The report features a set of 9 recommendations for how the garment industry and the Ethiopian government, foreign manufacturers, and western brands can address the human rights challenges created by the lowest wages for Ethiopian garment industry workers compared tothe entire global supply chain for clothing.
By Elias Meseret (The Associated Press)
ADDIS ABABA – Ethiopian garment industry workers are now, on average, the lowest paid in any major garment-producing company worldwide, a new report says.
The report by the New York University Stern Center for Business and Human Rights comes as Ethiopia, one of Africa’s fastest-growing economies, pursues a bold economic experiment by inviting the global garment industry to set up shop in its mushrooming industrial parks.
“The government’s eagerness to attract foreign investment led it to promote the lowest base wage in any garment-producing country — now set at the equivalent of $26 a month,” according to the authors of the report, Paul M. Barrett and Dorothée Baumann-Pauly.
In comparison, Chinese garment workers earn $340 a month and those in Kenya earn monthly pay of $207.
Drawn by the newly built industrial parks and a range of financial incentives, manufacturers for some of the world’s best-known brands — among them H&M, Gap, and PVH — employ tens of thousands of Ethiopian workers in a sector the government predicts will one day have billions of dollars in sales.
· NYU Report ― Made in Ethiopia: Challenges in the Garment Industry’s New Frontier
The new report is based on a visit to the flagship Hawassa Industrial Park that opened in June 2017 in southern Ethiopia and currently employs 25,000 people. Ethiopian leaders often show off the industrial park, 140 miles (225 kilometers) south of Addis Ababa, to visiting foreign dignitaries.
According to the report, most young Ethiopian workers are hardly able to get by to the end of the month and are not able to support family members.
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We should also compare productivity levels and cost of living.