...Thank you for providing us with an opportunity to comment on the Clean Clothes Campaign’s (CCC’s) recently published ‘Made in Europe’ report. Below you will find a brief description of our general approach to fair wages - which is the central issue in the CCC report – and an explanation of the wage-setting processes we have pursued in Georgia and the Ukraine...

We have sought to address and improve supplier wages in Eastern Europe through wage assessments and in-country collaborations...

We have conducted a [...] wage benchmarking exercise in the Ukraine... We reached out to the Ukrainian statistics office to obtain nationwide wage data and, in parallel, conducted wage surveys in each of our partner’ factories. From the combined data, we created a wage map. The mapping showed that our manufacturing partners were already paying a prevailing industry wage, one that was significantly higher than the legal minimum wage. The research also confirmed that our suppliers had taken it upon themselves to absorb the costs of a mandatory ‘war tax’ that was being levied against employees. They did so, to safeguard the workers’ take-home pay. 

We trust these examples demonstrate the positive approach we take to the question of fair wages in our supply chain in Eastern Europe.