Play FairA Sporting Chance for Workers

Light the Flame for workers’ rights!

The Olympic games commence today and Play Fair is calling on activists to light the flame for workers’ rights.

Over 3,000 sportswear and International Olympic Committee (IOC) e-actions as part of the Play Fair campaign have already taken place globally. Now that the games have started it’s time to increase the pressure. 

Play Fair research (published in Toying with Workers’ Rights and Fair Games?) found poverty wages and exploitative working conditions in factories producing London 2012 mascots, pin badges, uniforms and sportswear, including adidas’ Olympics goods.

Jyrki Raina, General Secretary of IndustriALL Global Union, one of the Play Fair’s coordinating organisations, says

The head of the Olympic family, the International Olympic Committee, needs to take responsibility for ending this exploitation and live up to the rhetoric of “building a better world through sport"

“Multinational sportswear companies need to do much more to ensure their goods are not products of exploitation. With hours to go before the Games begin, let’s make it absolutely clear that we want an Olympics where workers are the winners, not the losers,” adds Jyrki Raina.

Take action at:

http://www.playfair2012.org.uk/lighttheflame/

http://www.playfair2012.org.uk/what-you-can-do/fair-games/

Workers making Olympic sportswear for London 2012 for top brands and high street names including adidas and Next are being paid poverty wages, forced to work excessive overtime and threatened with instant dismissal if they complain about working conditions, according to a new report from the Play Fair 2012 campaign published today (Monday).

Last autumn researchers working on behalf of Play Fair campaign (which includes the International Trade Union Confederation, the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation and the Clean Clothes Campaign) visited ten factories – eight of which were producing Olympic goods – in China, the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Across the three countries they talked to 175 workers about their working conditions.

The report“Fair Games? Human rights of workers in Olympic 2012 supplier factories” uncovers a range of abuses, providing more evidence to increase the pressure on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to act to improve the working conditions in Olympic supply chains in the run up to Rio 2016, says Play Fair.

Play Fair and Playfair2012 have today published a report into working conditions at two chinese factories supplying merchandise for the London 2012 Olympics. The full research reports are available on the multimedia section of this website. Alternatively you can download an executive summary of the reports findings by clicking "view more" below.

The organisers of London 2012 are to introduce new measures designed to protect workers producing merchandise for this summer's Olympic Games, following evidence of exploitation uncovered by researchers working for the TUC and the Labour Behind the Label-led Playfair 2012 campaign.

As a result of the research findings published today (Thursday) - which include child labour, excessive hours, poverty pay, dangerous working conditions and an absence of independent trade unions - and subsequent negotiations with the TUC, the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) has now agreed to get tougher with the factories in its supply chains.

Last month Playfair 2012 handed LOCOG its dossier Toying with Workers' Rights, compiled using undercover researchers investigating the treatment of workers at two factories in China's Guangdong Province, which were producing London 2012 badges and Games' mascots Wenlock and Mandeville.

Following representations from the TUC and Labour Behind the Label that urgent action be taken, LOCOG has agreed to take concrete steps to ensure that workers making goods for the London Games have their rights respected. 

Jakarta, June 07 2011: Today a historic agreement has been signed regarding trade union rights in factories in Indonesia. The pact was signed by Indonesian textile, clothing and footwear unions, major supplier factories and the major sportswear brands, including Adidas, Nike and Puma. A keynote speech was delivered by Mr. Muji Handoyo, General Director of Labour Inspection, who expressed his appreciation of the efforts of the parties to ensure that freedom of association is respected.

Photo: Participants just before they sign the Protocol

Workers in Indonesia and in other countries producing sportswear are frequently prevented from organizing at sportswear supplier factories and from carrying out union activities. Recent research covering 18 factories in Indonesia found that all had taken anti-union measures[1].

 “This protocol is important because our law does not cover technical implementation of freedom of association. It also ensures brands take responsibility to ensure respect for union rights” states Lilis Mahmudah, Head of Program for SPN. “Our members have been waiting for this agreement to be concluded. It will help us in our bargaining efforts” adds Emelia Yanti, General Secretary of GSBI[2].  

Today’s agreement has been made possible by the Play Fair campaign, which since 2004 has been campaigning for global sportswear brands to take concrete steps to improve conditions in their supply chains. The campaign was represented at the signing by Oxfam Australia, the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation and the Clean Clothes Campaign.

