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Clean Clothes Podcast
Trailer
Bonus
Episode 4
Season 1
A Living Wage for All
How can we get fair pay in workers’ pockets, and replace poverty wages with a real living wage? What new tools can our campaigns use?
In this episode:
- Reflections on how low wages help trap workers as much as bonded labour (Tola Mouen, CENTRAL, Cambodia)
- A research project starts gathering wage slip data across several countries, in a step to hold brands accountable for the pay their workers receive (Anne Bienias, CCCIO; Martua Raja Siregar, Garteks, Indonesia)
- The EU Directive on Minimum Wages falls well short of what’s needed, but still provides campaign and negotiation opportunities (Štefica, Garment Worker; Mario Iveković, Novi Sindikat; Nikola Ptić, Regional Industrial Trade Union, Croatia)
- Activists in European production countries learn from the experience in Asia, as they define what a living wage should be across borders (Bojana Tamindzija, CCC Serbia, Artemisa Ljarja, CCC Germany)
- Thoughts on how a living wage is essential to tackling globalisation (Ashim Roy, Mill Mazdoor Panchayat & AFWA, India)
Please tell us what inspired you about this show, and share your feedback, comments and questions, by emailing: podcast@cleanclothes.org
If you want to know more about the Europe Floor Wage, including its methodology, you can find that here, and in even more detail here.
Speakers:
- Anne Bienias, Clean Clothes Campaign International Office, Amsterdam
- Martua Raja Siregar, Garteks Trade Union, Indonesia
- Štefica, Garment Worker, Croatia
- Mario Iveković, President, Novi Sindikat Trade Union, Croatia
- Nikola Ptić, Regional Industrial Trade Union, Croatia
- Bojana Tamindzija, Clean Clothes Campaign, Serbia
- Artemisa Ljarlja, Clean Clothes Campaign, Urgent Appeals Coordinator, Germany
- Ashim Roy, Asia Floor Wage Alliance International Secretariat, India
Host: Febriana Firdaus (febrianafirdaus.com)
Field Reporters: Petra Ivsic and Aca Vragolovic
Field Reporters: Petra Ivsic and Aca Vragolovic
Sound Engineering Support: Steve Adam (www.spectrosonics.com.au)
Producer: Matthew Abud
Clean Clothes Podcast Team: Anne Dekker, Johnson Ching-Yin Yeung, Liz Parker, Tanne de Goei
Producer: Matthew Abud
Clean Clothes Podcast Team: Anne Dekker, Johnson Ching-Yin Yeung, Liz Parker, Tanne de Goei
Full Transcript
TOLA:
Even the law, even the convention of ILO, mention that people working 8 hours per day and they should, they should be entitled to the decent living standard with human dignity. We talk with the workers, no single worker work, in our experience work only 8 hour per day and then enjoy with the decent living standard. Visibly we see that they have to force themselves to work overtime. Even you are not well enough, you are sick. And then if you just complain, you just make the complaint, they may frame up you with any criminal cases in the courts. So this is happening. So wage for me, as I said, it’s a key issue that put the people into the modern-day slavery. Forced labour. They don’t lock you by the key but they lock you by the system.
HOST:
That’s Tola Moeun, founder of the worker rights NGO CENTRAL in Cambodia.
Today we’re talking about workers’ pay.
How to use data to make the reality of poverty wages transparent.
And ways to campaign for a living wage.
TOLA:
The supplier always say we cannot pay higher living wage or minimum wage because the brand just pay them low price, but we don’t know how much the brand paid to the supplier because the business agreement between the brand and the supplier is quite confidential, so it is not transparent enough and then the brand does not disclose, even some brand do not disclose their supply list so we don’t know, and then the brand make an excuse saying ok they do not have much leverage to pressure their supplier because they have a small percentage of order either from the country or either from the individual factory.
The business agreement between the brand and the supplier, should be transparent. We know that some information they should hide, but I think the export country should also consider about the ethical information act, so the brand will not be free in terms of providing a fake information to the consumers or to its own government in terms of the situations of the workers where they’re producing the clothes. I know that in Norway for example they had introduced already the ethical information act, which hold their business or private sector be accountable in providing the accurate or real information to consumers, transparency in terms of throughout the supply chains.
HOST:
Welcome to the show. I’m Febriana Firdaus.
Making supply chains more transparent, is a key campaign tool.
The fashionchecker.org website, is a step towards this.
It matches brands with their supplier factories, so consumers and campaigners, can see where clothes are made.
