Michelle Bhattacharyya on Coffee's Essential Workforce | Re:co 2020

During the Covid-19 pandemic we have all seen our lives, our businesses, and our industry change in dramatic ways.

This session lays out a path to build a more resilient specialty coffee industry by respecting those relationships, workers, and the community at its core, whose vulnerabilities and value have been laid bare. We explore the issues of living wage and living income as essential to building back better. Living wage and income have long been gaining steam among the media, global governments, sustainability standards, businesses, and a wealth of other actors, including consumers. But the necessity of ensuring a basic but decent living is more stark than ever in an age where vulnerability abounds. Specialty coffee is poised in this environment to provide leadership and a global example of how economic sustainability within an industry can be achieved, price crises may be averted, and industry can build back with a sustainable distribution of value that supports workers, businesses, and communities for long-term sustainability. Michelle will explore a model for action that allows all players in the specialty coffee industry to work together and take responsibility for their own activities through the use of theoretical case examples on implementing a living wage or enabling a living income from barista to farm worker. At the end of this session, every listener should be equipped with the knowledge to start assessing the role of living wage and living income as well as its impacts in their own operations and/or supply chains and to make essential changes that protect our community from disruptive events like we are all experiencing today.

About the Presenter
Michelle Bhattacharyya, CEO
On-Up LLC

Michelle has focused on the intersection of business and public good for over ten years and is passionate about unifying parties with diverse interests and motivations for the betterment of all. Her current work as CEO of On-Up LLC (on-upllc.com), connects supply chain and internal employee living wage and living income strategy and action, creating shared value for business, consumers, workers, and communities.

Michelle formerly managed the work of the Global Living Wage Coalition (GLWC)(www.globallivingwage.org), achieving broad consensus on living wage estimations and catalyzing industry-wide action toward living wage and living income goals, with a concentration in agricultural industries.