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A wage you can live on

We believe that all garment workers should be paid a wage they can live on; because having a job should mean being able to support yourself and your family.

Most of the world's garments are made in Asia, and yet while the clothing industry continues to make millions in profits for the big brands the workers, predominantly women, producing the clothes across Asia are being paid the least. 

Workers, trade unions, campaigners and consumers are coming together to call for a living wage for all workers.

What is a living wage?

A living wage, means that the wage a worker earns in a standard working week (never exceeding 48 hours) is enough to provide for them and their family's basic needs - including housing, education and healthcare as well as some discretionary income for when the unexpected happens. 

Why the minimum wage is not enough

In the Cambodian garment industry, over 80% of workers are women, aged 18-35. Many of these have children and families to provide for. With escalating living costs in housing, food, clothing, education, transport and healthcare, the minimum wage simply isn’t enough.

Globally recognised as a basic right

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has defined a living wage as a basic human right under their conventions and recommendations to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 23. (ILO Conventions 95 and 131, ILO Recommendations 131 and 135).

Wages and benefits paid for a standard working should meet at least legal or industry minimum wage standards and always be sufficient to meet basic needs of workers and their families and to provide discretionary income.

ACT and the next steps for wages in Cambodia

The first 2-year term of the ACT Cambodia programme expired in May 2026. The programme got renewed for a period of 3 years.

CCC recognises several strengths and opportunities with the ACT programme as a whole, and the Cambodia agreement specifically. The most important ones being the legally-binding and enforceable sourcing volume commitment as part of the agreement, and the labour costing protocol as part of the ACT MoU. These mechanisms have the potential to create meaningful and lasting change for workers in the industry. On top of that, there are several positive provisions in the template CBA related to special leave and parental leave.

CBAs inevitably reflect the specific context and prevailing power relations. The only small wage increase agreed in the first agreement illustrates these constraints. At the same time, however, this initial CBA represented a foot in the door, establishing a foundation from which more substantial improvements could be negotiated in the future. Against this backdrop, it is all the more disappointing that the second agreement fails to further open the door to greater wage justice and instead risks entrenching real wage losses.

CCC notes four concerning elements:

1. Minimal wage increase

According to our partners on the ground, circa 10 factories have by now signed a CBA as part of the programme, covering an estimated 15,000 workers. The 6 USD top-up received by workers in participating factories falls short of even compensating for the rise in living costs not covered by the minimum wage adjustments. As a result, real wages continue to decline despite the top-up. The gap to a living wage is widening, pushing wage justice further out of reach.

Importantly, the 6 USD top-up by no meansreflects the financial ability of ACT member brands. In case workers in the 10 CBA facilities got paid the additional 6 USD per month for 9 months, only 810,000 USD was paid to workers. Signatory brands like Inditex, H&M, Primark, PVH, Bestseller, Lidl, Kmart Group and C&A all recorded net profits which add up to over 20 billion USD for the 2 years the Cambodia programme ran. 810,000 USD represents not even 0.005% of that combined profit. The ACT annual income, largely made up of membership fees, in 2024 was 1,2 million USD. Reports, including from Dutch trade union CNV, have repeatedly shown the devastating effects of the poverty wages paid in the Cambodian garment industry: from workers skipping meals to working 2 or 3 jobs or getting involved in dodgy loan schemes. To that background, the 6 USD that workers in ACT factories receive form a very stark contrast with the profits brands continuously make, or with the sum of membership fees ACT received.

As said, CCC considers the labour costing protocol (which regretfully is not legally binding) to be one of the strengths of ACT, but do have serious doubts about brands’ commitment to actually substantially increase wages for workers. While no worker will say no to 6 USD extra per month, and as an outcome purely of national or factory level bipartite bargaining exercise it represents progress. However, in the context of the brands involved and the ambition of ACT, it is an indefensibly low amount. The recently published ACT Monitoring report that shows that only 39% of of the volume bought by the ACT members is in line with the ACT labour costing protocol, which increases our strong doubts. Given that this number is based on self-reporting by brands, it might even be an overestimation. A recent publication by Public Eye and CCC on pricing (in Bangladesh) shows that brands, including several ACT brands, have paid suppliers similar low amounts for production of a cotton T-shirt for the past 25 years despite increased minimum wages, inflation and despite bold public commitments on living wages. How can it be possible that these same brands are apparently reporting progress under the ACT monitoring report? Or do they all together make up the 61%, and the 39% are others? The lack of reporting on individual brand progress makes it impossible to know this, which increases our concerns regarding brand accountability under ACT.

