As Living Wage Week gets underway, lawyers from The Circle NGO are focusing in on the fashion industry. We look into the key takeaways from the second ‘Fashion Focus’ report, which outlines the legal argument and actions to ensure garment workers a living wage.
Images: Nader Elgadi
A salary sufficient to provide a decent standard of life, the right to a living wage has been recognised as a fundamental human right for the past century. So, when we look at the garment industry as it operates today, it’s a shock to see that millions of workers are paid a mere fraction of what can be fairly judged as adequate.
This forms the focus of the latest work by The Lawyers Circle, a group within The Circle NGO, that marks a first in the history of workers’ wages by looking to legislation in order to improve the situation. Their newly published second report outlines progressive and thorough proposals for legal regulation that would enforce transparency across garment supply chains, setting out the framework for garment workers to be paid a living wage.
Jessica Simor QC, one of the masterminds behind the report, states that “labour should not just ensure survival, it should sustain decent lives.” However, according to research published earlier this year by Clean Clothes Campaign, no major global clothing brand has actually been able to show that garment workers in Asia, Africa, Central America and Eastern Europe are being paid enough to escape poverty. Without legislation or obligation in place, even businesses and brands who do want to pay their workers a living wage are discouraged from doing so by the cost disadvantage they might face.