In 2000, Labour Behind the Label (LBL) published a report entitled 'Wearing Thin: the state of pay in the fashion industry.' The report demonstrated how workers the world over producing for UK high street companies were living off poverty wages, and that few companies were taking the issue seriously.
"The evidence that the legal minimum wage is insufficient, even to cover the needs of a single worker," it concluded, "is overwhelming...The majority of companies are not addressing the problem of low pay. They attempt to demonstrate that what workers are paid is adequate, or use the pretext that 'nobody knows what a living wage is' to do nothing, or simply ignore the concerns of workers and consumers."
At the start of 2006, we decided it was time to check in with the fashion industry, to see what progress had been made. At the same time as we compiled information on conditions on the ground, we wrote to the major high street names, giving them the opportunity to comment on profiles we had compiled from the information publicly available on their websites.
"When told that it is checked that workers should get at least the minimum wage set by the government, which they all do, she said that if they think this wage is enough they should all try to live on this amount for a month and decide if it is OK." - woman working in a garment factory in Pakistan
LBL defines a living wage as one that enables workers and their dependants to meet their needs for nutritious food and clean water, shelter, clothes, education, health care and transport, as well as allowing for a discretionary income.
Most companies make an in-principle commitment to paying a living wage in their codes of conduct. Many use a formulation along the lines of that in the ETI base code: "national legal standards or industry benchmark standards, whichever is higher. In any event wages should always be enough to meet basic needs and to provide some discretionary income."
The difficulty with this statement is that, as evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates, neither national legal standards nor industry benchmark standards come close to meeting basic needs. Yet most companies seem to think that ensuring payment of a minimum wage is either sufficient to have discharged their responsibilities, or an adequate stop-gap measure. But a stop-gap for what?
Meanwhile, the global garment workforce in 2006 is even more tired, underpaid, and unable to reap the benefits of globalisation than it was six years ago. Earlier in 2006, in Bangladesh, where garment sector wages have fallen in real terms by half in the past ten years, workers finally snapped, protesting, rioting, striking, and even setting light to factories to express their desperation at wages as low as £7 per month. They are far from alone in having wages way below what is decent.
There are a few glimmers of hope. Several companies have accepted their responsibility to work towards payment of a living wage, and have begun pilot projects to investigate how this can happen. In 2006, no company had made a serious commitment to ensure that all workers in its supply chain receive a living wage.
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