Fair Wages

Over the last decade the emergence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has contributed towards better corporate governance by tackling such burning issues as child labour and basic human rights violations. However, as the author argues in this important new book, the time has now come to incorporate wage issues into CSR. Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead proposes a new methodology, the 'Fair Wage' approach, which should allow all CSR actors to make progress in this field through a coherent and comprehensive set of fair wage dimensions and indicators. The implementation of this new approach through a large-scale auditing exercise on wages in Asia and a number of qualitative cases studies in China provide unique, first-hand information on wage practices among suppliers. The results confirm the need to address wage issues using a broad spectrum of different wage dimensions, including living wages, minimum wages, prevailing wages, social dialogue, the payment of working hours and the evolution of wages in accordance with prices, enterprise performance and changes in technology and human capital. This approach also makes it possible to identify the impacts and pressures on wages, which are increasingly being used as the adjustment variable at the end of the supply chain. Adverse wage developments clearly highlight the limitations of government action in regulating this aspect of the global economy. The 'Fair Wage' approach advocated in this book is a first, serious and concerted effort to address this critical issue. It will be required reading for practitioners and scholars of labour economics, development studies and CSR.