Oxfam want fair play for Asia’s sport brand workers

AS top sportswear brands prepare to showcase their wares at this year’s FIFA World Cup in Germany, across Asia, workers who attempt to unionise are being sacked and threatened with violence, Oxfam International said yesterday.

A report Oxfam’s report, Offside! Labour Rights and Sportswear Production in Asia, found that workers making clothes, shoes and other goods for global sports brands have been sacked or threatened when they have organised unions to lobby for better pay and conditions.

The majority of Asian sportswear workers are women from poor communities, many supporting children and families.

Oxfam says that none of the big sports brands are doing enough to solve the problem.

“In 2004 the Play Fair Alliance, including Oxfam, the Clean Clothes Campaign and Global Unions, challenged the industry to improve labour conditions, but sadly little has changed. Workers’ right to form unions is crucial to achieving the big improvements needed on the factory floor but many brands are still not willing to play ball,” says Kelly Dent, Oxfam International spokesperson and the report’s co-author.

Oxfam’s year-long survey of 12 sporting labels found that FILA, a major US-based sponsor in world tennis, was bottom of the league and had failed to address serious labour abuses in its supply chain. In one case, a FILA sport shoe supplier in Indonesia with an appalling record of worker abuse closed suddenly and without warning.

A year later, none of its 3,500 workers have received any back-pay or severance pay. FILA refuses to reveal its role in the closure or take responsibility for workers.

“Unless workers are free to bargain collectively for better pay and conditions, companies like FILA will continue to get away with this kind of outrageous behaviour. Professional footballers are represented by players’ associations, sportswear workers should be allowed to form unions,” Dent said.

Oxfam says that Reebok has done the most to uphold sportswear workers’ rights in Asia.

However, performance of the industry as a whole remains poor.

For example, an adidas supplier in Indonesia recently sacked 30 union workers who took part in a legal strike for more pay so that they could meet dramatic rises in the cost of living. Workers receive as little as 60 cents an hour for their labour.