just a way of attracting more business. Overall, I would never step into a Bodyshop ever again and I would encourage people who believe in people before profit and the environment before profit not to either.