Femnet e.V.

This report summarizes gaps that need to be addressed in order to improve wages and working conditions for garment workers. It represents our findings on the actual wages that Vietnamese workers in some garment factories receive and the impact of wages on their lives and families.

The garment sector is delegated made up of women, so low wages plus poor working conditions is a matter of gender inequality. Therefore, paying a living wage and improving working conditions is an effective solution for addressing gender inequality in Vietnam.

The report stated practices in the global supply chains that lead to this status of wages and the domestic barriers to achieving a living wage. Low wages are the result of unfair business practices within the garment supply chain. The purchasing power of brands is the ultimate cause behind all these practices and is key to the solution.

The report provides recommendations to global buyers, consumers, factory managers, the Vietnamese Government and labour union for achieving a living wage.

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In this report we met 44 children aged 2-13: half live in the slums of Dhaka with one or both parents and half live in villages with relatives. The children’s parents sew clothes for Swedish and international buyers.

Several of the children’s rights are being threatened by their parents’ low wages, working conditions and low social status. According to international standards companies should identify and manage risks for adverse impacts on human rights. Children are a particularly vulnerable group. In the report, 18 Swedish companies state that they see a connection between their businesses and the wellbeing of the textile workers’ children.

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Unworthy working conditions for workers in the textile industry are fundamentally a problem that affects people regardless of their gender. Nevertheless, there are gender-specific disadvantages for women, which lead to the fact that they often work under exploitative conditions in the various production facilities along the textile chain. Due to the widespread hierarchies in the production facilities, many women, in addition to verbal violence by superiors, also experience physical violence again and again. This ranges from extensive body searches to sexual abuse. In order to improve the protection of workers against sexual harassment, an ILO convention against gender-based violence in the workplace would be necessary.

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The global garment and footwear industry settings heavily on the work of women, who represent up to 80% of its global workforce. The current living wage debate presents both opportunities and risks for the millions of women workers in this industry. A living wage is a central enabling human right: As such, it is a powerful tool not only to improve the working situation of women workers but also to create an environment in which they can realize their full capabilities. However, if the benchmark for a living wage is set too low, it risks cementing their current situation, in which they face poverty-related gender-specific consequences and multiple burdens of work, including care work, and the challenges arising from income poverty, such as the need to work overtime, engage in multiple jobs, or search for the cheapest food, all of which result in absolute time poverty. This paper therefore argues that it is imperative to adopt a gender-sensitive approach in the living wage discourse, and to look at the implications that such an approach has on the methodology of calculating a living wage and on the measures to implement it.

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The Vietnamese garment industry is the country’s second largest exporting industry, following electronics, and accounts for 15 percent of the country’s GDP and 20.77 percent of its total exports in 2014. The U.S is the biggest market for garments from Vietnam, while Japan and the EU come second and third, respectively. According to the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Convention 87 on Freedom of Association and ILO Convention 98 on Protection of the Right to Organise, Vietnam has not ratified worker’s rights. Freedom of association remains the most challenging problem for Vietnam. Workers are not allowed to establish independent trade union of their choice, as all enterprise union must be affiliated to the Vietnam General Confederation of Labour, the only recognized union in the country. At the grassroots level, it is common to find enterprise union leadership encouraged by high-ranking managers and collective bargaining agreements that are copied from the labour legislation.

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