Fashion companies must price a worker-centred living wage into their purchase orders at the outset if they are to genuinely improve garment workers’ wages.
- And, despite multiple initiatives claiming to support living wages for garment workers in the Global South there is little evidence they have attained a living wage.
The Project: The conclusions are from researchers at the Centre for Justice Modern Slavery Research Group, Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
- The people behind the research were Associate Professor Rowena Maguire and Justine Coneybeer, from QUT Centre for Justice Modern Slavery Research Group
- The briefing paper, 'Evading Responsibility: Living Wage Methodologies and Initiatives in the Fashion Industry', is part of a QUT Centre for Justice Briefing Paper Series on modern slavery and exploitative work practices prepared in collaboration with QUT Centre For Decent Work and Industry and QUT Centre for Justice.
- The paper is based on earlier research by Coneybeer and Maguire and published as Evading responsibility: a structural critique of living wage initiatives and methodologies in the open access International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy.
The Findings: The researchers studied two rigorous and creditable methods for calculating a living wage for specific countries and conditions — the Asia Floor Wage Alliance and Global Living Wage Coalition.
- However, they found that leading fashion companies and their respective living wage initiatives do not actually use any meaningful method to calculate a living wage for their workers.
- Globally many workers are not paid enough to support decent housing, food, healthcare and education costs and, given the gendered nature of garment manufacturing, gender consideration must be factored into living wage calculations and initiatives.
- Despite widespread knowledge of this issue, the lack of a living wage in the garment industry is an ongoing problem with minimal improvements made over the past few decades.
- Of the three living wage initiatives large fashion companies subscribe to, only the Fair Wear Foundation (FWF) provides a tool to use wage data to price a living wage into a garment’s production costs. The other two initiatives are Action, Collaboration, Transformation (ACT) and Fair Labor Association (FLA).
The Overall Conclusions:
- Leading fashion companies have adopted corporate-led initiatives that require little change in business practices, request weak or voluntary participation, and set vague wage benchmarks, all while allowing brands to reputationally benefit from membership.
- The most popular initiatives, ACT and FLA, push responsibility to governments, suppliers, and workers (e.g., worker incentive schemes), limiting fashion companies’ accountability.
- To improve garment workers’ wages, fashion companies must hold themselves accountable by pricing a worker-centred living wage into their purchase orders.
- When multiple companies begin to act on their individual responsibility, through collective action garment workers might begin to receive the basic utility of employment, enough money to live a decent life.
What They Said:
Fashion companies’ business models rely on exploitative worker conditions and contribute to them by seeking the lowest prices in developing countries. These countries’ economies become dependent on the low wages which, in turn, allows large Global North buyers to dominate prices. This power imbalance strikes fear in Global South governments that companies will relocate to cheaper countries and so they suppress workers’ calls for higher wages or unionisation.
— Rowena Maguire
Associate Professor
QUT Centre for Justice Modern Slavery Research Group
