June 11, 2007

TORONTO -- A new report released today by the PlayFair 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. 

Detailed research inside China into working conditions in four factories making Olympics bags, headgear, stationery and other products also revealed that factory owners are falsifying employment records, and forcing workers to lie about their wages and working conditions.

Since the Athens 2004 games, the PlayFair Campaign has been lobbying the International Olympics Committee (IOC) to require adherence to minimum labour standards as a condition of receiving Olympic licensing contracts. So far, the IOC has refused to do so. 

“Licensing of the Olympics brand is a major source of income for the IOC and national Olympics committees, and it brings shame on the whole Olympics movement that such severe violations of international labour standards are taking place in Olympics-licensed factories,” says Guy Ryder, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, a PlayFair Campaign partner along with the global textile union ITGLWF and the Clean Clothes Campaign.

In Canada, the Maquila Solidarity Network and the Canadian Labour Congress have been calling on the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) to adopt ethical standards for makers of Olympic-branded products.

Although the new PlayFair report does not include information on VANOC-licensed Olympics products, it does point to systemic problems in Chinese factories that should be of concern to the Olympics movement in Canada and internationally, especially since VANOC-licensed goods are also produced in China.

On June 5, VANOC announced it was adopting an ethical licensing policy for Olympics-licensed clothes and other products for the Beijing and 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games.

“We welcome VANOC’s recent efforts to address worker rights issues with their licensees,” says Bob Jeffcott, Policy Analyst with the Toronto-based Maquila Solidarity Network. “But this report demonstrates what can happen if VANOC’s program isn’t stringent or transparent enough to identify and correct worker rights violations. VANOC should pay particular attention to its wages and hours of work requirements, and to reports that auditors are being duped by factory management.”