In recent years, one of the world’s largest retailers, the Swedish based H&M signed a Global Framework Agreement (GFA) with global trade union IndustriALL. And in November 2013, H&M announced that all H&M’s strategic suppliers should have pay structures in place to pay a fair living wage by 2018. However, new research by the Clean Clothes Campaign reveals that many workers making H&M’s clothes live below the poverty line, despite H&M’s promise of a living wage, and despite the brand’s recent deceptive claims of progress. Interviewed workers in India and Turkey earn about a third and in Cambodia less than one-half of the estimated living wage. In Bulgaria interviewed workers’ salary at H&M’s ‘gold supplier’ is not even 10% of what would be required for workers and their families to have decent lives.
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For more information, please contact the editor Jan Cremers or Sanne van der Gaag, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies (AIAS) cbn-aias@uva.nl or the Head of communications at the ETUI, Willy De Backer wdebacker@etui.org © ETUI