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Can Vancouver Fend off Olympics Sweatshops?

China's abuses 'a warning bell' for 2010.

By Tom Sandborn, 20 Jun 2007, TheTyee.ca

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Playfair protest at the Athens Games, 2004.

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Imagine being a 13-year-old girl in a factory. You're forced to work 12 or more hours a day, sometimes seven days a week in a clamorous space full of dangerous equipment and dirty air. You could lose three days' pay for too much time in the bathroom, you are paid less than half the legal minimum wage in your country. The work can leave your hands bleeding, your throat and lungs full of fibre, filth and lint. You must find a way to buy your own gloves and mask from the pittance you earn. Try and quit without management's permission, and you'll be deprived of a month's pay.

Now you have some idea what it's like to work in a Chinese factory producing goods for the upcoming Beijing Olympics, according to a report issued June 10.

No Medal for the Olympics on Labour Rights, a research document produced for Playfair 2008, an international umbrella group of unions and NGOs, takes a close look at four suppliers to the upcoming Olympics in China, and finds that they are guilty of serious labour abuses, including child labour, excessive and forced overtime, unreasonable fines, harsh disciplinary measures and wage rates well below the legal minimum.

In addition, researchers found evidence factory brass were forcing workers to lie to inspectors sent to investigate. In one case, a researcher posed as a newly hired worker, while other findings are based on confidential, off-site interviews with workers.

Could production for Vancouver's 2010 Olympics be similarly tainted? There's a strong chance, say critics, unless the local organizers develop more comprehensive, transparent and effective countermeasures than are currently in place.

Without improvements in 2010's ethical purchasing policy, labour watchdogs say, Vancouver's Olympics could end up implicated in child labour and other human rights offenses.

'Warning bell'

"This report is a warning bell for VANOC and the Olympics movement," said Bob Jeffcott, a spokesman for Toronto's Maquila Solidarity Network (MSN), one of the Canadian groups involved in the Llanfair 2008 report. (Full disclosure: this reporter has done volunteer work over the years for the MSN.)

Kevin Thomas, another MSN staff member, said worker abuse is endemic in the sports apparel industry in China and around the world.

Jeffcott and Thomas pointed out that many of the commemorative uniforms, hats, and souvenir items for the upcoming 2010 Games in Vancouver were likely to be sourced in China, and called for swift action to guarantee that Olympic products not be bought from sweatshops.

Jeffcott and Thomas both said 2010 organizers had made some promising first steps to prevent complicity in worker rights abuses, but more needs to be done.

"To give credit where it's due," said Jeffcott, "VANOC is doing more than the International Olympics Committee on this front. We commend the Vancouver organizers for their initial policy and process moves. We have been in conversation with VANOC and some of the elements of their code for licensees are good.

"But the code only covers licensees," Jeffcott said, "and not the thousands of suppliers who will be part of the Games supply chain. We hope that they develop something with real force to control sourcing both from licensees and from suppliers, something that doesn't have the current code loophole on hours of work and that addresses freedom of association, which is a huge issue in China. The code needs language on requiring a living wage as well, and we'll only really be able to make a judgment when we see how it is all implemented."

Licensees are companies that are permitted to use the Olympic logo on their products. Suppliers produce non-logoed goods for Olympic use.

Assurances from VANOC

Ann Duffy, VANOC's sustainability program director, responded to Tyee questions about what steps her organization was taking to prevent involvement in sourcing goods made under sweatshop conditions with the following e-mail.

"As described in VANOC's 2005-2006 Sustainability Report, VANOC has established guidelines and requirements (standard of care) for licensees through the Code of Conduct and for suppliers through our Sustainability Procurement policy -- together these make up the core BuySmart Program. For suppliers, VANOC has established and is currently implementing its procurement policy and will later this year finalize the audit process for suppliers. VANOC has already defined sustainability attributes and criteria for selected bids for products and services. The sustainability attributes and requirements in contracts are substantiated with on-going reporting."

VANOC's 2005-2006 Sustainability Report is available here online.

Duffy declined -- "out of respect for our 3d party partner" -- to identify the for-profit auditing firm that will be responsible for inspecting factories supplying the 2010 Olympics, although she did say that information would be available at some time in the future.

'Learning to fool auditors'

The Playfair 2008 report alleges that some of the Chinese factories investigated had procedures in place to thwart auditing of their labour practices, including punishments for workers who tell auditors the truth about low pay, harsh disciplinary regimes and under age workers, and cash rewards for those who lie to off shore inspectors.

"Clearly, factory management is learning how to fool auditors by falsifying records and coaching workers to lie," said Jeffcott. "Checklist audits and interviews inside the factory are not enough to get at the truth."

Jeffcott emphasized that public disclosure of factory locations by all licensees and suppliers would be an important step toward transparency in Olympic sourcing, and expressed his hope that VANOC would be willing to provide that information to the public. Factory site disclosure is an important tool, he said, to help prevent and correct the abuse of workers by suppliers to events like the Olympics.

