The Fair Wage Solution: Unlocking Sustainable Development

This essential book explores in depth the topic of income as a key driver of sustainable development. Revisiting his innovative Fair Wage approach, Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead examines the critical dimensions that define equitable wages and showcases fair wage achievements in brand supply chains. Thousands of companies have already implemented this approach, benefitting more than four million workers around the world.

Vaughan-Whitehead shows how the Fair Wage concept has become a recognized methodology for improving company wage practices, leading to stakeholder-recognized international certification. He outlines the substantial wage advancements that have thus been attained in corporate supply chains, including by Unilever, Ikea, Puma and L’Oreal. Chapters investigate how reforms in pay systems, wage adjustment mechanisms and social dialogue can achieve vital living wage and income milestones. The book also illustrates how changing purchasing practices can enable sustainable wages and enhance working conditions globally. On a larger scale, it demonstrates how the Fair Wage approach can aid progress towards the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, especially with regard to inequalities, poverty, vulnerability and exclusion.

This enlightening book provides a clear and practical roadmap for students and scholars of employment relations, labour policy and economics, sustainability and global supply chains. The Fair Wage Solution also brings practical insights and strategies for managers and investors to effectively implement sustainable development in their businesses. Finally, it is a crucial resource for practitioners and policymakers in economic and social institutions currently working to strengthen the global sustainability agenda.

Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead, Founder and Chair of the Fair Wage Network and Professor, University of Geneva, Switzerland