Sportswear industry shamed by new allegations on working conditions
Monday, 21 April 2008 00:01
Just four months before the Olympic baton is passed from Beijing to London, the Playfair2008 alliance (supported by the TUC and Labour behind the label) has released a damning, name-and-shame indictment of factory working conditions in the sports wear industry.
The report, based on interviews with 320 workers in China, India, Thailand and Indonesia, has found that workers in China are making shoes for £1 per day and footballs for 25p each. Adidas, sponsors of the Beijing and London Olympics, and Umbro, sponsors of the England football team, are both heavily implicated in the report - Clearing the Hurdles.
Other key findings include:
- A worker in a Chinese factory owned by one of Nike's key suppliers would need to work for 9,000 years to earn the same take-home pay as Nike CEO Mike Parker in 2007.
- An Indian football stitcher would have to sew over 13 million balls a year - 100 balls per minute - to earn the same annual take-home pay of Adidas CEO Herbert Heiner.
- Adidas' £100m sponsorship fee for the London 2012 games would pay over 400,000 Chinese sportswear workers' wages for a year.
The report uncovers working conditions at Pou Chen, a little known Taiwanese manufacturer that produces one-sixth of the world's sports shoes, including Nike and Adidas.
A worker at a Pou Chen factory in Dongguan, China said: "I am exhausted to death now. The two of us have to glue 120 pairs of shoes every hour...We are working without rest and are always afraid of not working fast enough to supply soles to the next production line...We are tired and dirty."
Workers at Joyful Long, a factory in China's Pearl River Delta, work seven-day, 80-hour weeks and earn just half the legal minimum wage. Forged wage slips are used to fool auditors. Joyful Long manufactures footballs for Adidas and Umbro.
A worker at Joyful Long said: "It is ridiculous that there is not even one rest day in a whole month. Physically we are so tired, but psychologically we are also exhausted."
TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: "In spite of more than 15 years of codes of conduct adopted by most of the major sportswear brands, workers still face bullying and harassment, excessive, undocumented and unpaid overtime, threats to health and safety and a failure to receive legally required health insurance. We've raised our concerns with the organisers of the London Olympics and we are looking to them to ensure that London 2012 does not have its reputation sullied by such shocking abuses."
Chair of Labour Behind the Label Maggie Burns said: "The sportswear industry has got to work collectively to pay workers a living wage. They know what to do, and the millions of pounds they spend on sponsorship deals show that they have the money to do it."
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) General Secretary Guy Ryder said: "Five years after we first approached the IOC on this issue, no concrete commitments have been made and it still remains unclear how they will take action on outstanding labour rights issues. We are ready to start working with them right away to get concrete results."
