The textile industry has regularly proven quite vulnerable to workforce related reputation crisis, most notably in the supply chains, where suppliers labour practices are often characterised by long working time, low wages and hard labour conditions. Some textile brands have fortunately been acutely proactive in assessing root causes and implementing remediation measures, a movement that should be further extended.
Fair Wage developed it’s methodology and tools for large textile companies and has been helping them to develop fairer wage practices ever since. In this sector also increasingly characterised by new materials and technonological advances –notably through robotisation and digitalisation– the management of human resources will remain key to the competitiveness and reputation of actors operating in this sector. It is encouraging that a number of well-known brands have now put wages and the concept of a fair wage or living wage at the core of their sustainability strategy and many of them also committed to pay a living wage.
Applying the Fair Wage standards and tools provides numerous topical improvements to the operations of textile companies, most notably:
– Increase worker productivity
– Build good and higher quality products
– Attract better talents
– Add a decisive marketing advantage to the textile brand
– Increase investment attractivity
– Prevent the brand from labour related reputation crisis
– Develop a stable, loyal workforce
– Avert strikes and other workforce crisis
– Secure a healthy supply chain
