Apparel July 2019 Apparel July 2019 issue | Page 140

FEATURE
Tackling the Issue
of Living Wage
Samir Alam elucidates all that a ‘living wage’ encompasses, within the purview of
global econocmies.
This Spring Summer season, the variety of
apparel, fashion, and footwear options is wider
than it has ever been. A typical consumer can find
some variation of a contour item from anywhere
as cheap as US$12 to something as elite as
US$1,200. For a regular, middle-income person
in India, spending somewhere around US$25 is
a reasonable albeit rare indulgence for the quality
and brand value that they acquire. This price
range is where the bulk of international brands
find their greatest volume of consumers in India.
For middle-income consumers, US$25 roughly
translate to about 3–4 hours’ worth of their
monthly salary, while the same translates to more
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July 2019
than a whole month’s salary for marginalised
women, children, and other low-wage labourers.
Welcome to the world of fast fashion and
affordable brands.
Over the last few years, the incidences of
labour abuse, low wages, and unsafe working
conditions have cropped up in the news at
ever-increasing rates—be it the issue of child
labour in Delhi’s slum units to exploitation of
low-wage women in Bangladesh. Reports
now show that the prevalence of marginalised
women and children forms an integral part of the
global apparel supply chain, and intersect with
almost every major brand, boutique retailers,