Our aim to have a positive influence on human and labour rights both in our company and with our business partners, is clearly stated in our code of conduct. The wellbeing of our employees and the employees of our business partners is a priority of Bamatex home textiles.
A fair remuneration package is part of this. The idea of a living wage is that workers and their families are able to afford a basic, but decent, standard of living that is considered acceptable by society at its current level of economic development. Elements of a decent standard of living include food, water, housing, education, health care, transportation, clothing and other essential needs including provision for unexpected events as well as savings. In other words: a living wage should be enough for workers to live in dignity and safety.
As a responsible business, we do not want that workers employed in our supply chain to face hardship in their daily lives. Our aspiration is that workers earn enough for their basic needs and those of their family, and have income remaining to cover discretionary spending, as well as savings. We seek business partners who progressively raise employee living standards through improved wage systems, benefits, welfare programs and other services which enhance quality of life.
Our goal is for every supplier to pay living wages. We want to reach this by following process:
- The suppliers must gather information on local minimum wages and define and estimate local living wages.
- Secondly, the suppliers must map out the gap between minimum wages and living wages and assess the pay gap accurately.
- Finally, the suppliers should install a process to progressively work towards the payment of a living wage that is sufficient to afford a decent standard of living for the workers and their families.
All our suppliers made an analysis on their minimum wages and defined their local living wages. Our suppliers collected this information manually, by the Anker methodology or supported by the auditing company. We include these data in our yearly risk assessment.
Our analysis shows that closing the gap is no easy task. High inflation rates worldwide (including in our sourcing countries) are one of the reasons why our suppliers are currently unable to close this gap. Although it is not always easy to work with the right data, we clearly see a trend that the gap has only widened in recent years in Pakistan, China and Turkey. That is why we believe it is important to continue the dialogue.
To support our suppliers with advice and training in accelerating the process of closing the gap, we have entered into a partnership in 2025 with an international initiative that supports factories in social dialogue, working conditions and compliance.
