PIMKIE
With regard to fair and legal compensation PIMKIE’s Code of Conduct states that:
1. business partners must comply with all the laws and regulations relating to wages and benefits;
2. workers shall be paid at least the legal minimum wages;
3. workers must be given a pay-slip;
4. wages for regular working hours, overtime work shall be compensated as legally required
and compensation shall be at least provided monthly and without illegal deductions;
5. workers are provided with annual paid leave, insurances and statutory holidays as defined by
national law.
With regard to the living wage PIMKIE considers that it is the
role of the Government to define minimum wage levels and
says that this right has been communicated and explained
to their suppliers through the Code of Conduct, which each
of them should know, understand and accept.
PIMKIE relies on its Code of Conduct as a contractual agreement with its factories, it uses
third-party auditors to train its suppliers to implement these rights but there is no criteria to
measure it. In order to really provide living wages, this firm needs to move beyond pointing to its Code of
Conduct and take action to implement some of these rights.
PIMKIE states it will start to work on providing living wages shortly, based on the AFW
[Asia Floor Wage] road map for issuing a living wage, but there isn’t any strategy in place by which
the firm can work towards the implementation of a living wage within its supply chain.
Though PIMKIE mentions it’s adhesion to the Initative Clause Sociale (ICS), an initiative of a French
business to encourage suppliers to respect universal human-rights and local labour regulations in its supply
chain, it has made little practical activity on improving wages for workers so far.
PIMKIE also indicated that it started a pilot project on the issue of wages in Morocco with
the organisation Yamana in 2014 and launched a new supply-chain policy in 2013, which
includes important details on the control of its entire supply chain. In addition more financial
means have been dedicated to monitoring PIMKIE’s supply chain.
Inditex Brands:
Zara, Bershka, Stradivarius, Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, Oysho, Zara Home, Lefties, Uterqüe.
Company position on The living Wage:
Inditex says that the Wages should always be enough to meet at least the basic needs of workers
and their families and any other which might be considered as reasonable additional needs.
It has signed the International Framework Agreement with IndustriALL that states they will work
to ensure codes and standards to pay a Living Wage and will cooperate with Trade
Unions, manufacturers and suppliers to increase pay.
Workers’ representatives shall be protected from any type of discrimination and shall be free to
carry out their representative functions in their workplace. Inditex focuses especially on freedom
of association, while delivering improvements to wages needs to be improved and developed in order to
improve workers’ economic well-being. Inditex has started to increase production in suppliers with more
ethical practices and has yet to create clear living-wage benchmarks for each of its production countries.
This company is working on a number of projects linked to wages, freedom of association and
short-term contracts. It has considered also other project it hasn’t started yet.
Although Inditex has identified the living wage as “one of the key priorities for the coming years”,
to date, the company has not published an overall strategy to deal specifically with that issue.
It only has a long-term strategy to improve and maintain wages but this needs to be supplemented
by work to increase wages urgently in the short term. It is essential that Inditex develops benchmarks based on
the real cost of living for workers and ensures these are included in the prices paid to factories;
for example the living-wage benchmarks that Inditex provided for Europe and Morocco were very low,
just above the minimum wage.
Inditex also lacks a strategy to address the problem of poverty wages where trade unions are not yet
well established but it has to improve also wages in the short term, not only trade union rights and in order to
do this, it requires a clear, time-bound strategy for reaching a living-wage level in its major supplier factories.
Inditex has made efforts to face other issues, such as homeworking and short-term contracts,
and is willing to collaborate with key stakeholders to deliver important projects.
