WHAT’S IN OUR 2020 CERTIFICATION PROGRAM?

Living wage

Creating sustainable livelihoods for agriculturalworkers

More than 1.4 billion people around the world live in extreme
poverty, with farm workers being one of the occupationalgroups with the highest incidences of it. As the livelihoods offarmers, farm workers, and farming communities are intricately linked to some of the world’s most diverse ecosystems,
creating better livelihoods is key to our vision of a world wherepeople and nature thrive in harmony. For the millions of workers worldwide who form the backbone of agricultural production, ensuring a sustainable livelihood starts with being paid aliving wage.
In our 2020 Certification Program, we are going further to achieveliving wages for agricultural workers through the introduction ofseveral innovations that allow farmers to assess the gap to a living wage and measure progress. We’re also promoting a shared
responsibility approach that encourages companies to do theirpart as well.

Using the power of data to achieve living wages
Our aim is to help certified farmers and supply chain actors discover and bridge the gap between prevailing wages and living
wages of agricultural workers. The data we gather in the process
will be used to foster collaboration across the supply chain. It will
enable us to report on and verify progress made in a consistent,
standardized manner over time.
The Farm Requirements of our 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard state that:1•

All workers must receive at least the minimum wage intheir country and be afforded all the protections under theInternational Labour Organization Conventions and Recommendations that set out basic principles and rights at work.

•Farms must track the total payment1 (wages plus cashand in-kind benefits) made to all types of workers yearlyand compare it to the applicable living wage benchmark

This requirement doesn’t apply to small farms that are members of a group.

What is a living wage?
The right to earn a living wage is protected as a fundamental human right in the United Nations (UN) Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. A living wage is the payment
received for a standard workweek by a worker in a particular place that is enough to afford a decent standard ofliving for the worker and their family. This means earning
enough to cover all of life’s basic expenses, including food,water, housing, education, health care, transportation, andclothing, with a little extra to cover unexpected events.
This amount varies greatly by country and even region,
because the cost of food, housing, and other necessities
differ from place to place. The Global Living Wage Coalition(GLWC), co-founded by the Rainforest Alliance and otherstandard-setting organizations, estimates the living wage
benchmarks that we use for our standard in accordancewith the Anker Methodology.

using the Salary Matrix Tool. This tool collects comprehensive wage data and analyzes the gap to a living wage for all
types of workers at certified farms.
•If the total amount of compensation is below the benchmark for any type of worker, farm management, in consultation with workers’ representatives, will need to implement
a wage improvement plan. At minimum, wages need to beadjusted yearly for inflation based on the national inflation
rate.

This new approach will help farmers understand their actuallabor costs and develop an informed and practical strategy toincrease wages together with workers.

Taking a shared responsibility approach
We recognize that the responsibility for improving livelihoods
must be shared across the supply chain so that the risks, costs,

the Rainforest Alliance 2020 Certification Program | living wageand burdens don’t fall on farmers alone. Three new criteria in ourSupply Chain Requirements are specifically designed to encourage companies to reward and invest in more sustainable production and drive more value from the supply chain to workers.
Two of them require supply chain actors to pay a Sustainability
Differential and make Sustainability Investments. The third outlines supply chain contributions for living wage payments. This isa self-selected requirement for companies developed to support
due diligence on wages and facilitate dialogue across the supply
chain. When selected, companies connect to their suppliers who
are willing to work together to implement a wage improvement
plan. In this way, the Rainforest Alliance helps companies put
their living wage strategy into practice, while the previously mentioned Salary Matrix Tool gives them an easy way to monitor theirprogress. As more companies use this requirement to contributeto achieving living wages, their aggregate purchasing powershould drive sector-wide change.

Why are we taking this approach to wages?
The Rainforest Alliance approach to living wages is fully alignedwith the UN Guiding Principles for Human Rights and Business. It
recognizes that the responsibility for attaining living wages must
be shared and both sustainable farming methods and responsible business practices are essential in addressing the issue.
Our experience shows low wages are built into existing businessmodels and minimum wages are often set too low to protect
workers from falling into poverty. In the context of these systemic
challenges, our approach is one of continuous improvement.
That’s why we’ve included mechanisms like the mandatory Sustainability Differential and Sustainability Investments as well as
self-selected targets and timelines for companies to recognize
and reward more sustainable production from the certified farmers they source from. This enables them to directly support thepayment of living wages to workers. In line with our reimaginingof certification, we are also collecting and providing better data
to understand the gaps to living wages and measure progress
made.

How is this different from our previous standards?
The 2015 UTZ Code of Conduct and the 2017 Rainforest Alliance
Sustainable Agriculture Standard both include living wage
requirements that follow a continuous improvement approach.
However, it is still possible for farms to opt out of the requirements
in both standards as they are either self-selected or applicable
only where there isn’t already a collective bargaining process inUnited States:
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New York, NY 10004
tel: +1 (212) 677-1900
email: info@ra.org

JULY 2020

place. If there is a gap between living wages and wages paid on
a farm, both standards require a wage improvement plan to be
drafted, but they lack a rigorous approach to data collection andmonitoring as well as a way to incentivize progress. Furthermore,
the previous standards don’t hold the broader supply chain accountable to contribute to the costs of paying a living wage.
We’re going further in the 2020 Certification Program by:•

Defining living wage levels for more countries through
GLWC benchmark studies•Creating transparency on the gap to a living wage byrequiring mandatory yearly assessments of total compensation made to all types of workers using the Salary Matrix
Tool•Focusing on shared responsibility by introducing several
requirements for companies to that end

Want to know more?
Read more about living wage and about our new certification
program. For specific questions, email us at cs@ra.org.

Reimagining certification
Reimagining certification is our long-term vision for thefuture of certification. It is part of our wider strategy at theRainforest Alliance to drive change through our four mainareas of work: climate, forests, livelihoods, and humanrights.
In June 2020, the Rainforest Alliance takes the first stepon its journey towards “reimagining certification” with thepublication of its 2020 Certification Program. We’ve beenworking on this new program since 2018, when the Rainforest Alliance and UTZ merged.
The 2020 Certification Program—including a new Sustainable Agriculture Standard—is a unique opportunity to reallychange the way that certification works and how it delivers
value to the many people and businesses around the worldthat use it.
Between June 2020 and mid-2021, the Rainforest Alliancewill roll out the new program around the world, including acomprehensive training plan. Audits against the new program will begin in mid-2021.

The Netherlands:
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tel: +31 20 530 8000
email: info@utz.org

Rainforest Alliance@RnfrstAlliance@rainforestalliancerainforest-alliance.org