2024 Fair Labor Association Fellows

Awarded to U-M undergraduate or graduate students to intern with the Fair Labor Association in Washington, D.C..

Morgan Riggs

Pronouns: she/her
Major/Minor: Master's in Environmental and Sustainability, Sustainable Systems Track
Graduation Year: 2025

During the summer of 2024, I had the invaluable opportunity to work as a Manufacturing Fair Compensation Intern with the Fair Labor Association (FLA). This internship, running from May 20 to August 8, allowed me to engage in various impactful projects centered around wage benchmarking, wage trends, and inflation research. With a background in environment and sustainability, international studies, and economics, the internship provided a unique opportunity to explore the intersection of my academic interests in a real-world context. I began the internship by updating living wage benchmarks for fifteen countries, including both developed and developing nations. This involved researching various wage indicators such as the Global Living Wage Coalition (GLWC) estimates, legal minimum wages, and World Bank international poverty lines. A notable insight was the lack of standardization in living wage benchmarking, highlighting challenges like differing legal frameworks and variations in wage structures. This project emphasized the need for consistent methodologies in assessing living wages across different regions.

Ishwar Surendran

Pronouns: He/Him
Major/Minor: Public Policy/Business Administration
Graduation year: 2025

This summer, I had the privilege of interning with the Fair Labor Association’s (FLA) Agriculture team. Through this position, I applied the training I received from the University of Michigan in economic projections, brief writing, data analysis, and data visualization towards multiple challenging and engaging projects. At the beginning of the internship, I worked closely with my graduate counterpart, Morgan, to perform a series of inflation-adjusted wage estimates for various countries. These estimates would then serve as benchmarks for FLA affiliates in determining the proper “fair wage” to pay to employees. Then, I worked with Chaimae Azmi, Fair Compensation and Member Engagement Manager, to conduct an in-depth analysis of Turkish Hazelnut worker wage and earnings data. Under Chaimae’s close guidance, I was able to visually present average wage estimates for multiple regions in Northern Turkey in an accessible manner to the FLA Agriculture Team. Lastly, I worked with Michiko Shima, Senior Vice President, on several business and workflow optimization projects. These three experiences allowed me to apply the theoretical aspects of my education practically, supporting the important work that FLA’s Agriculture Team does to promote human rights in the workplace.