VANOC's Duffy told the Hamilton Spectator on June 19 that her organization has no plans to demand that 2010 licensees reveal their factory locations,

"Some companies are very comfortable [with revealing the information], others have competitive advantage issues. This is very new for an organizing committee," she said.

David Hurford, communications director for Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan, was confident the issue of worker rights was high on VANOC's radar. He said Vancouver had an opportunity in 2010 to set a new standard in these matters.

Raymond Louie, Vision party Vancouver city councillor, said his party pushed for a resolution committing the city to transparency and accountability in Olympic matters, but the NPA majority, led by the mayor, voted against it.

Louie and COPE city councillor David Cadman noted the city has an ethical and sustainable purchasing policy.

"We can only hope ... VANOC will adhere to the policies of the host city," said Cadman. "But I'm not naïve. I suspect that there will not be procedures in place that can guarantee we'll block all sweat shop products. All we can do is be vigilant and make it known to VANOC and the sponsors that we hope and expect that the 2010 Games will be truly ethical and sustainable.

"If not, then let the buyer and distributor beware. Unethical purchases will eventually come to light and will have consequences for the organizations responsible."

'Hot money' for sweatshops

Bill Saunders, president of the Vancouver and District Labour Council, had an opportunity to talk with Chinese trade unionists in Beijing last year about some of these issues, when his group sent a delegation to China.

"What the officers of the Beijing Municipal Federation of Trade Unions told us," he said, "was that the worst abuses were found in factories owned by foreign capital. They said that most breaches of labour rights came when foreign 'hot money' came into the Chinese economy.

"We need to criticize abuses where they occur," said Saunders, "but we also need to be sure our criticisms have pinpoint accuracy. I am wary about China bashing, which is common these days."

The world sports footwear and apparel industry was valued at US $74 billion in 2005.

Related Tyee stories:

[Tyee]

Tom Sandborn is a regular contributor to The Tyee with a focus on health policy and labour issues.

20 Comments:

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  • Grumpy

    4 years ago

    But gee whiz, don't we need sweatshops?

    Sweatshops are the foundation of globalization, slave wages abroad will certainly teach those commie unions and union leaders that manufactured goods can be had at fire-sale prices!

    Gee Whiz, how will Walmart and all those $ dollar stores survive without sweatshops?

    And China, the grand central of sweatshops, well we can't offend them can't we. If we do well we can't trade with them and get all those cheap sweatshop goodies that we really do not need.

    The Olympics (TM) don't care about sweatshops as the all mighty dollar is their god. to hell with sports, let make a buck off all those grunts who are anteing up millions of dollars to see glimpses of games that they will soon forget.

    Yeah sweat shops are important to our economy, because soon we will be all working in sweat shops; um well not all of us, the elites will be laughing all the way to the bank as always!

    Long live sweatshops!

  • alive

    4 years ago

    Hum bug

    Another good reason to avoid anything to do with those Olympics!

    We would have been so much better off if Vancouver had withdrawn and let some other sucker - city have all the problems.

    Only the very rich will have any benefits from this venture, the rest of us could watch it on TV, and it would be equally as good if it was held in a place far away.

    Personally I fail to understand this fascination with people who have developed into freaks of nature in order to achieve nearly impossible stunts!

    Also I fail to see where any nation can claim glory because a recently adopted citizen makes the stand?
    Another case of media frenzy!

  • Working Man

    4 years ago

    We're Better

    I am so glad that we, lily white, western countries never had sweat shops like these in our progression to G-8 status. I mean, those poor Chinese girls would be much better off if they had no jobs at all, wouldn't they?

    And of course, as a morally superior westerner, it is my right to pontificate and tell developing nations What is Right for Them as I sit in my confortable den, typing on a computer system that cost a couple of years' wages for the exploted in the third world, which like most pontificating Westerners, I have never seen.

    Finally, I plan to pontificate about other human rights violations in that Third World that I have never seen but I will do it after I return from my vacation in Hawaii, which I really deserve because Vancouver is just, like, you know, soooo stressful 'cause of the traffic tie up due to the Canada line construction.

    And in closing, the fact that we treat our own First Nations like crap gives us Westerners the right to pontificate about China, which being an arrogant patriachy, would tell you to f-off over an article like this.

    Imagine such arrogance!

  • Working Memory

    4 years ago

    Shell companies

    The local Olympic organizing committee in Sydney Australia promised to be as vigilant regarding the 2000 Summer Games as VANOC is doing today. Unfortunately, producers and suppliers of Olympic merchandise simply hid their illegal practices behind "shell" companies in an effort to thwart detection.

    The plan worked because by the time local garment manufacturing associations figured out what was going on they had already exhausted their time and resources bringing it to the public's attention, which meant they had "zero" dollars left to enforce the Australian government's findings arrived at through long and drawn out legal battles in the ramp up to 2000.

    Quite literally, Australian garment manufacturers proved that Olympic merchandise was made in sweatshops, but they had no money or time left to do anything about it. The IOC won again on the back of the community.

