Benchmark Report: Living Wage Report for Tiruppur City, Tamil Nadu, India

The concept of a living wage (LW) is that it should allow the worker and her/his family to live a decent life. This decent life should allow for a low cost nutritious diet, basic healthy housing with essential amenities of water, electricity and sanitation facility, and other essential needs including adequate health care, education of children through secondary school, transport, personal care, entertainment, etc. along with some savings for unforeseen events. This report establishes a living wage for Tiruppur, a city in the state of Tamil Nadu, India. Tiruppur is the biggest center for exports of knitwear in India. Nearly 600,000 people are dependent for their livelihood on 6,250 garment and textile manufacturing factories spread in and around Tiruppur. In 2014, this industry had an annual turnover of US $ 3.6billion. This study, undertaken by Centre for Operations Research and Training (CORT), India was funded by the TransFair e.V. (Fairtrade Germany).