Corporate Commitments to Living Wages in the Garment Industry

Remi Edwards , Tom Hunt

Europe

Since the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh in 2013, the garment industry has faced growing pressure to raise wages and improve working conditions from consumers, civil society, unions and governments. Leading global corporations have made ambitious commitments to deliver living wages to the workers who make their clothes. In this report, we investigate the commitments and actions of 20 of the world’s leading garment companies. Of those, 17 are members of initiatives that profess a commitment to living wages. The investigation found that many companies do not have concrete, measurable action plans for achieving a living wage in their global supply chains, or benchmarks for calculating living wage rates. Instead of altering their purchasing practices to make it possible for suppliers to pay living wages, most garment corporations are outsourcing their living wage commitments to external initiatives. Some companies are part of multiple external initiatives, each with different definitions and approaches to living wages, which mean that corporate commitments lack clarity. Our analysis shows that corporate supplier codes of conduct are often out of step with the requirements of the external initiatives they are involved with.

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