Events took place across the globe to commemorate World Day for Decent Work on October 7th. Not content with one day of events, the Clean Clothes Campaign organised a whole week of actions to focus the public’s attention on the urgent need for garment workers to be paid a living wage.
With lively events and awareness-raising actions in 11 European countries, the CCC highlighted the important role of giant retailers and brands in ensuring that workers receive a wage that allows them to live in dignity. The message was clear: a job in the garment industry should keep workers out of poverty, not in it.
Despite being an internationally-recognised human right, garment workers are denied a living wage, and global buyers are largely responsible. It is their pricing and purchasing policies – the constant threat that they’ll take their business elsewhere – that dissuades suppliers and governments from implementing a living wage and makes workers apprehensive about demanding one.
Substandard housing, lack of clean water, and insufficient food are a daily reality for garment workers. Yet most European consumers are largely unaware of this, and international brands and retailers are happy to keep it that way. The CCC’s Living Wage Action Week aimed to make this reality known and mobilise people to demand that companies implement a living wage in their supply chains.
Global buyers need look no further than the Asia Floor Wage for a concrete formulation of a minimum living wage for workers in Asia, which accounts for 60% of garment production. As described in a new report, Stitching a Decent Wage Across Borders, the Asia Floor Wage is a unified, regional pan-Asian demand for a decent and fair wage. The wage figure is different in each currency and country, but the purchasing power is the same: garment workers in one Asian country would be able purchase the same set of goods and services as their colleagues across the border.
And as we all know, solidarity across borders wins successes. After more than a year of international campaigning, workers at the DESA factory in Turkey won a protocol agreement that includes recognition of the union and reinstatement of dismissed workers. After two years of international solidarity support for workers in the Philippines, the government was finally forced to accept an ILO high-level mission in September to investigate labour rights abuses.
These achievements are just a couple that we, along with the workers and partner organisations with whom we work, wish to celebrate as the first national Clean Clothes Campaign – in the Netherlands – celebrates its 20th year.
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