FWF Wage Ladder
Straight to the FWF Wage Ladder
Payment of a living wage is one of FWF's eight labour standards. A living wage means that workers' basic needs, including food, clothing, housing, healthcare and education, are met. The idea is simple: people who work a normal working week should be able to make a living.
The export-oriented garment industry has great potential to lift millions of workers worldwide out of poverty. In most low-cost production countries, however, wages are too low for workers to meet basic needs, like food, shelter, and health care. The obvious answer to relieving the poverty of workers participating in garment supply chains is to find mechanisms that increase the wages of those at the bottom of the supply chain.
While global garment supply chains generate enormous wealth, improving wages, has proven a challenge. Progress has stalled in discussions about what, exactly, constitutes a living wage. Sidestepping these discussions, FWF has developed a web-based tool that will help garment brands and factories to gradually improve workers’ wages.
A first step is to find out what wages are in a certain factory, how they relate to various wage benchmarks and to wages in other factories. To make these comparisons possible, FWF has developed the Wage Ladder, an innovative online tool that helps brands, factories, trade unions and NGOs to work towards living wages for garment and other workers.
Read more in the FWF Living Wage policy or in the Wage Ladder Background Study.
The FWF Wage Ladder was made possible by the generous support of Dutch trade union CNV Internationaal.
