Fair Trade Criteria include:

• Paying a fair wage
• Offering employees opportunities for advancement
• Providing equal employment opportunities
• Engaging in environmentally sustainable practices
• Public accountability
• Building long-term trade relationships
• Providing healthy and safe working conditions
• Providing financial/technical assistance to producers
• Ensuring that there is no abuse of child labor

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Do Fair Trade goods cost more than comparable non-Fair Trade goods?

Generally, fairly traded crafts don't cost more than other goods because the large percentage taken by middle people is removed from the equation. The cost remains the same as traditionally traded goods; however, the distribution of the cost of the product is different. In some cases, like coffee, the producers receive a significant price more per pound, and the price is higher than grocery store coffee, but comparable to speciality coffees. [source]

Bananas are symbolic of the wide range of injustices present in international trade today. These include

• unacceptable working and living conditions for many of those who grow and harvest the bananas;
• suppression of independent trade unions;
• environmental devastation caused by toxic chemicals and intensive farming;
• the disproportionate economic and political power of the handful of multinational corporations which supply bananas to the North.

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[...] grim economic realities leave families more than ready to send their boys, and sometimes girls, out to work, even if it means pulling them out of school and placing them in fields or factories where they are exposed to hazardous conditions for little or no pay. [source]

The multinationals own sprawling plantations where workers often endure poor conditions and intimidation from owners. Working hours of 12-15 hours a day, 6 days a week are common, while wages are often not enough to live on. To combat this exploitation, workers have been struggling to establish trade unions, to protect their rights and to bargain for better wages. But union members have found themselves the victims of company harassment, in Costa Rica poorly paid workers were sacked because of their union membership while in Honduras, a union leader fighting for compensation for workers was shot dead. [source]

The night before, however, 200 men armed with high caliber and assault weapons surrounded the union hall and forced the two executive committee members present to drive to the house of the General Secretary of SITRABI, Marel Martinez, who was dragged out of his house and reportedly beaten in front of his family. Another union leader was forced at gunpoint to call the remaining executive committee members to request their presence at the union hall. Five executive committee members and over 20 union members were then held hostage for over eight harrowing hours. [Full Article]

[...] West African cocoa revenues average $30-$108 per year per household member. These impoverished producers have no choice but to keep their kids out of school to work in dangerous tasks on cocoa farms, or even use child slaves. [source]

In times past, we had slaveowners. Now we have slaveholders. In both cases, the slave is forced to work by violence or the threat of violence, paid nothing, given only that which keeps him or her able to continue to work, is not free to leave, and can be killed without significant legal consequence. In many cases, non-ownership turns out to be in the financial interest of slaveholders, who now reap all the benefits of ownership without the obligations and legal responsibilities.

There are in fact many chocolate companies who only use cocoa that has definitively not been produced with slave labor. These companies include Clif Bar, Cloud Nine, Dagoba Organic Chocolate, Denman Island Chocolate, Gardners Candies, Green and Black’s, Kailua Candy Company, Koppers Chocolate, L.A. Burdick Chocolates, Montezuma’s Chocolates, Newman’s Own Organics, Omanhene Cocoa Bean Company, Rapunzel Pure Organics, and The Endangered Species Chocolate Company.

At present, no organic cocoa beans are coming from Ivory Coast, so organic chocolate is unlikely to be tainted by slavery.

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It's "cacao" before the beans are fermented and "cocoa" afterwards. [source]

Many coffee farmers around the world receive market payments that are lower than the costs of production, forcing them into a cycle of poverty and debt. Intensive coffee farming can also lead to pesticide pollution and deforestation. [source]

Conditions for coffee workers on large plantations varies widely, but most are paid the equivalent to sweatshop wages and toil under abysmal working conditions. In Guatemala for example, coffee pickers have to pick a 100-pound quota in order to get the minimum wage of less than $3/day. A recent study of plantations in Guatemala showed that over half of all coffee pickers don't receive the minimum wage, in violation of Guatemalan labor laws. Workers interviewed in the study were also subject to forced overtime without compensation, and most often did not receive their legally-mandated employee benefits. [source]