Dutch financial institutions launch living wage platform for textile industry

By

Shomara Roosblad

Published
Oct 1, 2018

On Thursday 27 September, a group of Dutch financial institutions launched the Platform Living Wage Financials (PLWF). The platform is designed to improve working conditions in the textile industry and will later be rolled out to other industries.

PLWF said that it aims to ensure that all companies will eventually be able to make a living wage possible for employees in their supply chain. The platform developed a methodology to make living wage measurable. With this, textile companies are assessed and compared in the same way.

The founders of the platform include: ASN Bank, MN, Triodos IM, Asr, Achmea Investment Management, NN Investment Partners, Robeco and Kempen. Together these institutions, who manage more than €700 billion, will use their influence to encourage, support and monitor the companies they invest in to address living wage in their global supply chains.

Senior Advisor Human Rights at ASN Bank Irina van der Sluijs, one of the founders of PLWF, said in a press release: “As a result [of low incomes], employees in low-wage countries often cannot meet their basic needs such as food, clothing, care, housing and education. A living wage breaks through the vicious circle of poverty that these families often hold for generations. This is how the living wage functions as a catalyst, to also reduce child labor and excessive overtime.”

The platform starts with a focus on the textile sector and will later expand to other sectors such as agriculture. PLWF is in accordance with the UN guidelines on human rights and business (UNGPs): from policy on living wages, to practice and measurable impact in the production countries.