WELCOME TO THE ARCHIVE (1994-2014) OF THE MAQUILA SOLIDARITY NETWORK. For current information on our ongoing work on the living wage, women's labour rights, freedom of association, corporate accountability and Bangladesh fire and safety, please visit our new website, launched in October, 2015: www.maquilasolidarity.org
Before the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the Play Fair at the Olympics Campaign – the biggest international worker rights mobilization of its kind ever undertaken – brought the world’s attention to the underside of the sportswear industry: the abysmal working conditions endured by the young women and men, and children, who make the shoes, jerseys, footballs and other items in contract factories and subcontract facilities around the world.
In anticipation of the Beijing Summer Olympics, in the spring of 2008 MSN wrote a paper for the Play Fair Campaign entitled “Clearing the Hurdles: Steps to Improving Wages and Working Conditions in the Global Sportswear Industry.” The paper found that substantial violations of worker rights were still the norm for workers in the sportswear industry.
Clearing the Hurdles identifies four central hurdles that need to be overcome by the sportswear industry to make real progress on the litany of worker rights violations plaguing the industry.
These are:
• Lack of respect for freedom of association and the right to bargain collectively;
• Insecurity of employment caused by industry restructuring; and
• Abuse of short-term labour contracting and other forms of precarious employment.
• poverty wages
Prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, MSN coordinated the Play Fair Campaign in Canada, which included a public forum in Vancouver on our proposal to the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the adoption of an ethical licensing policy. MSN also supported the Play Fair Campaign leading up to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England.
On July 31, the Beijing Organizing Committee of the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG) announced the results of its investigation into Play Fair's findings of child labour and gross violations of adult workers' rights in certain factories producing licensed goods for the 2008 Olympics. While BOCOG confirmed some of Play Fair's findings, it neglected others and failed to commit to acting positively to improve workers' conditions, choosing instead to cut and run from factories implicated in Play Fair's original report.
A new report released today by the Play Fair 2008 Campaign exposes gross violations of workers’ rights by several Chinese factories supplying goods under license for the Beijing Olympics, including employment of children, adults being paid half the legal minimum wage, and employees forced to work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, in unsafe and unhealthy conditions.
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