Living Wage
What is a Living Wage?
A living wage is the minimum income an individual or family needs to afford a basic but decent standard of living in a specific location, covering essential goods and services beyond just survival. Unlike a minimum wage, a living wage is calculated based on local costs for items like housing, food, healthcare, and education, allowing for participation in social and cultural life as well as provision for unexpected events.
Fyffes approach to Living Wage
Fyffes is working to ensure all workers on our own farms and supplier farms receive a living wage by partnering with retailers and stakeholders to close the living wage gap on our farms.
We use the IDH Salary Matrix (a tool developed by IDH, the Sustainable Trade Initiative, to help companies calculate and identify gaps between workers’ total remuneration and a living wage benchmark for their region) to measure our employees’ total compensation against regional living wage benchmarks, though the exact current pay for all roles can vary and is based on specific location and other factors.
At all our owned sites, our employees earn more than the legal minimum wage, and we strive to pay workers a living wage in our supply chains. Workers covered by collective bargaining agreements have terms related to wage levels and frequency of wage payments included in their collective bargaining agreements.
In addition, using the IDH Salary Matrix on our farms and suppliers farms, we aim to identify and understand the gap in living wages in several countries, comparing wages and in-kind benefits workers received against the Global Living Wage Coalition living wage benchmarks established for the countries where we operate in Latin America, which are based on the Anker Methodology.
Fyffes advocacy for Living Wage
In 2021, we joined IDH’s Call to Action, an initiative that aims to close the living wage gap and build a living wage economy with the participation of companies and businesses. We are also a member of the IDH Steering Committee, whose goal is to take action on living wages through the Roadmap on Living Wages, as well as developing and scaling up solutions for workers in global supply chains to earn a living wage.
We sit in the World Banana Forum Sub-Group on Covering Costs of Sustainable Production, whose mandate is to find a global solution to the price dispute between large distributors in developed countries, which results in low prices for bananas.
We commend the Dutch, German, Belgian, and UK supermarkets for joining forces to ensure a living wage for banana workers in the international production chain and the concept of shared responsibility.
Partnering with retailers on the Living Wage
We have actively collaborated with our retail customers to identify practical solutions for advancing the implementation of a living wage. As a result, we have reached agreements with several customers and suppliers to provide additional financial support—such as monetary contributions or food vouchers—to workers in our supply chain where living wage gaps have been identified.
In February 2024, Sainsbury’s announced plans to pay thousands of workers a fairer wage to support the future of banana growers in Cameroon, Colombia, Dominican Republic and Ghana, working with Fyffes and Fairtrade to make it possible. The price Sainsbury’s is paying for every box of bananas now covers the cost of the fruit, plus a premium that is invested into workers’ wages. The additional funds help workers meet essential needs such as food, housing, education, and healthcare—enhancing their overall livelihoods and those of their families. The remaining portion of the premium supports environmental sustainability by enabling banana growers to adopt responsible farming practices, including carbon capture, water footprint reduction, and improvements in biodiversity and soil health.
In addition, we have been in ongoing discussions with other customers in the UK and Europe, resulting in agreements to add a premium per box of bananas purchased. This additional contribution will be directed toward increasing wages for workers in our supply chain, moving them closer to a living wage.
Some payments have been completed in early 2025 while the remaining are scheduled for the end of 2025. We will be able to measure the impact of these contributions via the completion of the 2025 salary matrices, which will be completed in 2026.