But this does not show factory conditions, including how much suppliers pay their workers
To try and change this, a recent Fashion Checker project began collecting worker wage slips in several countries.
Anne Bienias is from the Clean Clothes Campaign’s International Office.
ANNE:
We can’t just go out and campaign and ask for brands to pay something because they will always say they’re already doing that, or that it’s not as bad as we’re saying. So we need real data, we need real evidence to show that we are right and that workers have the right to earn more. So it might seem like just a small part, but it’s very important for our credibility also as a Network that our campaigns are fact-based or data-based.
HOST:
Martua Raja Siregar is from the Garteks trade union in Indonesia.
His union was part of the research.
He says getting wage slips from workers can be difficult.
RAJA:
For in the field, it’s some of the workers is afraid that their name will leak to the company, and some workers also afraid that the name of the company will be give to the brands and they scared that the brands say that this company is not good and then they stop the orders, it will be also impact to the workers. It’s also difficult for us actually to expose the name of the workers and also expose the name of the company directly if we put it in public.
ANNE:
We told the workers we would not publish the name of the factory. But it’s then impossible to make the connection to the brand, and that’s ultimately what you want to do, because you want to hold the brand accountable for the poverty wage that they’re paying. It might be that we do eventually publish the name of the factory if we know that that worker is no longer working in that factory for example, because it’s usually workers that we know. But yes, it’s very tricky and the last thing we want to do as a campaign is of course to put workers at risk.
HOST:
The research gathered data in several countries.
ANNE:
In some countries the wage slips were a little bit more reliable than in other countries. So you don’t know if that was for a month, or for four weeks which is a little bit different, or for six weeks or whatever. But it was still good to collect the wage slips because it’s just a piece of proof that you then have because often also what was stated on the wage slip was very low. So if you have that piece of evidence a brand can never claim that what they’re paying is much more than that, because they’re not.
HOST:
The project has made a start.
It has also identified problems to solve.
RAJA:
So the problem is how to update the data and also to gather more payslip from the workers. And not only for Indonesia but for other country that also supply to the same brand, to compare the difference between the wages between in the suppliers of the same brand.
We are thinking about how to create a tool also that workers can directly contribute to the survey, to the data gathering, without the third persons like the surveyors. We are still looking at how it will be done, because like we said in the beginning the confidentiality of the information it’s really need to be put in the first place.
ANNE:
I think it’s very important that workers feel some sort of ownership because it’s their livelihoods and it’s their data. So it should be easier for workers to for example to just take a photo of their payslip, upload that in a secure space, where we are then able to clean it as my colleague would say so that the worker can never be identified based on the phone that they took the photo with. And then I think there is no way but to have a middle person who would then need to analyse the data and do something with it. Because the risk is just that if we go too fast and don’t have any check in between, that then eventually the data is not worth anything anymore because we can’t compare it then. And what you want to do is then compare, being able to compare data across countries, preferably from the same brand even.
HOST:
The main challenge is clear.
For real transparency on wages, we need more data.
It’s a big job, and needs lots of collaboration.
RAJA:
This also one of the important points you see. Because it’s not only work for one trade union, all the trade unions actually have the same objective and we have to collaborate each others. So it’s will also need to open the mind, to open up the willingness of each organisation to also contribute on doing the data. And I hope that all the organisations that also involved in the Clean Clothes network will in the end will contribute to the data collections.
ANNE:
So that’s the kind of network engagement that I think we’re looking for. And also for ways to make it easier for unions who might have wage data lying around in their offices, make it easier for them to also share it. So I think it’s that, those kinds of things that we need to think about in the next couple of years. Because it’s so it’s so important to have this data and to be able to use it for campaigns, instead of for every campaign having to do a research before you can start campaigning. So I think if we just find a way to, or maybe different ways, maybe we don’t need one way but multiple ways in which data can come into this data base then I think that would be awesome.
HOST:
Data on wages is one important campaign tool.
But better data capacity, can also help many different campaigns.
ANNE:
We are noticing in our office here in Amsterdam but I think in the whole network, that data is becoming more and more important and that over the years we have collected so many important data points that we are now trying to digitalise and combine them. Then at some point I think it is a really powerful thing to have at hand, because it will make also our work so much faster because now often we rely on information coming from the workers, but of course if there is a crisis at a factory, an urgent appeal going on, the union leader often is busy with something else than talking to us. But if we have historical data already somewhere where you just type in the name of the factory and a list of brands comes out, and if you just have all that information at hand I think that would be very relevant for us but I think now it’s still something that we’re developing.
