BIG BRANDS, LITTLE WAGES

The Clean Clothes Campaign is an international alliance that aims to improve conditions and support the workers in the global garment industry. It has national campaigns in 16 European countries and its secretariat is based in Amsterdam.

This organization made a survey based on the rights of workers who make clothes for large retailers because sometimes the employers don’t pay the right wages to employees. We talk about companies that make something to resolve this problem and others that keep paying unacceptable wages.

In this article we present companies that have been labelled as  “black” and “orange” according to the CCC.

The first ones are firms which are doing little or nothing to protect rights and wages of workers, while the second ones are brands which are trying to make something to increase wages, although this solution is still far.

We consider: Levi’s (the black company) and Adidas Group (the orange one).

Adidas AG is a multinational firm created by Adolf Dassler in Germany. Today it is the first sportswear manufacturer in Europe and the second in the world. This is the parent company of Adidas Group which consist in Adidas, Reebok, Taylor Made, a percentage of Bayern Munich and Runtastic. The Headquarters of Adidas Group are in Herzogenaurach, Bavaria.

In this survey Adidas is placed in the orange group, the company is working on living wages, but the efforts are not impressive.

The company thinks that the way to improve welfare of employees is to promote wage setting, which must be transparent and developed with direct inputs from workers. Adidas in continuing to make research on this field.

Despite Adidas is trying to understand what living wage means in its business, they also know that the significant change needed for workers will never happen. Adidas must identify the living wage, then change prices in order to enable the payment.

The Group organizes trainings for workers and for the management of its supplier, in order to teach the freedom of organization for employees, same as it does in Indonesia where they have developed  and signed  a protocol with Trade Unions, NGOs and Managers on freedom of association.

Adidas check if suppliers pay a fair wage using the legal minimum wage as a benchmark.

The interviewers comment that the protocol signed in Indonesia is admirable, but they think that is unsatisfying that a business as large as Adidas Group continues just to control that its supplier pay the minimum wage and not the living one.

In order to change the situation, Adidas can use its buying power to choose suppliers that pay better wages with the purpose to promote the change and guarantee a living wage for all workers.

For the interviewers it is very important that a company chooses an understandable benchmarks so that, when wages meet employees' needs, this standard can be measured and it takes part in the product price.

The company is going in the opposite direction: if the minimum wages go up, the multinational companies flee, taking assets away and impacting on the industry of developing countries.

Adidas needs to change its tack.

Levi Strauss & Co. is an american company founded in 1853, famous all over the world for clothing production. Its headquarters are in San Francisco (USA).

In this survey Levi’s is placed in the black group since the company said that has nothing to declare.

Levi’s said hat “everyone who works has the right to wages ensuring a standard of living adequate for health and well-being of themselves and of their family but is doing nothing to increase and improve the wages that workers need.

In addition to that, Levi’s declared that they cannot raise wages without working with governments and unions.

Beside this, Levi’s has started a project called “Improving workers well-being” and even if a survey revealed that fair wages were one of the principal goal of the project, we haven’t got any information available.

 It  is also known that the firm is doing nearly nothing to resolve wages problems and there are not concrete proofs that wages have been improved.

Debate has moved on because Levi’s said that since there are not internationally recognised benchmarks or standards between brands, it is not possible to improve the wages and improve the situation.

It would be better if we could see more evidence that the company is taking the right responsabilities.

Written by: Debora Frontini, Chiara Lupo, Irene Scandroglio