Fair Wages - Strengthening Corporate Social Responsibility (Paperback)

`While many economists, policy-makers and commentators often point at negative effects of globalization on wage inequality and income distribution, few specific proposals have emerged so far. Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead's book should be commended for proposing a concrete approach for addressing the wage-related dimension of the social issues raised by globalization---Pascal Lamy, Director General of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Geneva`Remedies should be found for the worrying global wage trends so well documented in this book, not only by governments but by employers themselves, out of enlightened self-interest rather than generous benefaction, in the pursuit of long-term profitability. Daniel shows that there is still much room for tapping the resources of corporate social responsibility: this potential must be exploited to the full before anything else, and therefore it must be investigated and publicized the way he does.'---D. Mario Nuti, Professor, University of Rome `La Sapienza' and formerly of the London Business School `This is an exceptionally important and timely piece of work for the simple reason that it brings to our attention a global crisis - that of unfair wages. In this volume, Daniel provides an excellent analytical framework and tool that can be applied at firm level. I fully expect that the different dimensions of the fair wage proposed in this book will become standard features of company annual wage reviews and of social audits.'- Auret Van Heerden, President and CEO, Fair Labor Association Over the past decade the emergence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) has helped to improve corporate governance by tackling such burning issues as child labour and human rights violations. However, as the author argues in this important new book, the time has now come to incorporate wage issues into CSR. Daniel Vaughan-Whitehead proposes a new methodology, the `Fair Wage' approach, providing CSR actors with a coherent and comprehensive set of fair wage dimensions and indicators. Application of this new approach in a large-scale auditing exercise on wages in Asia and a number of qualitative case studies in China provides unique, first-hand information on wage practices among suppliers. The results confirm the need to address wage issues using a broad spectrum of wage dimensions, including living wages, minimum wages, social dialogue, payment of working hours and wage development in accordance with prices, enterprise performance and changes in technology and human capital. The `Fair Wage' approach advocated in this book is a first, serious and concerted effort to address the issue of wages, which are increasingly being used as the adjustment variable at the end of the supply chain.