HOST:
That’s Anne Bienias from the Clean Clothes Campaign’s International Office.
Across Asia, minimum wages are far below what workers need, for a dignified life.
But in producing countries in Europe, the difference is even bigger.
The average minimum wage, is only thirty per cent of a living wage.
The European Union has a draft Directive on minimum wages for the bloc.
From Croatia, journalists Aca Vragolovic and Petra Ivsic have this report.
ŠTEFICA
My name is Štefica and I work in the garment industry. I worked in two factories that went out of business. Now I’m working in the third and we'll see what will happen next...
REPORTER
We met Štefica at the canteen in her factory.
Her situation is typical here in Croatia – and in many producing countries in Europe.
Most workers earn a minimum wage that barely covers the cost of living.
ŠTEFICA:
During last 30 years my salary has gone up very little, by almost nothing. At the moment it’s the same as the Croatian minimum wage. It's really hard to cover expenses with that, you can pay for utilities and maybe some food, but you can't afford anything except more and more work. I work six days a week, including for no pay on Saturday. If I need a day off, I have to explain why I want a day off and where I am going, and so on...
REPORTER:
The European Union has targeted some level of wage protection, for all workers in the bloc.
In October last year, it published its proposed Directive on Adequate Minimum Wages.
This would establish a legally-binding framework on minimum wage levels across the EU.
But it bases its calculations, on a combination of existing legal minimum wages, and median wage levels.
That means it ignores what’s needed, for a living wage.
Mario Iveković is president of the Trade Union Novi Sindikat.
MARIO:
I'm not satisfied with criteria in this directive because I think that minimum wage has to be living wage… If there is no this connection, then we will say it is better something than nothing, but we will not be satisfied, because it’s really not enough for workers in European Union.
REPORTER:
The EU Minimum could be so low, it wouldn’t really help workers like Štefica.
The level in Croatia would be four hundred and fifty one Euros per month
That’s only forty-six Euros more, than the current minimum wage.
The estimated living wage for the country is around three times that, at almost one thousand two hundred and fifty Euros.
The EU Directive clearly lets workers down.
But Croatia’s government lets them down even more. They are sceptical towards directive which actually sets minimum wage on very low level.
However the proposed EU Directive might still provide tools to help change the situation.
It also includes measures on freedom of association, and collective agreements for workers.
It says at least seventy per cent of all workers, should be part of these agreements.
But the Croatian government insists workers should have the right to not join a trade union.
Unionists say changes to the labour law mean membership has dropped, from sixty-five per cent to forty-two per cent over twenty years.
Nikola Ptić is from the Regional Industrial Trade Union.
NIKOLA:
In Croatia, for the last thirty years the number of trade union members is in constant decline and the same case is in textile industry. Workers are unionized mainly in companies that are owned by domestic entrepreneurs. In textile, clothing, leather and footwear factories, which are owned by foreigners, union organizing is, with a few exceptions, almost impossible. Although they never say this publicly, employers find a way to let workers know that union organizing is not an option.
REPORTER:
Employers spread the word within their factories that those who join any union are not wanted.
Štefica says workers get the message – especially if they’re on short-term contracts
ŠTEFICA:
Nowadays in the garment industry very few people trust a union. I mean, it is not that they don’t trust a union, but they don’t believe it’s powerful enough to stand up to employers and the government. The government doesn't allow us to fight for our rights, to stop being underpaid.
REPORTER:
Mario Iveković is not optimistic that the Directive’s measure on collective bargaining, will lead to big changes.
But even with the limitations, he thinks the Directive might provide some opportunities.
MARIO:
The reason why we supported the establishing of minimum wage on European level is not this part which speaks about mandated collective bargaining and freedom of association, because we already have it in our laws and in international laws, but it’s not respected and it will not be respected again. But, if we will establish minimum wage in each country then we will have higher start in negotiation for collective bargaining. Today, in all companies where we negotiate we start from really low level of salaries, then we have to fight for salaries and we don’t have enough energy or strength to get other things which are also really important for workers. If we will have better level of minimum wage, then our strength in collective bargaining will be on higher level for sure, and it is a reason why we really think that we need minimum wage, because otherwise we will lose lot of energy on just minimum wages which are existing today.
REPORTER:
Other campaigners say that if the EU sets a minimum wage, it can open the discussion about a real living wage.
In other words, it can be a campaign tool in the longer term.
ŠTEFICA:
If we had a collective agreement, then the situation would be completely different. The employer could be pressured into raising this lousy salary, at least slightly. We should organize and put an end to this situation. It’s time for change!
