From the 4th – 7th of July 2022, a Living Wage is Possible! Forum was held in Zagreb, Croatia. It was the final event of a project that Clean Clothes Campaign worked on for three years: the EU-funded Fashion Checker. The forum was hosted by Novi sindikat and co-organised by different organisations that worked on Fashion Checker. The event brought together about 110 participants from around the world, including 18 European countries, Africa, India, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, USA. The participants were primarily Clean Clothes Campaign members, partners, and external participants willing to cooperate on CCC topics. During the four days, we discussed internal CCC topics and had five panels open to external participants. Topics ranged from how to achieve living wage costs in buying prices through enforceable wage agreements, due diligence and what it has to do with wages, transparency, gender and purchasing practices, and problems in organising garment workers in Europe and Asia, to name a few.

A group of forum participants also demonstrated in support of former women workers for Adidas and German brand, Olymp. We held a public action in front of the Adidas store in Central Zagreb, followed by a press conference in front of the Museum of Broken Relationships where workers from Orljava factory handed over a few items from the factory to symbolise their broken workers’ rights. With this action, we wanted to warn Adidas and Olymp that the world is watching them and wants them to pay their workers and take responsibility for rights violations in their supply chains! The full press conference can be seen on this link. Videos created by the Croatian portal Workers’rights (Radnička prava) can be found here: Orljava workers action, and Adidas Pay Your Workers action.