Play Fair at the Olympics
As the Olympic games draw closer, the finest athletes in the world are preparing themselves for the effort of a lifetime. Many will set new world records. They will run faster, throw farther, and leap higher than ever before. And, as the contests are fought and medals are distributed, the corporate gods of the modern Olympics will be in close attendance. Nike, along with Adidas, Reebok, Fila, Puma, ASICS, and Mizuno, are investing billions of dollars in advertising and branding for the Olympics. For these corporate giants of the sportswear industry, the Athens games provide an opportunity to expand profits and build markets through an association with sporting success and the Olympian ideal. While the world’s media spend two weeks focusing on the struggle for sporting success, away from the cameras thousands of workers- mostly women in the developing world – will be engaged in a different type of struggle. They are employed to produce the tracksuits, trainers, vests and team uniforms – and they too are breaking world records for the global sportswear industry: working ever -faster for ever- longer peroids of time under arduous conditions for poverty-level wages, to produce more goods and profit they will never see. For them there are no medals, rewards or recognition from the industry that they service”- says a new report entitled “Fair Play at the Olympics ” commissioned by- Oxfam Community Aid Abroad, The Clean Clothes Campaign and Global Unions. This report aims to put pressure on the Olympic Movement to take responsibility for the “sweatshop conditions” under which Olympic sportswear is made. Sarah Morris spoke to Oxfam’s Community Campaign Manager for New South Wales Margaret Di Nicola.