Catherwood LibraryILR School

Fashion company H&M has not been following through with its 2013 promise that it would provide fair living wages for its textile workers by 2018, according to the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), based on interviews with 62 workers in supplier factories from Cambodia, India, Turkey, and Bulgaria. The CCC report found that H&M workers in Cambodia earned less than half the estimated living wage; those living in India and Turkey were earning a third of the living wage. The company - which has more than 4,800 stores in 69 nations - disagreed with the CCC’s findings, saying that it had reached at least 600 factories and 930,000 garment workers with its fair living wage strategy, and that “there is no universally agreed level for living wages…(which) should be defined and set by parties on the labor market through fair negotiations between employers and workers representatives, not by Western brands.” The Ethical Trading Initiative – a group of trade unions, companies, and charities, commented that “the issue of living wages is bigger than one brand, and too few companies have initiatives to drive up wages.”