REPORTER:
With Petra Ivsic, this is Aca Vragolovic
HOST
The Asia Floor Wage has been a powerful tool in the campaign for decent wages.
It uses a simple but powerful method, to define what a living wage should be, across national borders.
That covers the wage a family needs, to live a dignified life.
Now Europe has its own Floor Wage, using the same methods.
Matthew Abud has this report.
REPORTER
The Europe Production Focus Group first started looking at calculating a living wage for the region back in 2014.
The group is an alliance of Clean Clothes Campaign and other organisations, focused on the garment-production countries in east, south-east, and central Europe.
The reasons why a living wage is needed, are familiar.
REPORTER
Bojana Tamindzija is with the Clean Clothes Campaign in Serbia.
BOJANA
There is kind of competition between this countries who will attract more so-called foreign investment which is widely used by brands. And also it’s common that our state is giving subsidies to brands to come and open the factories or sub-contract some factories here. For example it’s ten thousand Euros for one working place which means, we calculated it, that brands have employers, workers completely free with the gross salary for almost three years. So that means like pure pure profits, that it’s even cheaper than in Asia because it’s for free.
REPORTER
The Asia Floor Wage Alliance was deeply engaged with all stages of developing the Europe Floor Wage.
They worked with the Europe Production Focus Group to apply the methods to calculate this.
But differences between the two regions are significant.
Artemisa Ljarja is Clean Clothes Campaign Urgent Appeal Coordinator in Germany, and was heavily involved in the Europe Floor Wage work
ARTEMISA
The prices of goods, the prices of utilities, and the prices of houses are much higher in this region than in Asian production countries. And this comes because many of them are also members of the European Union, which means that they have to somehow standardise these prices. And in many cases standardisation of these prices led to an increase of the prices especially in the housing market and in the utilities.
REPORTER
The workforce often varies greatly between countries as well.
In Ukraine for example, workers are often older, while in other countries such as Albania, they are largely younger.
But these differences didn’t affect the relevance of the Asian Floor Wage methodology – its strengths were clear.
This included using the cost of food as an indicator to calculate overall living costs.
As in Asia, this was set at three thousand calories per person per day.
Rather than rely on official statistics, field research confirmed what this would really cost workers.
Other features of the Asia Floor Wage methodology were also key.
ARTEMISA
It's a highly-feminised industry and women are like sometimes in their household the only breadwinner. They also are in charge of the reproductive work, taking care of the elders, of a partner, of children. So we wanted to factor in also the reproductive work of women, and the Asian Floor Wage Alliance methodology, with this like family approach towards a living wage, allows for that.
REPORTER
This means the living wage is calculated for the needs of a family of two adults and two children.
Some costs varied by location.
In the end, the Europe Floor Wage has two slightly different levels, covering two different groups of countries in the region.
This is measured in purchasing power parity – meaning, how much goods cost in a given country, in their US dollar equivalent.
It comes to 2,640 US dollars for one group, and 1,980 US dollars for another.
You can find a link to more detail on this and other elements, on the episode website.
The Europe Floor Wage report was adopted in March 2020.
But defining how much is needed for a living wage, is only the start.
BOJANA
For most of the countries, actually the living wage as a concept is completely unknown. Now when we are introducing Europe Floor Wage, we are also introducing the concept of a living wage. That is the higher difficulty that we are facing now actually. You are presenting the concept of the living wage as such, and then you are also presenting the concrete numbers for the region and for specific countries.
REPORTER
Artemisa says it’s not just about explaining the Europe Floor Wage.
Some campaigners also struggle to accept it as feasible.
ARTEMISA
The main difficulty that we have so far, is that this huge gap between minimum wages and living wages, makes the Europe Floor Wage seen as something unattainable. A real utopic aim, according to many stakeholders. So our biggest challenge at the beginning is to conquer the narrative in order to gain legitimacy with this tool. By conquering the narrative I mean by reaching out to different stakeholders, first and foremost trade unions. They are the most sceptical. It’s not that they are not sympathetic to the methodology and to the fact that they would have a figure, but they are not sure whether they would not look themselves ridiculous by placing this as a demand.
REPORTER
This work already started in Serbia late last year.
Here’s Bojana once more.
BOJANA
We organised two round tables for trade unions, CSO representatives and independent media representatives, and also we called from political parties and movements, progressively oriented. And we present them, and the reactions were very surprisingly positive.
REPORTER
Bojana says they began promoting the idea of a living wage even before the floor wage was finalised.
