Implementing Living Wages and Responsible Purchasing Practices through Collective Action: Insights from the IDH Living Wage and Income Summit

This week, over 400 cross-sectoral actors, including producers, buyers, and unions, convened for the IDH Living Wage and Income Summit to drive change through responsible business practices, policy instruments, and social dialogue. The Summit underscored the urgent need to create a future where due diligence is a fundamental aspect of how industry actors operate, both independently and collaboratively, while consistently engaging and integrating the perspectives and lived realities of workers.

For Fair Wear Foundation , the Summit began with the ‘Apparel Roundtable on Living Wages and Responsible Purchasing Practices,’ which brought together diverse actors from the garment industry to discuss how developments in due diligence and wage policy can guide collective action on responsible purchasing practices and living wages.

Central to the roundtable discussions was the launch of the ILO Living Wage Guidance, which provides multilateral-level definitions and principles for living wage estimates and highlights the role of wage-setting instruments, such as social dialogue and collective bargaining, in negotiating and institutionalising higher wages. Lisa Süss, Head of Industry Alignment at Fair Wear, shared insights on the potential ripple effects of due diligence legislation for improving purchasing practices and increasing wages, underscoring the role of Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives and the need for alignment on actions and tools. Showcasing the Common Framework on Responsible Purchasing Practices as an example of alignment work across several MSIs; Ethical Trading Initiative , Etisk handel Norge - Ethical Trade Norway , Fair Wear Foundation , Partnership for Sustainable Textiles , Etisk Handel Danmark , and Etisk Handel Sverige - Ethical Trade Sweden .

The following day, in the plenary session 'Driving Change through Global Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships,' these concepts were reinforced, highlighting the potential of multi-stakeholder networks to ensure effective HREDD implementation that will improve the lives of garment workers. Zeeman textielSupers shared a key example, offering insights into their collaborative efforts with Schijvens Corporate Fashion Hilvarenbeek B.V. to promote living wages and the role Fair Wear played in enabling collaboration with key production country actors. They discussed how engaging suppliers in long-term relationships and wage discussions sparked interest and encouraged broader participation.  Indeed, multi-stakeholder initiatives can have an enabling power for driving progress forward. As a true multi-stakeholder initiative, Fair Wear operates on the vision that the right to dignified work can only be realised with the active participation of all involved in the supply chain—brands, manufacturers, workers, their representatives, and governments.

The IDH Living Wage and Income Summit demonstrated that collaboration across all sectors of the supply chain is essential to addressing living wages and living income. The Summit connected participants around shared challenges and opportunities, driving momentum for collective action. A key message throughout the program was that there is no 'one size fits all' approach to value chain issues; solutions must be context-specific and include the experiences and perspectives of local communities. However, responsible purchasing and contracting can help shift from transferring risk to suppliers to sharing responsibility with them. This shift towards shared responsibility is a crucial component of the comprehensive risk-based approach we need to see in the industry.

Learn more about the Common Framework for Responsible Purchasing Practices (CFRPP): https://www.cfrpp.org/  

#HREDD #LivingWages #FairWear #MultiStakeholderPartnerships #RiskBasedApproach #CollectiveAction