The Fair Labor Association (FLA), a non- profit collaborative effort of universities, civil society organizations and businesses, has released its first annual compensation report, highlighting data on the earnings of workers in 124 apparel and footwear factories assessed by it last year. This is the first-of-its kind collection and publication of wage data and analysis that is part of a commitment by the FLA and its affiliates to improve compensation for workers in global supply chains.
From each factory where assessors of FLA collected compensation data, the Association has compiled a chart that depicts how much workers are earning, compared with other local benchmarks such as the legal minimum wage, World Bank poverty levels and cost-of-living figures developed by governments, unions, non - governmental organizations (NGOs) and others.
Wanting to place workers' compensation in a local context, these wage ladder charts provide a snapshot of workers' purchasing power going by their current compensation levels in each of the 21 countries where FLA assessors collected data. In all the four factories assessed in Bangladesh last year, average compensation fell below the World Bank poverty line for a three-adult-equivalent household.
The annual compensation report also enlists the FLA's 2015 findings of legal pay violations with 20 per cent of the factories assessed found to have miscalculated overtime pay and six per cent of factories found to have violations of minimum wages. On the other hand, compensation for workers in assessed facilities in Cambodia, the Dominican Republic, India, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka (and for migrant workers in Jordan) averaged above World Bank poverty lines, though the FLA found that purchasing power of compensation for these workers remained comparitively weak. Average compensation was found to be highest in relation to the World Bank poverty line in the 14 factories assessed of the United States.
The Association will continue to collect compensation data in its 2016 factory assessment cycle and in subsequent years help steadily to increase awareness among companies, unions, NGOs and other interested stakeholders