 “The signing of this freedom of association protocol is an important first step in improving the situation for the hundreds of thousands of sportswear workers facing low wages and poor conditions” says Jeroen Merk of the CCC. “The real test, however, will be in its implementation” adds Ashling Seely of the ITGLWF.

In the run up to the London 2012 Olympics the Play Fair Campaign will be encouraging other sportswear and garment brands to sign up to the protocol.

Link to the Protocol on Freedom of Association[3]:

For more information please contact:

-Ashling Seely, ITGLWF, aseely@itglwf.org or +44 7511715277

- Jeroen Merk, CCC, jeroen@cleanclothes.org or +31 646744662          

The Global Union representing workers in the garment industry has today released a damning report on working conditions in Asian sportswear supply chains.

Says Patrick Itschert, General Secretary of the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF): “This report highlights how factories supplying multinational sports and garment brands, many of whom will be kitting out teams for the London 2012 Olympics, are routinely breaking every rule in the book when it comes to labour rights”.

The report focuses on conditions in 83 factories in Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Indonesia which together employ over 100,000 workers.

Through worker interviews and surveys researchers uncovered a litany of workers’ rights abuses, including the widespread suppression of the human right to join or form a trade union by means of harassment, bribes, the failure to renew short-term contracts and even factory closure. In Indonesia the majority of trade union officials reported that they were denied the basic facilities to enable them to adequately perform their duties. In Sri Lanka the Board of Investment promotes the use of Employee Councils as a form of worker representation, but the workers interviewed had no way of raising concerns at these Councils and unions expressed frustration that they are used to undermine true freedom of association.

Not one of the 83 factories surveyed was reported to pay a living wage, and workers in the Philippines explained that they were so destitute by the months’ end they had no choice but to pawn their ATM cards in exchange for loans. Some factories denied workers the legal minimum wage, while others linked the payment of basic wages to unachievable production targets which workers struggled desperately to meet.

Although international labour standards restrict overtime to twelve hours a week on a voluntary basis, workers told researchers they regularly work up to 100 hours of overtime per month. In many cases workers could not refuse overtime. In Sri Lanka workers who tried to leave at the end of their shift were denied permission to go and harassed by their supervisors.

Contract, agency and other precarious workers, who comprised 25% of the workforces covered, were found to be particularly likely to suffer exploitation. Although these workers were paid even less than their permanent counterparts they told researchers they feared they would lose their job if they complained.

Concludes Mr. Itschert: “The multinational companies sourcing from these factories need to live up to their rhetoric and ensure that every single workplace in their supply chains complies with national law and international labour standards”.  

An international conference organised by Play Fair and the Building Workers’ International is opening today in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Conference will launch the BWI Campaign around the World Cup 2014, as well as the Olympic Games 2016 Play Fair Campaign, and will formalise the strategies and action plans around both campaigns.

For the first time in history, the world’s two biggest sports events are being held in the same country, within two years of each other. While countries and cities all around the world are rightly proud of hosting these big sports events, the workers (mainly located in Asia), who are making the merchandise for the events, such as T-shirts,, bags, shoes, stationery and other items, are too often victims of abuses and work in indecent conditions. “Is it fair to go a mega sports event and pay a high price for a t-shirt that has been made by an underpaid worker in a sweatshop on the other side of the world?” asks Play Fair.  

As the frenzy grows over the upcoming FIFA World Cup in South Africa, there is a part of the World Cup that won’t be broadcast on TV. The Play Fair Alliance today asked FIFA to respond to the report “Missed the Goal for Workers: the Reality of Soccer Ball Stitchers”, released by US-based NGO International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) on 7 June.

In the run-up to the February Vancouver Winter Olympic Games, an international coalition of worker rights organisations is releasing its rating of commitments made by major sportswear brands to eliminate sweatshop abuses in their global supply chains. The ratings are based on the responses of the sportswear companies, including Nike, adidas, Puma and others, to a series of demands put forward by the coalition on the eve of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Based on interviews with over 320 sportswear workers in China, India, Thailand and Indonesia, as well as reviews of company and industry profiles, published and unpublished reports, newspaper articles, web sites, and factory advertisements Play Fair researchers found that substantial violations of worker rights are still the norm for workers in the sportswear industry.

This report outlines research undertaken in the winter of 2006/07 into just four of the companies awarded licenses to produce official Olympic goods and reveals some very disturbing scenes.