Living wage
Addressing low wages in supply chains is crucial to tackling the labour rights violations that impact millions of workers globally. ISEAL supports action to deliver living wages to workers, notably through the Global Living Wage Coalition, a pre-competitive collaborative platform.
241 million workers worldwide live in extreme poverty (UN stats 2023), earning insufficient wages to secure decent living conditions for themselves and their families. Working poverty affects a range of sectors, from agriculture and mining to the garment industry. Research supports a strong link between low wages and a number of human rights violations. In 2024, the ILO published its first comprehensive guidance on living wages, establishing global principles for defining, calculating and implementing living wages across diverse economic contexts, thereby fuelling a new era of public and private action on living wage. Civil society and an increasing number of businesses are advocating for supply chain workers to be paid a living wage as an essential step to lift workers out of poverty and ensure decent working conditions.
Living wage has been and continues to be a priority issue for ISEAL. In 2013, ISEAL was instrumental to the creation of the Global Living Wage Coalition (GLWC), a unique knowledge-action partnership that brings together sustainability systems, researchers, and others with the shared goal of increasing wages and enhancing quality of life for workers and their families worldwide.
ISEAL supports the on-going work of the GLWC coalition and hosts the Secretariat of the GLWC Action Network, a platform dedicated to living wage action, advocacy and learning, grounded in the Anker methodology©. ISEAL Members Fairtrade International, Rainforest Alliance, UEBT, Aquaculture Stewardship Council, Bonsucro and Fairtrade USA are members of the Action Network. ISEAL and GLWC members welcome the participation of organisations that share their commitment to effective living wage action and see high quality research, practice-based learning, and collaborative action as essential ingredients for closing the living wage gaps. Contact us to get involved.
From 2021 until 2023, ISEAL also partnered with the Sustainable Trade Initiative IDH to strengthen sustainability systems’ effectiveness on living wage. Resources produced included a guidance on effective wage auditing and a framework to help organisations make credible claims related to living wages (see resources below).
Living Wage is defined by the Anker Research Institute as “the remuneration received for a standard work-week by a worker in a particular place sufficient to afford a decent standard of living for the worker and her or his family.” Elements of a decent standard of living include food, water, housing, education, health care, transportation, clothing, and other essential needs including provision for unexpected events. The Anker Methodology© estimates living wages globally based on a methodology developed by renowned living wage experts Richard Anker and Martha Anker, which uses a combination of primary and secondary data to create accurate, robust living wage estimates that are transparent, internationally comparable, and locally specific.
Sustainability systems are critical supply chains actors working with hundreds of brands, buyers and retailers that have a central role to play in wage discussions around the world. By defining and verifying responsible labour practices, sustainability systems can help operationalize complex concepts like living wage.
They provide frameworks that enable businesses to measure progress toward living wages and operationalise their commitments. By incorporating living wage benchmarks and wage measurement tools into their standards and verification processes, sustainability systems can create accountability mechanisms that transform aspirational goals into measurable outcomes. This helps companies move beyond statements of intent to demonstrable action.
Sustainability systems also connect wage issues to broader sustainability challenges, recognising that fair compensation intersects with other social, economic and environmental outcomes. Their holistic approach helps stakeholders understand how living wages contribute to community resilience, reduced inequality, improved productivity, and better environmental stewardship – supporting a stronger business case for investments in wages beyond compliance requirements.
Amidst a growing momentum around living wage action, sustainability systems also play an important role as sector convenors in their own right, and through active participation in other sectoral platforms or multi-stakeholder initiatives (such as IDH’s Living Wage Roadmap or the World Banana Forum’s Living Wage Advocacy Initiative).