Foreign garment buyers are being asked to pay a few cents more for garments bought from Asian countries, including Sri Lanka – to help pay decent wages to garment workers.
Worker representative groups in major Asian garment producing countries are launching a campaign called the ‘Asian Floor Wage Campaign’ in October, targeting international garment buying companies.
The campaign will also ask for support from US and EU bases trade unions and consumer movements as well. Trade unions in Sri Lanka say western garment retailers and international apparel brands can afford to pay a few cents extra for workers.
“Garment retailers and brands have such big profit margins, they can definitely afford to pay a few cents extra to help garment workers in Asian countries. Just as an example, if you take a shirt that is sold at US$ 22.50 to US consumers, 75% of that price is profit for the retailer. If the shirt is made in Sri Lanka the labour cost is only 2.8% of the price. Up to the CIF value it is only 23.1% of the retail price,” said the President of the Progress Union, Palitha Athukorala. The Progress Union is part of the trade union and NGO grouping called ALaRM that is heading the Asian Floor Wage campaign in Sri Lanka.
“We are asking international garment buyers to pay a little extra, to be given directly to the workers, not to the garment factories,” said Mr Athukorala.
ALaRM says it is directly targeting foreign buyers of garments because most local garment factories are already operating under shrinking profit margins. “We are directly targeting the big international buyers because even in Sri Lanka most garment factories have very small profit margins. They have been forced by buyers to cut their selling prices,” said Mr Athukorala.
In Sri Lanka, women’s groups say the poor pay is forcing garment workers to cut down on already poor food intake and is hurting entire families.
“Garment workers in Sri Lanka are mainly women. So they are caretakers of their own families and in many cases, their extended families as well. Wages most of the time are not enough even for a single person to eat three square meals and also cover other costs like rent and transport,” said Ms Chamila Thushari, from Da Bindu, a women’s group.
The Asian Floor Wage proposed by the campaign sets a standard basic wage for garment workers across Asia, based on cost of living. It is currently calculated at 475 international dollars (using the purchasing power parity method of the World Bank) for Asan countries.
Based on a floor wage calculation for Sri Lanka, ALaRM says garment workers should be getting a basic monthly wage of Rs 16,705.75 (US $ 145.66), excluding overtime payments. But at this point, say women’s groups and trade unions, most garment sector workers earn, at most, about Rs 11,000, with over time work added. ALaRM says international garment buyers should cover the wage gap by paying a few cents extra to workers producing clothing in Sri Lanka.
Big western retailers like Walmart, Carrefour, Lidle, Aldi, Tesco, J C Penny’s and Marks and Spencer, control large shares of the western garment retail markets. This gives them bigger bargaining power on how much they pay local factories for garments they buy from Sri Lanka and other Asian countries. Right now there is growing pressure on local factories by big buyers, to reduce their selling prices. Big buying brands like Gap, Tommy Hilfiger, H&M also influence labour conditions, says ALaRM. |
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