Sustainability is in the air
Sustainable Development Goals, multinational enterprises and Living Wages. Overlooking the field of international development and cooperation from this angle, we have noticed a growing interest in Living Wages. We see multinational enterprises who want to make sure that they pay - their own personnel to begin with - decently. For a benchmark to safely apply in all countries where these multinationals operate, some turn to WageIndicator. We concluded our first contracts during 2019.
Also, our insistence that all our operations must take shape based on the principle ‘one size fits all’ finally seems to pay off. This principle underlies each of our new additions, be it a country joining our ever growing ranks, or a new application such as a tool to measure compliance with the labour law, or presenting results of analyses through sophisticated graphs and audiovisuals - just to mention a few innovations.
Special mention merits our cooperation with FLAME, a private university based in Pune, India. In 2019 some of our data specialists and journalists lectured there for a month. During that month we also recruited 55 students with a professional interest in our work, who have since September been engaged as interns, working 1 day per week on improving our databases and websites.
Going global reflected in the databases
Throughout, it was and is our aim to become global, operating similar national websites and the activities which surround them in all countries. We are well on the way. A major jump took place in 2019, with a first batch falling into the language groups English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, 35 countries in all. These include smaller island states. Their inclusion was finalized after 6 months. The next step, to include 15 countries where Arabic is (one of) the official language(s), had to be
postponed to the first quarter of 2020. Ten more countries on the list all need extra attention/translations, given the singularity and uniqueness of their national languages. This is why their inclusion was prudently postponed to the latter half of 2020.
The capacity of the Minimum Wage database was silently extended to encompass 145 countries, i.e. made ready for accommodating up to 150 countries by the end of 2020.
The Living Wage time-series, comprising 67 countries at the beginning of the year, was extended to cover 76 countries by October and saw 2 editions in 2019.
In 2018 a milestone was reached with 100 national Decent Work Checks. Decent Work Checks also have served as the basis for applications WageIndicator uses in the field. Good examples of such use are the highly successful Decent Work Check-survey and related Factory Pages in Indonesia and Ethiopia, to which Uganda was added in 2019. Another actual development made possible by this Decent Work Check is the innovative labour law index under construction, showing countries at risk. By the end of 2019 104 countries were equipped with their national section in the Labour Law-database.
The Factory Pages-project has become an outstanding activity in Indonesia over the last 3 years and in its slipstream Ethiopia (garment and flowers) and Uganda (flowers) followed. Factory Pages may be published on national WageIndicator websites when such publication can help to foster compliance with working conditions as stipulated in the prevailing law. The decision is up to the local WageIndicator team. First it presents its findings, based on data collected from workers to the factory management and tries to discuss the results. Possible wrongs detected might be remedied on the spot, tedious issues which remain might - depending on the reception of the Factory Pages by the management - lead to ensuing publication on the national WageIndicator websites. All steps are coordinated with the national trade union partners.
The impact of the Collective Agreement database (CBA-database) increased, both internally and externally. By the end of 2019 the database contained 1120 CBA’s from 55 countries.
The consistent work on the transformation of the back end of all operations into database-driven websites, started to pay off. The operational aim is to achieve an all-encompassing system of online databases internally consistent and internationally comparable. Whereas in 2017 the database infrastructure had already been improved by fully automating data cleaning for some databases and surveys, this process was completed to cover all 5 databases and all surveys by the end of 2018. The latest achievement is that data visuals can also be updated automatically. Since 2019 all maps – Wages in Context, Labour Law, Gender Pay Gap - use Tableau matrices in a highly cost-efficient manner.
Increase reach and impact
The combined sites of the WageIndicator countries had 31.2 million visits in 2015 and reached 39.3 in 2016. In 2017 this growth came to a halt. Traffic slumped to 34.5 million for a variety of reasons, but none of them systemic by nature, as most websites showed steady growth. In 2019 traffic picked up again, after the technically induced slump (transmigration of systems to a new CMS) of the previous year. Traffic over the past decade is shown in the table below. In 2019 we seem to be back on track, having reached the traffic level of 2017 again.
Table 1.1 Web traffic and data intake
| Year | Visits | Salary Survey Data |
| 2010 | 13,400,000 | 130 000 |
| 2011 | 15,000,000 | 310 000 |
| 2012 | 18,700,000 | 510 000* |
| 2013 | 21,800,000 | 350 000 |
| 2014 | 25,500,000 | 300 000 |
| 2015 | 31,224,274 | 323 331 |
| 2016 | 39,354,131 | 429 333 |
| 2017 | 34,478,057 | 457 017 |
| 2018 | 30,325,034 | 369 785 |
| 2019 | 36,150,189 | 324 241 |
*old cleaning method, less precise than years after
Traffic based on 125 countries. Data intake for 2019 based on wage and working conditions surveys in 125 countries and Salary Check mini surveys in 86 countries.
