Proactive Corporate Sustainability via Social Innovation—A Case Study of the Hennes & Mauritz Grand Challenge in Bangladesh

The purpose of the study is to explore how a multinational enterprise can use social innovations to drive change and solve grand challenges in an emerging market context. This paper brings market-shaping literature into a sustainability context, particularly by studying the implementation of social innovations in an emerging market context. Specifically, the study involves an in-depth qualitative study of H&M’s fair living wages program in Bangladesh. We find that H&M is tackling utterances of grand challenges revealed by orchestrating social innovation in collaborations with local stakeholders. Social innovation is carried out in ongoing projects involving multiple stakeholders. The study contributes to current literature by revealing that multinational enterprises indeed can use social innovation to drive change in emerging markets, although this requires long-term commitment, an ability and willingness to shape the surrounding business environment, and a prominent standing among key stakeholders.

Reforming wage policy for workers towards living wage in Vietnam

Currently, in Vietnam, wage policy is implemented through an important tool, the minimum wage. However, the reality shows that the use of the minimum wage to pay employees is still inadequate and far from reality. Instead of using the minimum wage, a number of developed countries have recently used a new concept in wage policy making, which is “living wage” with high efficiency. In line with the trend of international integration, a living wage needs to be recognized and researched and applied in practice in Vietnam to bring about more positive effects, ensuring the life of workers and the whole country the sustainable development of the business. The article uses information and secondary data to analyze the current situation of minimum wages, scientific basis for living wages and policy implications to aim at workers with a living wage in the future.

Economic Security & the Regulation of Gig Work in California: From AB5 to Proposition 22

Employment is the primary legal and political means to address economic inequality in the United States. With the evisceration of the welfare state, employment is also key to democratic outcomes. Despite this, self-employed work deployed by labour platforms like Uber has grown in recent years. What can we learn from worker demands and recent regulatory attempts to clarify and extend who is covered by employment protections? Based on a decade of legal and ethnographic research in the state of California, I situate the legal and regulatory history of labour platform work in the context of platform workers’ experiences and responses to the insecurities and poverty promulgated by their putative status as independent contractors. In highlighting this history, I argue that self-organised labour platform workers were critical to the passage of a state law (AB5) that would have forced companies to treat them as employees—with access to predictable living wages, unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, and health insurance, among other safety net protections. Finally, I show how, leveraging tremendous structural and instrumental power, the major labour platform companies, in the middle of the global Coronavirus pandemic, sponsored a successful referendum on AB5, and lay out the anti-democratic implications of the referendum's passage.

Attempting to Address Conditions of Poverty through an Inclusive Economic Approach in Alberta

This article responds to the call to alter current economic and social systems in light of COVID-19 by documenting initial efforts by a community-university partnership to build an inclusive economy. First, the effects of neoliberalism and oil ex- traction are examined to highlight the inequality that existed in Alberta long before the pandemic began. The paper then outlines four key areas of change: employment and training; social procurement and community benefits agreements; living wages; and basic income. It concludes with some initial learnings that may have resonance for others attempting to stimulate economic practices that distribute wealth more equitably. RÉSUMÉ Cet article répond à un désir de modifier les systèmes économiques et sociaux actuels en conséquence du COVID-19. Il le fait en décrivant des efforts préliminaires de la part d’un partenariat communauté/université pour établir une économie qui soit plus inclusive. L’article examine d’abord les conséquences du néolibéralisme et de l’extraction du pétrole afin de souligner les inégalités qui existaient déjà en Alberta bien avant le début de la pandémie. L’article présente ensuite quatre domaines clés qu’on aurait besoin de modifier : l’emploi et la formation; les ententes sur l’approvisionnement social et sur les avantages communautaires; le salaire de subsistance; et le revenu de base. L’article conclut en faisant des ob- servations préliminaires qui pourrait inspirer d’autres individus tentant d’encourager des pratiques économiques orientées vers une distribution plus équitable de la richesse.

Setting the table, not running it: An inclusive approach to access to healthy foods

Food Empowerment Project (F.E.P.) is a vegan food justice nonprofit in northern California. We focus on making a more just and sustainable food system for everyone involved. Since injustice in the food system crosses the species barrier, we work to connect the dots between the exploitation of human and nonhuman animals. We focus our efforts on four main areas: ending the use of animals in the food system, improving access to healthy foods in Black, Brown, and low-income communities, exposing the worst forms of child labor (including slavery) in the chocolate industry, and advocating for farmworker rights. These seemingly disparate areas have much in common: they are interlocking forms of oppres­sion, marginalization, and domination in the food system. We recognize that the intersecting nature of oppression necessitates a nuanced response. For example, as an organization working on both farm­worker justice and food apartheid, we cannot advocate for lowering the price of food as this would negatively impact produce workers who already suffer grave systemic injustice. Instead, we advocate for equality of access and living wages for everyone.[1] In this piece, we focus on our approach to the lack of access to healthy foods, and specifically our community-based efforts in Vallejo, California.

Union Membership as a Moderator in the Relationship Between Living Wage, Job Satisfaction and Employee Engagement

In many developing countries, lower-level employees are working in workplaces that pay them poverty wages. The need for workers to earn a living wage has long been argued, both within the trade union movement, employers and society, along with the link with job satisfaction and employee engagement. The present study aims to explore the relationship between living wage, job satisfaction and employee engagement, as well as union membership as a moderator in these relationships. A quantitative research approach was employed in this study, and Loess curves were used to graphically predict the relationship between study variables. There were significant relationships between a living wage, job satisfaction and employee engagement. The results indicated that the relationships between the variables were cubic and not linear. Union membership was the moderator in the relationship between living wages and employee involvement. Union membership moderated the cubic relationship between living wages and employee engagement. Union membership also moderated the cubic relationship between living wages and job satisfaction.

Living Wages and the Welfare State

Addressing the rapidly shifting politics of the minimum wage in six English-speaking countries, Shaun Wilson analyses minimum wage policies within a political-economy narrative. Topical and poignant, this book identifies the success of living wage campaigns as central to both welfare state change and alternatives to the Basic Income.