Leading fashion brands have been exposed by a new report as failures when it comes to fulfilling their promises to ensure that their workers get living wages. SPERI, a research institute at the Sheffield University, made public their findings after carrying out an investigation on these brands. The investigation what about corporate commitment regarding the living wages of their workers in the industry.
The brands that were analyzed include Nike, Adidas, Gucci, and more. These companies had their commitments assessed by the team of researchers. The assessment comes up based on the commitments made by the brands to ensure that their workers currently employed in supply chains received the promised living wages. The brands were scrutinized in terms of the actions that were being taken to ensure that these promises came to fulfillment.
Data was gathered based on the collation a Clean Clothes Campaign survey together with the stats that were gathered by the team themselves.
The report reveals that out of 20 apparel brands, 17 are active members of a wide range of initiatives that have proclaimed themselves as being dedicated to ensuring that workers currently employed get living wages.
Clean Clothes Campaign has its own way of defining a living wage and 3 companies (H&M, G-Star RAW, as well as, C&A) were revealed to have a kind of C.O.C where workers are required to receive wages that are in line with that definition. However, the researchers discovered that a lot of these corporations outsourced their commitments to other initiatives, MSIs and external. This action from these brands implies that some of them probably have their unique definitions as well as approaches when it comes to living wages. This made it hard to clarify what their commitments were.
The SPERI deputy director went on to state that companies currently operating in the garment industry must take actions. Failure to do this will see workers remain on very low wages thereby making it difficult for them to provide for themselves life’s basic needs such as housing, transportation, food, as well as, healthcare and clothing.
In 2013, over 1,000 workers lost their lives when the Rana Plaza which is an apparel factory located in Bangladesh went down in rubbles. This incident shines the spotlight on what kind of conditions workers had to face as they worked at the factory. Sohel Rana came under fire for giving orders to the employees to keep on with their work regardless of reports that the plaster of the building was experiencing cracks prior to the occurrence of the disaster. This is coupled with the fact that an engineer is reported to have declared that the building was not safe.
It was emphasized by the research assistant how important it is for global fashion companies to keep to their commitments to provide living wages. Over 60 million staff are employed all over the world by these brands and the living wages would mean a lot to them.
