Tailored by England.. but made in Indonesia..
Friday, 19 June 2009 09:05
Indonesian workers producing the new England kit, launched before the start of the World Cup 2012 competition are earning poverty wages and toiling in terrible conditions according to an investigation by the UK Sunday tabloid, the News of the World.
Journalists tracked down production of UMBRO's England shirts to a production site in Indonesia, PT Tuntex, and despite high security did manage to speak to some of the workers involved. Workers reported that they were earning 16p an hour, working 12 hours a day and were forced to work under high pressure in order to complete the order. One worker told the paper "We have been making many of the England shirts to send directly to Umbro UK. We are told to work very fast. They must be very popular."These conditions are not unusual in Indonesia, where the reality facing workers is considerably different to that promised by codes of conduct and ethical claims of top sportswear brands. However, we might expect that UMBRO and Adidas would take extra steps to ensure that the site producing football shirts for such a high profile competition would meet the minimum standards set out by international conventions and by their own codes of conduct.
Labour Behind the Label and the Clean Clothes Campaign have repeatedly called on Nike (UMBRO) and adidas to take more concrete steps to improve conditions for workers producing their brands. Although definite improvements have been made, cases such as this show progress is too slow and not reaching those workers at the bottom of the chain. We have also called on sporting bodies, such as the FA, to take more responsibility for ensure decent conditions for workers producing under their licence. Until now neither FIFA nor the FA have accepted responsibility for ensuring workers producing garments bearing its logo are doing so under decent conditions.
