June 29,
2006 The Life
of Football Factory Workers in Thailand
Thai Labour Campaign
New
Thai study reveals workers at football factories
don’t earn enough to live in dignity
Junya
Lek Yimprasert
For immediate release
Amsterdam, June 30, 2006
While sportswear companies rake in their profits
and World Cup players and fans enjoy the matches
in Germany, the Thai women who put together footballs
for major brands such as adidas earn so little they
can do little more than buy food.
A report released today by the Thai Labour Campaign
(TLC) shows that workers at Molten (Thailand), a
Japanese/Thai joint venture company producing the
adidas Teamgeist (team spirit) football, in use
during the current World Cup matches, earn as little
as 173 baht per day (3.6 euros). Just three basic
meals per day comprise 77% of their wages. barely
get by: a 41-year-old woman working at the factory
for 18 years told researchers she works fulltime
and earns 9.700 baht (201 euros) per month. Absolute
basic needs (food, transport, shared accommodation,
personal care and care of one child) comes to around
8000 baht per month (166 euros). The Teamgeist ball
retails for approximately 100 euros.
The TLC report entitled The Life of Football
Factory Workers in Thailand http://www.cleanclothes.org/ftp/Life_football_workers_of_thailand.pdf
also reports on wages at the Mikasa Industries
factory, where workers producing Mikasa (Japanese)
footballs also earn poverty wages.
The report echoes the findings of other recent
research studies into the failure of the sports
goods industry to ensure a decent living for the
mainly women workers who make the products that
are the foundation of the industry's huge profits.
[For example, Adidas Group, having pumped 142
million euros into marketing around the World
Cup, estimates a 30% leap in football merchandise,
with sales on football products alone projected
at 1.2 billion euros this year (adidas spokesperson
Anne Putz cited in Just-style.com, June 5, 2006)].
Oxfam International (OI) recently released Offside!
Labour rights and sportswear production in Asia,
http://www.oxfam.org/en/files/offside_labor_report/download
which also reported that poverty wages were prevalent
in the sportswear industry in such countries as
Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Thailand, taking to task
brand leaders, including the main sponsors of
World Cup teams, for failing to raise industry
standards.
New research published by the Christian Initiative
Romero (CIR), a member of the CCC coalition in
Germany, also found that wages at factories producing
for brands including Nike, Reebok, and adidas
in El Salvador and Honduras are also abysmally
low. An additional study commissioned by German
CCC member Südwind Institute für Ökumene
in Indonesia found that in four out of five sportswear
factories researched, workers said they could
not live off of their wages.
"Having a child, getting sick or buying
a TV - these are all luxury items that for many
of the football factory workers we spoke with,
things they can only dream about," noted
Junya Lek Yimprasert, of the TLC. "Workers
who organize to push for better wages are aggressively
harassed. Companies sourcing at these factories
have a lot to do to improve the situation."
The CCC calls upon the global sportswear industry
to pay workers a wage that allows them to live
in dignity, and take positive action to ensure
respect for trade union rights.
"The evidence is overwhelming - the lives
of workers in the industry and their families
are very negatively shaped by the poverty wages
they're paid," noted CCC researchers Jeroen
Merk. "These people work hard and have to
take out loans to cover their basic needs, while
millions are spent on sponsoring and advertisements.
Companies can and should organize their supply
chains differently, and exhibit true Teamgeist.
We are convinced football fans throughout the
world also support this."
For more information on The Life of Football
Factory Workers in Thailand, contact the TLC (e-mail:
lek@thailabour.org
, Tel. +66 16175491.
-end-
The Clean Clothes Campaign is an international
network of trade unions and NGOs that aims to
improve conditions and empower workers in the
global garment industry.
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