Good Clothes, Fair Pay is a campaign demanding living wage legislation across the garment, textile and footwear sector. It is an ECI, European Citizens' Initiatives, supported by organizations such as Clean Clothes Campaign, ASN Bank, Fair Wear Foundation and Schone Kleren Cmpaigne
The ECI, European Citizens' Initiatives, is a participatory democracy instrument that allows citizens to suggest concrete legal changes in any field where the European Commission has the power to propose legislation.
The reason for the Good Clothes, Fair Pay initiative is that workers in the textile and clothing industry cannot survive on the minimum wage they receive. Voluntary efforts have been made in recent years to change this situation, but these have proved insufficient," said Kirsten Kossen, human rights adviser at ASN Bank.
The proposal states, among other things, that companies should put together a plan that defines how they will ensure employees throughout the chain earn a living wage. They also need to announce in which factory their clothes are manufactured, what products they produce there, how many people they employ and what their starting salary is.
Following the initiative, the European Commission has become aware of a bill. The Commission said that companies selling clothing, shoes or textiles in Europe are responsible for paying a living wage in their production chain. The garments are mainly made in low-wage countries such as Bangladesh, Cambodia and Indonesia. Textile workers in these countries live in poverty.
The group of European citizens who launched the campaign for a European law on supply chain wages, Good Clothes, Fair Pay, in the global clothing, textile, leather and footwear industries, hopes to collect 1 million signatures in a year.
The system works like this: to launch an initiative, it takes seven EU citizens, living in at least seven different Member States. Once an initiative gathers one million signatures with minimum thresholds reached in at least seven countries, the European Commission must decide whether or not to take action. If the Commission decides to put forward a legislative proposal, the normal legislative procedure kicks off: the Commission proposal is submitted to the legislator (generally the European Parliament and the Council or in some cases only the Council) and, if adopted, it becomes law.
