Re: Yvon Chouinard. Filozofia prostoty

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Do workers in factories making Patagonia clothes earn a living wage?

Not all do. We require that factories pay their workers a legal minimum wage or better, that working conditions be decent, and that workers have the right to join a union. Many of our clothes require highly skilled labor from operators who earn a decent hourly rate for local conditions. We prefer to work with factories who pay workers enough to meet basic needs – and more.

We agree with the living wage principle – that a family has to be able to live on what it’s paid – but don’t yet practice it. Why? Sewing is low-paid work and the business is competitive (And many governments, including that of the U.S., set minimum wages low.) A living wage can be hard to define. Factories have to be assured that they can raise prices to pay higher wages without losing revenue (and thus risk worker layoffs). Also, factories pay the same wages for similar type of work for multiple companies. So all customers of a factory have to agree to pay more. The companies have to overcome the fear of business loss due to higher prices. And enough consumers have to pony up the extra cash to ensure a living wage.

There’s no excuse, though, for exploitation of the labor of poor people to make nice things for the better off. We believe the best way to achieve a living wage is for a collaborative association like the Fair Labor Association (FLA) to establish a living wage (or fair wage) clause, which would ensure that all companies who are members agree to add to their Codes of Conduct the same standard as well as a graduated or “stepped” timetable for achieving it. To be effective any new wage clause has to have teeth – and include provisions for auditor training and factory verification. We are working for this within the FLA.

For the moment, we track minimum and prevailing wages in each country from which we source; we work toward a higher, fair or living wage in our costing negotiations with each factory. From the results of our own social audits and FLA monitoring, we know that many of our factories pay above minimum wage for some or all of their workers already. We have also participated in the "JO-IN" project, a multi-stakeholder initiative in Turkey (with the Clean Clothes Campaign among others) that worked towards a “stepped” wage ladder in the pursuit of achieving a living wage.

All this said, according to the “Living Wage Calculator” for Ventura County (California), where we have our headquarters, a living wage for one adult (in 2010) is $12.46 an hour – no problem. But for a single parent supporting a child a living wage is $22.49 per hour ($46,779 per year). That sounds about right, but by this standard we do not pay some of our own headquarters employees a living wage, although we pay competitively (and well above minimum) and have earned recognition from the press as one of the best companies in the United States to work for.