Fair Wage Guide
A Detailed Description
Welcome to the beta version of the innovative Fair Wage Guide. The goal of this project is to create a revolutionary technology aimed at empowering artisans and buyers by giving them user-friendly access to wage and pricing information.
As a collective group, we aim to create a new framework for the fair pricing of hand made goods thereby offering an alternative positive path to globalization. This revolutionary technology will develop a measurable and auditable floor-pricing model for crafts that can be replicated globally and has the potential to lift thousands of artisans above poverty. At the click of a button, this web tool generates a localized price analysis of wages paid to artisans in comparison to international living wage standards. Designed for the use of both artisan organizations and buyers, this tool brings real bargaining power to artisans while encouraging mainstream retailers to engage in more ethical and fair trade on a global level.
Guiding Principles of the Fair Wage Guide
Floor Price Only: The tool will calculate a floor price for the payment to artisans. The floor price is a protective safety net to ensure that artisans are being paid at least a fair floor price wage.
Empowerment Tool: The tool aims to reinforce the core values of the fair trade movement by making information available to artisans and buyers that will help inform decisions about fair wages, prices and costs. We believe this increased access to information will improve the livelihoods of artisans by increasing their negotiating power and informing the design process.
Both Quantitative AND Qualitative are Important: The calculated floor price is NOT a stand-alone measure. The qualitative measures remain central to fair trade and the tool will help reinforce the quantitative measures. The Wage Guide can only be successful when all the other principles of fair trade are followed.
Not Defining Market Pricing and Margins: This tool is NOT designed to set market prices or control margins. The Wage Guide aims to inform buyers and artisans of the minimum wage standards in order to ensure the ethics underlying market-based pricing and margin decisions.
Working Together: The success of the Wage Guide relies on the cooperation of the key players in the industry working together to create a tool that is effective for everyone. World of Good: Development Organization sees itself as the catalyst to start the development of the Wage Guide, but it is our hope to transfer its ownership to IFAT, FTF, FLO in order to truly develop and promote the tool objectively on a global level. Working together is critical to the success of the project.
Free Access for Everyone: The Wage Guide will always be a freely accessible tool available for the global community. The Wage Guide was built in free, open-source technology so that it will be easy for artisan groups to sync their own systems to the Wage Guide.
Practical not Perfect: This is a practical solution focused on progress not perfection. We hope to balance the ideals of fair wages with a realistic solution to ensure minimum fair wages are being met in the global fair trade community. We hope to ensure a stronger system for the majority of products in the Fair Trade space.
Confidentiality: All information entered into the Wage Guide will be kept confidential and the data will only be seen in an anonymous aggregate. A system will be created where each organization will have password protected access to their own information. Only World of Good: Development Organization researchers will have access to the information and they will sign confidentiality agreements promising not to discuss this private information.