BOJANA
Since 2017 actually we speak about that and we try to have like kind of low profile campaign mentioning the word living wage and our translation of it. And first reactions from trade unions was that is too high, and from workers also that is too high. But we now have progress, where in one factory producing for western brands there is demand to increase wage that workers are receiving to the level of the average wage in Serbia which is two times higher. And this is the most political and bravest demand ever. And they use our benchmark, they said ok living wage is like this, we need two thirds of it.
REPORTER
Making this change happen isn’t only about promoting the idea of a living wage as a human right.
And it’s not only about defining what this wage should be.
There are other challenges too.
ARTEMISA
In the Eastern European and South-Eastern European production countries the idea of a collectivity has lost its notion. Because it was so used, worn out, during the Communist time, that once you mention this idea, yeah but together you can do something, like the collective is strong, they associate it with the way they were collectivised beforehand immediately. It’s a bitter sensation. But also in the ground, many of the workforce now is in some countries is pretty young, so they have no information of what a trade union is, no concept, no notion about it. They don’t even know the labour code, or what a payslip looks like. So there is I think a need to do double work in order to just inform the workforce.
BOJANA
And our idea is to form a platform that will campaign, I’m speaking now about Serbia, for a living wage. It’s just at the very beginning, the reactions are positive, we think that there is a lot of great experts actually that we can benefit from, that they are willing to help, and that we are also offering, as I said, as we said to all the trade unions we are offering you with this living wage we are offering you a tool. So you can do with this whatever you want, but you can first of all use it in negotiation for a minimum wage, or for collective bargaining or for whatever you want. So we think that it will be successful but we’ll see.
HOST:
Bojana Tamindzija ending that report.
What’s the next step, in campaigns for a living wage?
Ashim Roy is from the Asia Floor Wage Alliance International Secretariat.
ASHIM:
The first step of universalising the idea of the living wage I think is already happening. Because we have moved from Asia to Europe. What is important is that as this idea gets to Africa, to Latin America, the idea of a living wage for a global economy, which is robust enough, comparable enough, useful enough as a concept in all countries, in all situations, has become a very important element.
The COVID crisis has shown that there’s hardly any surplus of savings in the workers. Most of the time the workers are in debt. So from a social insurance or social security point of view if you keep the workers’ wage at the level of poverty level constantly, for years and years, essentially you are creating a debt environment, and not an environment where workers have some savings through which they can adjust to hard times. And the moment there’s a crisis like this, and this might happen again and again in the future, a large section of the working population will fall immediately below the poverty line. And that will bring serious consequences both for the family, and the society where such a drop takes place, and the state to respond to the health crisis and the social crisis and may lead to starvation if it gets acute and there’s no government support.
I think the global alliance, CCC, Asia Floor Wage, many other groups, have all demanded that there should be some kind of wage assurance, some kind of contribution from the big brands towards mitigating this crisis that the workers are going through in this COVID phase.
One other thing I want to add here and this is very important from the sustainability and the larger ecological questions that the world is facing, there are very strong research papers which have shown that it is the cheapening of the costs, or the cheapening of the labour costs of the garments, that have increased an excess of cheap fast fashion. To the extent that almost thirty percent of that fast fashion are actually a waste. And so as you increase or make the global production chains of the garment industry adaptable to this living wage, you might reduce a bit of the total quantum of the garment use. That will actually mean a win-win situation, both for the workers, and for the industry, and for the environmentally sustainable world that we want to all live in.
Now we have to build up a fair amount of a narrative globally to be able to show that this is actually a concept that will hold good. And I think the garment industry being the most mobile of the industries in the sense that historically it has evolved the most, the one that has shifted from one country to another, if it comes and animates from the demands and the aspirations and the movement of the garment workers, I think that will be an historical contribution of the garment workers for the living wage debate. There is no way of addressing globalisation without coming to the idea that there is a legitimate, feasible, and universal idea of a living wage.
HOST:
That’s Ashim Roy, ending our show.
This is the last show for a while. We’ll be back in April with four more episodes.
We’ll talk about China, digital campaigns, and home-based workers.
But what else do you think we should talk about?
We really want to get your suggestions and ideas.
And your feedback!
So remember, please email us at podcast@cleanclothes.org.
That address is on the podcast webpage too.
Matthew Abud produced this episode, with Anne Dekker, and the Clean Clothes Podcast team.
Liz Parker, Tanne de Goei, and Johnson Chin-Yin Yeung.
Sound engineering support is by Steve Adam
I’m Febriana Firdaus. See you next time.