Colombia Advances Towards Living Wages: Multi-Stakeholder Workshop Held in Medellín
The project Towards Living Wages in the Banana Sector hosted a national multi-stakeholder workshop in Medellín with key organizations from the Colombian banana sector. The event marked an important milestone in strengthening dialogue, transparency, and shared responsibility toward living wages and decent work.
The event brought together 14 key organisations including Augura, Asbama, Sintrainagro, Uniban, Banasan, BananaLink, Rainforest Alliance, ALDI South, representatives of the Ministry of Labor (Apartadó), CNV, and 3F Denmark—to advance a shared agenda on living wages, decent work, and responsible purchasing practices.
The workshop presented the progress of the project in Colombia, including findings from the context study conducted with Econometría, which analysed working conditions, wage structures and decent work dimensions in Urabá and Magdalena. The session also highlighted the results of the 2024 Living Wage Pilot Programme, where over 400 farms across Latin America—358 of them in Colombia—participated in wage data collection and verification. This process strengthened transparency and data quality, with many farms improving their reporting practices.
Another key component of the workshop was the presentation of the initiative on Responsible Purchasing Practices (RPP), developed in collaboration with the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI). The discussion emphasized how purchasing decisions directly affect producers’ ability to ensure living wages. Stakeholders were invited to contribute actively to the RPP assessment through interviews, surveys, and feedback mechanisms.
The event also introduced the upcoming collaboration with the International Labour Organization (ILO), which will support capacity-building on decent work, collective bargaining and wage verification mechanisms. The joint work aims to strengthen national structures and prepare stakeholders for future requirements of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD).
The workshop concluded with working groups to define priority actions for 2026, reinforcing the importance of shared responsibility among retailers, producers, unions, and public institutions in advancing living wages and responsible purchasing in the banana value chain.
