Flower sector needs transparency and cooperation to come to a living wage
During the second day of ‘The Only Way is Up!’, the workshop ‘Up your game: a living wage case study from local worker to consumer’, hosted by Hivos, brought together the key players in the international flower supply chain to discuss wages. The entire supply chain was represented: from a local workers’ union all the way up to the end consumer.
The panel consisted out of Mastewal Habtamu Assefa from the Ethiopian National Federation of Farm Plantation and Fisheries and Agro-Industries Trade Union (NFFPFAITU), Michel van den Boogaard, CFO of the Ethiopian-based rose production company SHER Afriflora, and Marloes Bruin, Sustainability Manager at the Dutch retailer Albert Heijn.
Read More
ALIGN: a guidance tool for living wages and incomes
A further exiting outcome of the conference was the launch of ALIGN. ALIGN is a platform that gives access to existing resources on living wage and living income in an interactive and customised way. The portal is meant to be a guidance tool for agri-food companies aiming to reduce complexity around the topic, prioritising easy access and accountable information to build a strong understanding of living wages and income, and assessing risks in supply chains.
Read More
Bananas: breakthrough commitment in Dutch retail
The closing session of the congress highlighted the first ever country-wide commitment from retailers to close the living wage gap in the banana supply chain. The goal of the Banana Commitment is to predominantly sell bananas in Dutch supermarkets of which production workers have earned a living wage.
‘I’m so excited to share with you today the commitment we’ve made with other Dutch retailers’, said Laura Jungmann, Team Lead Sustainability at Albert Heijn, the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands. ‘As a company we’ve been working on fair and transparent supply chains for years. But we also know that living wages can only be achieved if we work together as Dutch retailers.’
Read More
Celebrating commitments
The highlight of the closing ceremony was the presentation of several sector ánd company commitments on achieving living wages and living incomes. Here are a few of the most remarkable ones.
Read More
“We will not shy away from the issue of legislation”
In her speech to the conference, deputy director-general International Cooperation Birgitta Tazelaar promised that her government will make a more vigorous effort to adopt legislation on sustainable trade, including living wages and incomes, in the years ahead. “We will launch this discussion next year in the Netherlands.”
Also a video message was presented of Gerd Müller, the German federal minister for Economic Cooperation and Development. The Netherlands and Germany were amongst the organisers of the conference. Both governments are very supportive to various efforts to achieve living wages and incomes and try to integrate it in their policies.
Read More
Antonie Fountain: "We need a bigger boat"
"We have to solve the problem of poverty, meaning living wages and living incomes. If we fail to do so, we will not solve other sustainability issues like child labour, deforestation or gender inequality." This was one of the messages of Antonie Fountain in his keynote speech at 'The Only Way is Up! Conference.
In an energetic and passionate speech, peppered with clips from famous movies, Fountain also used a quote from the shark movie Jaws: "We need a bigger boat." What he wanted to say with this is that the fight for living incomes and wages should only be a starting point. "It’s not the finish line of where we want to go. We want prosperous farmers, not farmers barely scraping in. So living income is where the real work begins."
Read More
