Dear NikeWatch Supporter

In this edition we report on how most sportsbrands have dodged your messages and the major offside! report recommendations, we update you on the growing frustration of ex-Spotec workers still waiting for the fair and transparent hiring process that adidas promised, and we introduce you to a book examining transnational anti-sweatshop campaigning.

 
In 2006 around the time of the World Cup Soccer tournament and following the release of the report Offside! Labour Rights and Sportswear production in Asia, people from around the world wrote thousands of messages to Sportsbrands asking them to improve workers human rights.

In January this year, Executive Director of Oxfam Australia, Andrew Hewett, wrote to 10 major sportsbrands asking them to address the concerns of consumers and citizens regarding the treatment of workers making their goods. Thousands of these messages were attached to each of Andrew’s letters.

Most of the brands responded in February saying that they are taking action to improve conditions in their supplier factories. These actions, however, are a long way off addressing the systemic abuse of workers rights that occurs in the supply chains of these companies. Only Puma and adidas responded to the nine major recommendations of the Offside report. Mizuno, Asics, Lotto, Umbro and Pentland all provided short, standard responses and dodged responding to all the major recommedations. Nike and New Balance have not yet responded.

We will be posting the responses from the brands along with Oxfam Australia’s assessment of their responses on the Dialog with Sportsbrands page of our website in April.

In his letter in January, Andrew Hewett restated the nine recommendations of the offside report and asked brands to provide information about how they are making concrete changes in the following areas:

1. Confidential and accessible means for workers to report exploitation and abuse; 
2. Independent education and training for workers concerning their rights at work; 
3. Further transparency regarding company supply chains and efforts to improve conditions; 
4. Purchasing practices which allow suppliers to respect labour standards (including stable business relationships and reasonable prices and delivery times); 
5. A framework agreement between the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF) and the World Federation Sporting Goods Industry (WFSGI) to facilitate freedom of association and collective bargaining; 
6. Prioritising retaining unionised factories in the companies' supply chain; 
7. Banning, or severely restricting, the employment of workers on short-term contracts; 
8. If factories close, ensuring that workers' receive their full entitlement to severance pay and take steps to help ensure there is no discrimination against worker activists if they apply for jobs with other suppliers; and
9. Not increasing your company’s sourcing in countries and free trade zones where the right to freedom of association does not have legal force. Any new production should be in countries and zones where this right has legal effect.

Adidas and Puma were the only brands to address each of these recommendations.

There is growing confusion and disillusionment amongst the ex-Spotec workers who are still waiting to get new work making adidas after losing their jobs at the end of 2006.

Over the past months, five hundred supporters have called on adidas to improve the human rights of workers who produce adidas’ products. Many of these letters have called on adidas to uphold their commitment to a fair and transparent process in prioritising hiring the ex-Spotec workers into the new Ching Luh adidas supplier in Indonesia.

While we wait to hear back from adidas, we understand that the Ching Luh factory has now received machinery and may be ready to start production next month. We understand that none of the union officials from Spotec have been called for interviews at Ching Luh.

If you haven’t already, please write to adidas calling on them to ensure that ex-Spotec workers are hired into Ching Luh.

Ethel C. Brooks takes a critical look at transnational anti-sweatshop campaigning in Unraveling the Garment Industry: Transnational Organizing and Women's Work.

Don Wells, who teaches in the Labour Studies Programme and Political Science Department in Ontario, provides a review of the book. Here is an excerpt from his review:

"Most of the world's 30 million garment workers toil in Dickensian misery. The garment industry is also the primary focus of transnational anti-sweatshop campaigns to reverse the "race to the bottom" in global labour standards".

Read the rest of Don Well's review.