Cracking Corporate Impunity

How can we get fair pay in workers’ pockets, and replace poverty wages with a real living wage? What new tools can our campaigns use?

In this episode:

• Reflections on how low wages help trap workers as much as bonded labour (Tola Mouen, CENTRAL, Cambodia)
• A research project starts gathering wage slip data across several countries, in a step to hold brands accountable for the pay their workers receive (Anne Bienias, CCCIO; Martua Raja Siregar, Garteks, Indonesia)
• The EU Directive on Minimum Wages falls well short of what’s needed, but still provides campaign and negotiation opportunities (Štefica, Garment Worker; Mario Iveković, Novi Sindikat; Nikola Ptić, Regional Industrial Trade Union, Croatia)
• Activists in European production countries learn from the experience in Asia, as they define what a living wage should be across borders (Bojana Tamindzija, CCC Serbia, Artemisa Ljarja, CCC Germany)
• Thoughts on how a living wage is essential to tackling globalisation (Ashim Roy, Mill Mazdoor Panchayat & AFWA, India)

Please tell us what inspired you about this show, and share your feedback, comments and questions, by emailing: [email protected]

If you want to know more about the Europe Floor Wage, including its methodology, you can find that here, and in even more detail here.

Speakers:

• Anne Bienias, Clean Clothes Campaign International Office, Amsterdam
• Martua Raja Siregar, Garteks Trade Union, Indonesia
• Štefica, Garment Worker, Croatia
• Mario Iveković, President, Novi Sindikat Trade Union, Croatia
• Nikola Ptić, Regional Industrial Trade Union, Croatia
• Bojana Tamindzija, Clean Clothes Campaign, Serbia
• Artemisa Ljarlja, Clean Clothes Campaign, Urgent Appeals Coordinator, Germany
• Ashim Roy, Asia Floor Wage Alliance International Secretariat, India

Host: Febriana Firdaus (febrianafirdaus.com)
Field Reporters: Petra Ivsic and Aca Vragolovic

Sound Engineering Support: Steve Adam (www.spectrosonics.com.au)
Producer: Matthew Abud
Clean Clothes Podcast Team: Anne Dekker, Johnson Ching-Yin Yeung, Liz Parker, Tanne de Goei

Full Transcript

TOLA:

Even the law, even the convention of ILO, mention that people working 8 hours per day and they should, they should be entitled to the decent living standard with human dignity. We talk with the workers, no single worker work, in our experience work only 8 hour per day and then enjoy with the decent living standard. Visibly we see that they have to force themselves to work overtime. Even you are not well enough, you are sick. And then if you just complain, you just make the complaint, they may frame up you with any criminal cases in the courts. So this is happening. So wage for me, as I said, it’s a key issue that put the people into the modern-day slavery. Forced labour. They don’t lock you by the key but they lock you by the system.

HOST:

That’s Tola Moeun, founder of the worker rights NGO CENTRAL in Cambodia.

Today we’re talking about workers’ pay.

How to use data to make the reality of poverty wages transparent.

And ways to campaign for a living wage.

TOLA:

The supplier always say we cannot pay higher living wage or minimum wage because the brand just pay them low price, but we don’t know how much the brand paid to the supplier because the business agreement between the brand and the supplier is quite confidential, so it is not transparent enough and then the brand does not disclose, even some brand do not disclose their supply list so we don’t know, and then the brand make an excuse saying ok they do not have much leverage to pressure their supplier because they have a small percentage of order either from the country or either from the individual factory.

The business agreement between the brand and the supplier, should be transparent. We know that some information they should hide, but I think the export country should also consider about the ethical information act, so the brand will not be free in terms of providing a fake information to the consumers or to its own government in terms of the situations of the workers where they’re producing the clothes. I know that in Norway for example they had introduced already the ethical information act, which hold their business or private sector be accountable in providing the accurate or real information to consumers, transparency in terms of throughout the supply chains.

HOST:

Welcome to the show. I’m Febriana Firdaus.

Making supply chains more tran...