Living wages = human right
Living wages = human right
Why this petition matters
Living wages = human right
Join us in ensuring living wages are respected as a human right and stand for the thousands of people that made your smartphone.
Join the fight for fair living wages
Have you ever stopped to think who made your phone? Thousands of people played a role in creating the powerful device you carry with you every day. People who are skilled in their fields and working full-time to provide for their families. Many of them struggle to access the bare necessities for a decent life, simply because they don't earn a fair living wage. This has to change!
Minimum Wage ≠ Living Wage
It sounds like a no-brainer: Everyone working a normal job with normal hours should (at the very least) be able to afford food and shelter, regular meals and other basics like medication and education for themselves and their family. However, for the majority of people working in smartphone factories, current wages are well below any meaningful understanding of a living wage. In China living wages are triple that of the legal minimum wage. This creates a pressure cooker of excessive overtime hours and even budget cuts through food, housing, health care and education to make ends meet.
There’s a better way
We are not talking about hypothetical solutions here: Fairphone’s living wage program has been up and running since 2019. For less than $2 extra per phone, all people working in factories that don’t earn a living wage get an additional salary of up to three months. That's a real difference, for less than the price of a cup of coffee.
Scaling and adopting this model is not rocket science, either: For many industries including electronics, researchers, organisations, think tanks, and industry pioneers have already done the legwork, and are sharing their instructions online for free. Fairphone, too, has published a guide on paying living wages, laying out nine steps towards paying product prices that include a living wage.
Sign here to change the industry
We've openly shared our guidelines, investment calculators and our legal templates - We've even sent personal letters to the CEOs of all the big smartphone brands out there, just in case they missed our invite... but we've only received one response so far.
At this point, the industry needs a crowdsourced wake-up call!
It is time for the European Union to incorporate a true living wage into the upcoming Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Over 60 companies and NGOs have already joined our call to ensure this.
Now is your chance to make yourself heard: The industry finally needs to realize that the issue goes far beyond their annual balance sheet. Inequality is a threat to global stability. Low wages are a violation of human rights. It is time for manufacturers to accept their responsibility.
And with your support, we can get there!
Every signature is a call on the Members of the European Parliament and European Commission to respect living wages as a human right.
Sign the petition and ensure living wages are respected as a human right!