Garment retailers urged to pay Asian living wage

Activists in 11 European countries are launching a series of campaigns this week calling for retailers to pay a living wage to all garment workers in their supply chains.

In particular they are pressing retail giants such as Carrefour, Tesco, Aldi and Lidl to take up a ground-breaking new proposal for an Asia Floor Wage (AFW) which would see the equivalent of a 475 dollars a month minimum wage throughout Asia.

"The Asia Floor Wage Alliance is uniting unions and NGOs in Asia around a common wage demand," says Mr Jeroen Merk of the Clean Clothes Campaign International Secretariat. "It's a powerful response to industry practices that have kept wages at a poverty level and play off workers against each other."

The AFW, calculated using the World Bank's purchasing power parity, would allow workers to purchase the same set of goods and services across key garment-producing countries in Asia, the campaigners suggest.

They add that a living wage is regularly denied to workers in the garment industry where workers, mainly women, who produce clothing for international retail chains often live in severe poverty.

The proposals will be formally launched with events in countries across Asia this week including India, Indonesia, China, and Bangladesh.

News Source: AEPC India

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