ACT: Towards living wages in global supply chains
We worked together with leading brands & retailers to achieve living wages in textile and garment supply chains. ACT (“Action, Collaboration, Transformation”) is an initiative between international brands & retailers, manufacturers, and trade unions to address the issue of living wages in the textile and garment supply cain.
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HiiL supports ACT
Our clients asked us to support and facilitate their collaborative process and to ensure implementation and follow-up of their strategic plans to establish industry-wide collective bargaining for workers in the global garment and textile supply chain.
Our role as HiiL was to bring trust, transparency and a balanced representation of the different stakeholders as a neutral third party. With our support, ACT has been able to bring together different stakeholders with different interests. The brands have agreed on the Enabling Principles, have signed an Memorandum of Understanding and have started work on the first country programme in Cambodia.
HiiL supported the partners involved to develop their strategies and actions jointly in a sphere of innovation. We supported the brands to work transparently, collaboratively and in good faith to ensure the mutual responsibilities. We helped the relevant partners to explore different solutions, make room for imperfection and continuously adapt their strategies to ensure implementation of their joint goals. We encouraged them to jointly drive a new culture of trust and participation between all relevant actors.
How will ACT achieve this?
ACT is the first global framework on living wages in the garment sector that brings together all relevant stakeholders; identifying what each stakeholder’s role and responsibility is, and how, if taken together, this can support living wages in a scaled up, sustainable, industry-wide approach.
There are very few examples of industry collective bargaining agreements within key garment and textile sourcing countries. This is why retailers & brands, trade unions and manufacturers are working towards this goal.
