New York, United States of America

The UN Global Compact welcomes the outcomes from the International Labour Organization (ILO) meeting of experts on wage policies, including living wages. The employers, workers and Governments at the ILO agreed on an accepted concept of living wage, and principles and calculation methods for the estimation of living wages (announcement).

The outcomes will help further the Global Compact’s work with companies to provide and promote a living wage as an essential aspect of decent work, ensuring that all workers, families, and communities can live in dignity.

The Global Compact looks forward to working with the ILO, which is also the Guardian of the Global Compact Labour principles, to operationalize living wages based on these outcomes. This ILO guidance will help us tackle poverty across value chains with all stakeholders involved—buyers, suppliers, governments, employers, and workers’ organizations. 

The ILO supports the Forward Faster targets on living wage and, in the report for the expert meeting, references this initiative as an indication of business leadership on the topic. We encourage companies to sign up to these commitments to move Forward Faster together to advance living wage economies: https://forwardfaster.unglobalcompact.org/

Notes to Editors

About the UN Global Compact:

As a special initiative of the United Nations Secretary-General, the UN Global Compact is a call to companies worldwide to align their operations and strategies with Ten Principles in the areas of human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption. Our ambition is to accelerate and scale the global collective impact of business by upholding the Ten Principles and delivering the Sustainable Development Goals through accountable companies and ecosystems that enable change. With more than 20,000 participating companies, 5 Regional Hubs, 62 Local Networks covering 67 countries and 15 Country Managers establishing Networks in 34 other countries, the UN Global Compact is the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative — one Global Compact uniting business for a better world.