Call to action: Advancing living wages
Call to action: Advancing living wages at the Second World Summit for Social Development
Ensuring workers are paid a living wage is one of the most transformative things governments and businesses can do to reduce economic inequality and advance human rights and the SDGs. If businesses paid their workers a living wage, and ensured their suppliers did the same, it would not only benefit individual workers, but also their families and communities, creating a multiplier effect on economies and society at large.
However, businesses can’t achieve this transformation alone. To commit to paying a living wage and supporting their suppliers to do the same, they need clarity on the responsibilities of both governments and the private sector, alongside a level playing field created through regulatory action.
The 2025 UN Second World Summit for Social Development (WSSD2) presents a critical opportunity to put a spotlight on the importance of living wages and drive collective action.
That’s why the World Benchmarking Alliance and IDH, together with UN Global Compact, the Business Commission to Tackle Inequality, Unilever, Shift, and the Platform Living Wage Financials have issued a multi-stakeholder call to action. We urge UN Member States to prioritise living wages in the WSSD2 process and ensure their inclusion in the resulting political declaration.
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