概要

The study identifies the ways in which voluntary sustainability standards (VSSs) could positively affect workers' incomes, and evaluates whether voluntary sustainability standard-setting organizations (VSSSOs) - the organizations that create standards and direct the processes of auditing and certification - are leveraging or overlooking those opportunities. This study examines the world's leading standard setting organisations. First criterion for case selection was membership in the ISEAL Alliance and second criteria was that all cases included in the study set standards for globalized supply chains, in which production and consumption occur in multiple and different regions of the world. The study concludes that VSS can and should address income inequality by requiring employers to pay living wages and actively support collective bargaining.