Under the leadership of the ILO's Living Wage Programme, the International Labour Organization signed its first three public-private partnership agreements with the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA), Unilever and amfori, marking a significant step in translating the 2024 tripartite agreement on wage policies, including living wages, into concrete action to support ILO constituents.
The agreements are the first of their kind since the Programme launched in April 2025. They represent an important step towards achieving the Programme's core objective: ensuring that workers earn wages that provide a decent standard of living for themselves and their families, while safeguarding the sustainability of the enterprises and economies that create their jobs, in line with the Minimum Wage Fixing Convention, 1970 (No. 131) and the 2024 tripartite agreement on wage policies, including living wages.
These agreements also show that despite the sharp increase in voluntary initiatives on living wages by multinational enterprises, individually or as part of a multi-stakeholder initiative, many living wage initiatives do not yet take into account the ILO principles to estimate and operationalize living wages in line with the tripartite agreement. Alignment of the living wage initiatives with those ILO principles is therefore necessary.
The Responsible Business Alliance
The Responsible Business Alliance (RBA), one of the world's largest industry coalitions dedicated to responsible business conduct in global supply chains, and the ILO will work with constituents to estimate the needs of workers and their families, including living wages, applying the ILO methodology, and analyzing the relevant economic factors through national data. The RBA's member companies, many of which are already exploring approaches to living wages in their operations and supply chains, will be able to draw on estimates and guidance grounded in ILO principles to inform their efforts.
The Responsible Business Alliance looks forward to partnering with the ILO on this important project to support evidence-based approaches to wages in global supply chains.
- Rob Lederer, CEO, Responsible Business Alliance (RBA).
Unilever
Unilever has been working to advance living wages across its operations and supply chain for many years. As momentum grows across living wage initiatives, Unilever recognizes that sustainable progress requires collaboration across complex supply chains and diverse contexts. Through this partnership, the ILO will convene roundtables with governments, employers' and workers' organizations, and other living wage initiatives in countries where Unilever operates to support the advancement of living wages through jointly developed roadmaps implemented progressively at the national, sectoral and company levels.
At Unilever, we have long recognized that advancing living wages is critical to building resilient supply chains and supporting decent work. Meaningful progress depends on shared solutions that bring together the perspectives of workers, employers and governments. Together, through this partnership, we aim to translate living wage ambitions into practical action and provide greater clarity on the role that different actors can play in driving sustainable progress.
- Rianne Buter, Global VP for Sustainability, Unilever
amfori
amfori, a business association for open and sustainable trade, provides living wage estimates with an established supply chain methodology across 2,400 member companies operating in more than 50 countries in a wide range of sectors and sourcing markets. Through this partnership, the ILO will provide technical assistance and conduct research to support living wage estimation in line with ILO living wage estimation principles in beneficiary countries. It will also contribute to the collection of broader wage and economic data to support evidence-based social dialogue and strengthen national wage-setting mechanisms. The partnership will also create synergies with existing ILO programmes and initiatives, including the Global Coalition for Social Justice, to advance living wages through social dialogue and locally grounded wage-setting processes.
We all spend too much time calculating living wage estimates over and over again, and then debating the outcomes. If we can establish a common and credible reference point, grounded in the ILO's definition and methodology and informed by national wage-setting institutions, we can focus our time and resources on what matters most: supporting businesses and their partners in turning living wage commitments into practical action. By bringing together amfori's supply chain experience and member reach with the ILO's expertise and locally grounded approach, this partnership can help create lasting progress at scale.
- Linda Kromjong, President, amfori
The three agreements share a common commitment: aligning living wage initiatives with the 2024 adopted tripartite conclusions on wage policies, including living wages, grounded in the needs of workers and their families and in relevant economic factors. Through the ILO Living Wage Programme, they will advance evidence-based estimation and operationalization with local ownership, in full respect of national wage-setting institutions and collective bargaining autonomy.
That architecture is replicable. The Programme works with ILO constituents - governments, employers' organizations and workers' organizations - as the primary drivers of change. It also partners with national statistical offices, academia and research institutions to generate the data the Programme relies on, and engages with multinational enterprises, supply chain actors, UN agencies, development cooperation organizations and other living wage initiatives to harmonize approaches and pool expertise.
