Few of the garment factories in China and Vietnam were able to increase workers’ wages by up to 57 per cent over a three-year period.
The Fair Labor Association (FLA) has claimed this in its new report ‘Reaching Living Wage for Garment Workers’.
As per the report, apparel factory workers in the supply chains of three FLA affiliates enjoyed wage increase between 29 per cent and 57 per cent over three years.
The FLA, a non-profit collaborative effort of universities, civil society organisations and businesses, says the cases provide a blueprint to show how apparel workers in supply chain countries can be paid a living wage to support their families without having to work overtime.
The report also underlines the fact that incentive pay played a key role in improving productivity during the regular work week; all examples show changes to productivity bonuses and other incentives leading to increases that ranged from 89 per cent to 330 per cent.
On the other hand, report also says that 97 per cent of the Chinese apparel factories have hours of work violation, with 94 per cent of factories exceeding 60 working hours per week. It is based on the 170 Chinese factories’ assessments done by FLA from 2012 to 2019.
In Vietnam, 85 per cent of factories had hours of work violation with 74 per cent having working weeks more than 60 hours. The FLA has, notably, assessed 54 factories in Vietnam.