The availability of databases - sometimes in less, sometimes in more countries then where WageIndicator has websites and operations - across WageIndicator countries in 2019 was:
- 86 countries have a Salary Check
- 145 countries are included in the Minimum Wage database
- 80 countries can show a Living Wage
- 94 countries run Labour Law pages from the database
- 104 countries have an offline DecentWorkCheck
- 56 countries are included in the Collective Agreement database
- 85 countries run a VIP salaries database
Projects in 2019:
- StepStone - integration of its vacancy website, started by the end of 2019.
- Gajimu.com/Garmen - Transparency through mobile internet: enabling apparel workers and employers to check, debate, negotiate and publish wages and working conditions online. C&A Foundation, Follow up project, August 2019 - July 2022.
- Mywage.org/Ethiopia for living wages in the garment sector. Results will be: insight in Living Wages, Collective Agreements and compliance with the law in garment factories. On the basis of Living Wages, analyses of the CBA's and performance of factories the trade unions use intervention meetings with employers/employees in the factories to improve conditions. FNV, January 2018 - January 2021.
- Flower farms in Ethiopia and Uganda, funded by Mondiaal FNV, July 2019 - January 2022
- Minimum Wage/Living Wage data collection Myanmar, funded by Mondiaal FNV, July 2019 - December 2019
- INGRID 2 - European Union - Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. May 2017 - May 2021: Minimum Wage rates database and Minimum Wage setting.
- SSHOC - Social Sciences & Humanities Open Cloud, financed by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme. The project aims to improve linkage of the present European research structures in the fields of the Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), as well as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), and by doing so to facilitate the work of researchers in this domain, 3 years, started in 2019; activities: text mining in Collective Agreements, refining the occupation database
- COLBAR-Europe, Social Dialogue in Europe, to last for 2 years, started April 2019
- Salary gross/net check - employers’ version. A new project, funded by Instituut Gak. Primarily aimed at the Dutch labour market. It builds on the highly popular gross/net check of salaries, developed together with Visma/Raet, a Dutch payslip specialist.
- Platform Workers: Decent Rights & Pay. Another new project, also Gak-funded, which lasts from October 2019 till April 2020. While the platform economy is growing rapidly in the Netherlands and abroad, knowledge about income and legal positions of platform workers lags behind, both among policy makers and platform workers themselves. Systematically gathered knowledge is needed to achieve improvements, preferably in dialogue with platform workers and their representatives. Results will be shared and swapped. Apart from members of the core team and legal specialists from the University of Amsterdam, participating are the WageIndictor teams in the Netherlands, Argentina, India, Spain, South Africa, United Kingdom.
Further development of the organization
Budgetary constraints have been, are and will be limiting the scope of our ambitions. They certainly limit the number of our staff and remuneration of all who dedicate (part of ) their work to make WageIndicator into a global success story. The past few years were especially lean, but as things stand by the end of 2019, WageIndicator seems to be safe for the next couple of years. Key are strong internal relationships and commitment. Over the years quite some team members have come to consider WageIndicator a kind of cooperative, though it is not, legally. Yet, in the way it has kept functioning through hard times, it actually performs as such, as members share in both the good times and the bad, the gain and the loss.
The search for potential partners translates into looking for structural alliances or even merging with like-minded organizations. Notwithstanding the dedication of the international team, the management has become convinced that only a strategic alliance or merger will bring the hoped for continuity of the organization in the long run.
Some additional management tools were introduced. For daily contact email, Whatsapp, Google Chat, Skype and Google Sheet work fine. The total allows us to communicate and work together on an almost 24/7 basis. The last addition is Tableau, a data visualizer, also suited to present data in an easy to read manner, e.g. when reporting. The team coordination tool ASANA had been skipped already in 2018. The present mix of communication tools and management sheets in (Google sheet) seems to work better, more efficiently and cheaper in the end.
Crucial files for financial and project management, data and web management are also stored in Dropbox and connected. Through Smartsheet contractors download signed contracts, invoices, and post information when assignments have been completed. In Helpscout questions from users are tagged and assigned to individuals (team members) for handling. All incoming (legal & commercial) questions can be tracked and traced, rated and their handling evaluated on this basis. It serves as a reminder and improves teamwork. Finally Webcash, an online accounting system, in combination with Smartsheet, creates a paperless office, efficient and smart indeed.
The relationship between management and Board is ruled by the statutes, in force since 2003, and last updated 6 July 2014. Annually the Board evaluates the functioning of the management. Since 2012 WageIndicator Foundation has had an Audit Commission in place. In 2019 it met 4 times with the financial manager. The Audit Commission reviews the accounts of WageIndicator on which basis for each quarter an audit statement is prepared. It also monitors the financial position and cash flow. The audit statements did not reveal any discrepancies in the accounts. Also no irregularities could be found in the financial risk management, operational risks and with personnel and partners. Institutional relations with the Board remained unchanged.
Financial statement
In 2019, the WageIndicator had a total income of € 656,000, of which income generating activities contributed € 182,000, and grants and projects the remainder, € 474,000. Income increased by 55% compared to 2018, which was mostly attributable to more projects. The result was € 6,321, which will be added to the general reserves, which stands at € 129,000 per end of 2019. The bank and cash balances per year end were € 249,000, an increase of 25% compared to 2018.