A union was formed at MSP in November 2003 when work-ers could no longer tolerate the very bad working conditions. These included constantly increasing quotas with no pay increase, compulsory overtime, poor quality drink-ing water, verbal abuse from supervisors, and daily body searches that at times amounted to sexual harassment.

The CCC International Secretariat, working closely with the French CCC, pressured both brands to enter into talks with CLIST (Centre for Labor Information Service and Training, the Thai organization supporting the union activ-ists), and the local union at the MSP Sportswear factory. The French CCC distributed 7,000 protest letters and 9,000 campaign postcards to put extra pressure on De-cathlon. However Decathlon failed to react in any constructive way. Indeed, CCC regards their role as disgraceful and disappointing. However, a great deal of publicity was generated in the French press and by the letter-writ-ing campaign which certainly helped to resolve the case.

On March 18, 2005, a meeting took place between CLIST and the other brand, Nike. Here an agreement was reach-ed where all three dismissed union activists were offered their jobs back, including full back pay to the date of dismissal for two of the workers. The third worker accepted settlement money which came to a higher amount than the back pay.

The parties also agreed to develop "Terms of Engage-ment" with input from all concerned: workers, management, buyers and Thai labor officials. The Fair Labor Association (FLA), involved in the case after a complaint was filed by the union against FLA member company Nike, is to develop these Terms of Engagement further. They will cover the protection and reinstatement of the workers, their reintegration, and any follow-up work that needs to be done. They are to include rules of behavior for all parties concerned (MSP management, external parties, brands, dismissed workers, general MSP workers, and any other workers' organizations or workers' representatives at MSP). A neutral third party will be identified by the FLA, with the consent of all parties, to facilitate a sustainable solution to prevent the recurrence of labor disputes at MSP. Several rounds of negiotations between the different parties haven taken place since then, and CLIST reports thus far reasonable progress is being made.

While the CCC welcomes the steps taken by Nike to re-solve this situation in their supplier factory in Thailand, at the same time Nike can be criticized for unnecessarily prolonging the dispute. There were numerous opportunities for Nike to intervene by enforcing its code of conduct and insisting that MSP reinstate the dismissed workers. Instead, the dismissed workers and their union col-leagues still working in the factory faced great hardship in what can only be seen as an attempt to break the union. The CCC hopes that Nike will learn from this dispute and take its own code of conduct more seriously.