Fashion brands are getting better at telling the public where their clothes are made. What workers earn inside those factories remains much harder to find.
Forty-one percent of the 110 brands assessed in Clean Clothes Campaign’s latest Fashion Checker update disclosed supply chain facility data. Just 3 percent disclosed wage levels at those facilities. And while 32 percent had made a living wage commitment, only 4 percent reported tangible progress toward one, according to the labor rights group.
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The seventh edition of Fashion Checker, released Wednesday for Living Wage Action Day, updates brands’ living wage and transparency scores. It also adds information on their participation in industry initiatives, exposure to due diligence rules and grievance mechanisms for workers. The project draws on brand statements as well as wage data and testimony gathered through worker surveys.
Benetton, Levi’s, Adidas, Uniqlo and H&M were among the brands receiving Fashion Checker’s lowest possible living wage score. The score reflects the campaign’s assessment of publicly available evidence; it does not establish the pay of every worker making products for those companies.
The worker surveys show how far pay can fall short. Workers surveyed in Bangladesh earned 73 percent less than a living wage benchmark, according to Clean Clothes Campaign . The gaps were 74 percent in Pakistan , 63 percent in Serbia and 66 percent in Turkey.
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