2. Structure of the agreements

The ACT Cambodia programme consists of 2 separately negotiated agreements: one between signatory brands and IndustriALL (“the agreement”) , and a template CBA negotiated between manufacturers organisation TAFTAC and local IndustriALL-affiliated unions. CCC notes several issues with this set-up:

  • Under this system, the level of the wage increase and other direct benefits for workers are determined in the bipartite negotiation between local trade unions and the manufacturers, without taking into account the uneven power relations between them, and without factoring into the equation the financial ability of participating brands.

  • The CBA is negotiated with TAFTAC, which is a manufacturers association and not an employers association, and as such does not have the mandate to negotiate a CBA on behalf of its members. Hence the construct of a template’ CBA. TAFTAC members have to individually sign agreements with local unions, but there is no corresponding obligation on the brands that signed the IndustriALL-brand agreement to make their suppliers enter into good faith negotiations with the local unions. Instead, local unions need to first provide evidence of meeting thresholds as defined under national law in order to be able to legally compel the employer to enter into the bargaining process. The Trade Union Law has been been severely criticized1, and forms an almost insurmountable barrier for independent unions de jure and de facto, which may well partly explain the very low number of factories where the template CBA has been translated into a factory level active CBA.

  • The design of the ACT programme in 2 separate agreements also makes it impossible for local trade unions to take enforcement action against signatory brands when the supplier violates the terms of the CBA, as the provisions outlined in the CBA are not referenced in the agreement between brands and IndustriALL. Even if they raise a dispute via IndustriALL (as the signatory party) the terms of the agreement do not obligate brands to ensure their supplier respects the terms outlined in the CBA. Instead, local trade unions are dependent on the widely discredited Cambodian Arbitration Council (referenced in the template CBA as the exclusive dispute resolution mechanism).

Many of the issues above could be addressed through multi-party supply chain bargaining involving brands, (individual) suppliers, global unions and local unions. The ultimate outcome can well still be a set of interlocking agreements, but if there ever was a time to reconsider the current extremely bifurcated set up, it is now.

3. Freedom of Association under pressure

One of the most urgent issues that workers and independent trade unions in Cambodia are dealing with is the strong repression against independent trade unions. Since the Trade Union Law has been in place, it has become increasingly difficult to register as an independent trade union and defend the right to freedom of association in Cambodia. In the meantime, the Cambodian sector is more and more characterised by the predominance of unions affiliated with factory management or even high CPP officials. The space for genuine trade unions to freely operate is shrinking quickly. This also negatively impacts the sector negotiations regarding the renewal of the template CBA, and has been a reason for at least one of CCC member unions to withdraw from the process. The other reason for them to withdraw is the decision to not increase the 6 USD wage amount that workers will receive until 2028. Initiatives like ACT cannot and should not ignore this trend, but instead should do everything in their power to reverse it and ensure basic FoA rights are respected and protected.

4. Lack of transparency

ACT has not published the Cambodia agreement, nor the template CBA. The Cambodia agreement can be accessed if individual signatory brands choose to make it public, which only very few have done. The template CBA is not publicly accessible.This lack of transparency makes it unnecessarily burdensome for workers and other rights holders, researchers, journalists, watchdog organisations or NGOs to verify claims made by ACT, IndustriALL or ACT member brands. For a programme that is widely promoted as a model for the industry and (living) wage initiatives this is extra concerning. Furthermore, a list of participating facilities has not been made public, nor a list of how many facilities per brand are participating. Significantly more information is needed to verify any claims by participating parties on how successful the programme has been.

Given the industry players that are part of the ACT programme, there is a lot of potential to create lasting change for Cambodian garment workers. However, CCC believes several significant changes need to be made in order to make this a reality, including:

  • Increasing the amount paid to workers in CBA factories more substantially,

  • Engaging in multiparty bargaining in a single process, and ensure agreements interlock so they are specific and enforceable for local unions across the supply chain,

  • Including provisions obligating brands to go beyond the law, and enable independent trade unions to be formed and engage in bargaining at their Cambodian suppliers,

  • Setting targets for the number of suppliers/relative to brands sourcing for CBAs to be signed,

  • Publishing all agreements reached, the names of suppliers that signed a CBA and report publicly about progress made by individual brands .

Further reading:
1. Cambodian garment workers: never paid enough to escape the debt
2. Squeezed Dry. Pricing pressure in the global fashion industry
3. Green Industry, Grey Realities - Between LEED’s factories and Just Transition: pathways for the RMG sector in Bangladesh

1Human Rights Watch (2022)Only “Instant Noodle” Unions Survive. Union Busting in Cambodia’s Garment and Tourism Sectors. Available: https://www.hrw.org/report/2022/11/21/only-instant-noodle-unions-survive/union-busting-cambodias-garment-and-tourism