CNV Internationaal and Wikirate: Comparing worker experiences to brand commitments in fashion supply chains
As part of the Open Data Institute and Humanity United’s Peer Learning Network, CNV Internationaal and Wikirate have teamed up to explore how we can share and leverage data to advance advocacy on labour rights. This article is the second part of a series, details on the initial phase can be found here.
Authenticating brand policies and commitments against worker experiences is a crucial trigger for improving accountability and labour practices in supply chains.
This pilot project has triangulated publicly available supply chain data from the open data platform Wikirate with CNV Internationaal’s Fair Work Monitor. The Fair Work Monitor contains survey data from Cambodian apparel workers collected in collaboration with trade unions, around themes such as the cost of living, wages, freedom of association (FoA), and grievance mechanisms. This data has been collected every year since 2022, this article focuses on the data from 2023. The data is used by local trade unions as part of yearly garment sector minimum wage negotiations.
During the initial pilot phase, we used public supply chain relationships available on Wikirate to identify facilities within the Fair Work Monitor which are supplying major fashion brands, specifically focusing on the year 2023. We then analysed the commitments of brands on a number of labour rights issues using data from Fashion Revolution’s Fashion Transparency Index. We have now triangulated this data with survey data from the Fair Work Monitor to discover to what extent brand commitments match up with the reality experienced by workers.
Living Wage Commitments do not reflect worker’s reality
A living wage ensures that workers earn enough money during regular working hours to support themselves and their families, and it includes a range of food and non-food costs (i.e. housing, education, healthcare, clothing, childcare, and transportation). Research from Profundo and CNV Internationaal found that, in 2023, fashion supply chain workers in Cambodia struggled to cover their basic needs and identified that 77% of the total surveyed workers take out loans to cover their household expenses.
During the pilot phase, we found that 43% of brands, identified as sourcing from facilities where respondents have participated in the Fair Work Monitor, publicly stated they have a commitment to achieving a living wage for workers in their supply chains. For this article, we refer to the 2023 Anker Living Wage Reference Value of 230 USD as the living wage benchmark, as well as the Asia Floor Wage living wage benchmark of 701 USD (note this is the living wage benchmark for 2022). Details on the methodology used by each organisation can be found via the links provided.
As CNV Internationaal strongly believes workers should not rely on bonuses (such as overtime pay and performance bonuses) to make ends meet, only the basic wage reported by respondents will be included here. In facilities where we found supplier brands with a living wage commitment, 96% of the FWM respondents received a lower basic wage than the living wage according to the Anker methodology. The Fair Work Monitor showed that these workers were being paid an average monthly wage of 205 USD as their basic wage.
This indicates there was a 11% gap between the basic wage and living wage for the respondents, according to the Anker methodology. Conversely, the Asia Floor Wage Alliance benchmark, reveals an even larger gap of 71% between the basic wage and living wage for the FWM respondents in the aforementioned facilities. These findings indicate that a lot of progress can still be made by brands to help achieve higher wages in Cambodia.
The ACT initiative in Cambodia is a very promising initiative that recently announced ground-breaking agreements have been signed between individual brands and IndustriALL Global Union, which supports the ongoing collective bargaining process between employers and unions in Cambodia.
Grievance Mechanism Dissemination going in the right direction
Access to remedy is a pillar of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). A functioning and well-disseminated grievance mechanism provides workers with a route to address breaches of labour standards.
We found that 38% of brands identified as sourcing from facilities where the Fair Work Monitor has been conducted publicly stated that a grievance mechanism is disseminated to supply chain workers.
Taking a sample of facilities that these brands supplied from in 2023, the Fair Work Monitor dataset revealed that 77% of workers in these facilities indicated a complaints mechanisms exists at the facilities at which they work. This suggests that there is considerable existence of grievance mechanisms at the facilities that brands source from where grievance mechanisms are disseminated, all the while taking into consideration that the question focuses on the perception of workers on whether a complains mechanism exists.
Of these respondents, 27% found the grievance mechanisms not effective, and 13% of the respondents indicated they do not know if the complaints mechanisms are effective (answered “I don’t know”). This suggests the effectiveness of these grievance mechanisms (and the perception of the effectiveness by the workers) still leaves room for improvement.
Next steps
Using publicly available supply chain data provided via Wikirate to triangulate the findings of the CNV Internationaal Fair Work Monitor of 2023 can be a powerful way to leverage data. It can be used by CNV Internationaal and local trade unions to have more targeted conversations with brands to improve their efforts towards better working conditions and, in particular, to improve wages. Additionally, this data helps to monitor the transparency and effectiveness of brand efforts to improve worker conditions in the supply chain, and evaluate the progress made.
The two organisations will continue this data collaboration — further analysing Fair Work Monitor data against public supply chain data on Wikirate and widening the analysis to include facilities in Indonesia.
To find out more about CNV Internationaal’s Fair Work Monitor head to their website or get in touch with the Partnerships Coordinator Daantje Bras through d.bras@cnv.nl
Want to learn how you could use this type of data in your work? Head to Wikirate.org or get in touch with our team through info@wikirate.org
