An in-depth study of the jewelry company, Pura Utz.
"Our agenda is to bust one of the most persistent myths: We cannot pay living wages because customers aren't willing to pay for it. We will be busting this myth with a real-life example, the company Pura Utz, and lay out its methodology in the hope that others can find the strength to pursue a similar path."
Read the full white paper report elaborated independently by Post Growth Guide and Tanja Gotthardsen.
A note from us -
We call ourselves an empowerment project - this value should be reflected not only in the way we create and carry out our work environment, but also in our wages and workers rights.
In the fall last year, we had the pleasure of a visit from consultant Tanja Gotthardsen in our workshop in Guatemala to carry out a thorough formalisation of our business - but also to test our wages and price calculations applying time-motion study and living wage tools developed by Nest, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, Global Living Wage Coalition and the Anker-Methodology.
It was nerve-racking to actually benchmark our vision against renowned international methods and tools - what if we failed our own exam big time?
But great news - we got almost all of them right, because the one who calculates our wages is Bernabela, always applying her local knowledge, personal experiences and vision in her own time-motion study of our pieces. Isn’t that telling?
Anyways, the whitepaper is not just about this - it also highlights and reflects on piece rate work vs. hourly work, our business structure and the fragility of our business model.
If you want to dive in deeper - follow this link to the whitepaper.
Thank you Marcus Feldthus, Oscar Haumann and Tanja Gotthardsen for your time and work!
We didn’t know what we were getting ourselves into with your whitepaper (also had to google what that meant :)), but we are happy we did.
We would also like to encourage you to check out the amazing work of Post Growth Guide - an open source community/library/space that explores the world of business that has a limit to growth (yes you read that right! Infinite growth and capital is not the goal).