    It happens like this in all Olympic regions. For details and solutions you can read Helen Lenskyj's book, "The Best Olympics Ever?" or my book, "LeverageOlympicMomentum.com"

    Now that "The Vancouver Sun" is the official local Olympic newspaper, issues like this will be harder, if not impossible to follow. The IOC and VANOC want Vancouverites to give up and give in. Don't do it.

    Share information like this with people around the world. If you keep it a secret they win, and you lose.

    Maurice Cardinal

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Well working man

    There are, among us, some who have been pretty damn critical of things here at home as well.

    I don't think that gives me a right to pontificate but, I happen to know several people from China and India and they tell me - backed by very persuasive facts and figures - that things for the average Chinese and Indian citizen are actually far worse today than was the case 20 years ago before the miracle of the sweatshop made the establishment of a Chinese and Indian management and ownership elite possible in the few centres where the so-called miracles are happening. Not only that, but I think you’ll find that virtually every product recall (in the toy industry) that happens every year in the USA for health and safety reasons is of a product manufactured in CHINA.

    Furthermore, if you check the rate of serious errors in complex medical radiograph interpretation done in India, you’ll also discover that it is much higher than radiographs read here in Canada. You get, often, pretty much what you pay for.

    I don't know if boycotting the products of sweatshops manufacturing Olympic kitsch will help the real victims of global capitalism of course. But pretending that the lot of the vast majority of the citizens in those countries is improving as a result of the system is just plain wrong.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    And, working man, I forgot to mention

    The deaths and illness in several countries which have been linked to drugs and other personal products like toothpaste to which Diethylene glycol has been substituted for glycerin.

    Turns out those products came from, wait for it, globalized factories in....China.

    Is that arrogant enough for you?

    References:
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/17/health/17poison.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1182354301-ge9zDBApCw/qxlmj9iPTww

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/02/us/02toothpaste.html?ex=1182484800&en=26f110ed2f19f5e7&ei=5070

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/business/worldbusiness/22toothpaste.html?ex=1182484800&en=7cd5af67309ae6a5&ei=5070

  • Grumpy

    4 years ago

    The lowest common denominator

    Globalization is about paying wages to the lowest common denominator, nothing more. To hell with good paying jobs in Canada, while we take off tariffs from sweatshops paying next to nothing. Tariffs actually helped stop the spread of sweatshops!

    how about this, is the Chinese sweatshops nothing more than a long tern strategy to denude the greedy west of vital small manufacturing? In 25 years we will be next to naked, losing people from important technical/mechanical while creating nebulous 'service McJobs', paying McWages!

    Have our McQuisling political leaders sold down the river for short term McProfits!

  • freebear

    4 years ago

    Sad

    Sad that apparrel for Canada's Olympic (oops)team members is not being made in Canada!

    Oh I used the word Olympic (oops) in the previous sentence and this one-the copyright police may be close behind!

    Besides TV coverage, the Olympics (oops) are a 2 week sports orgy for the wealthy (or those that scrimped and saved), and benefit real estate speculators.

    Does not allowing youth (under 19 years of age) to volunteer for the 2010 Winter Olympics (oops)mean not allowing child labour?

    If the Olympics (oops) is such a buiness (protecting its assets) why do governments need to fund/subsidize them?

    Make the whole thing a private affair and that way the politicians would pay for their own event tickets (or receive a gift from some corporate sponsor), and not get to nosh and smooze at the taxpayers' expense!

    Sweatshops are just a by product of greed (on someone's part) sadly.

    So it goes........

  • Working Man

    4 years ago

    No Point Debation a Zealot but....

    G West, have you actually ever been to China? I have many times, and I can tell you that the stardard of living for millions of people, tens of millions, has hugely improved over the last 15 or so years.

    The first time I was there the streets were a sea of bicycles; now they are jammed with cars. More than 485,000 motor vehicles were bought for private use LAST MONTH. Maybe this is not a good thing but it sure is a barometer of wealth creation. Most of the vehicles being sold are mini cars which are not bought by fat cats.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/07/business/worldbusiness/07fobriefs-CARSALESRISE_BRF.html?ex=1338868800&en=7049dfb361e0081e&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

    In 1990 most people lived in traditional walled compounds call hoottangs. As romantic as we Superior Westerners like to think these digs are, they are draughty, cold and death traps in an earthquake. Now people are moving into high rise apartments in droves.

    In 1990 the shops were packed with people looking. Now they are packed with people buying. China's middle class is growing in leaps and bounds, with at least 12% being so and growing. That is 140 million people.

    I love the place, it is so dynamic and optomistic that if I didn't have kids I'd be setting up business there right now.

    Go tell the average Chinese that going back to the farm is good for them while you sit in your comfortable house in Vancouver and he'll tell you to take a long walk off a short pier.

  • BC Dude

    4 years ago

    A great sweatshop

    A great sweatshop documentary "China Blue"all about Wal-Mart's dedicated owned and operated slave factories for "Levi Jeans"!
    Wal-Mart owned by the Walton Family and all together are worth in excess of $500 billion dirty dollars!
    TILMA will do the same to Canadians as S Harper (the idealist) is planning to bring it into law right across Canada.
    In the Atlantic Provinces it's called ATLANTICA but there they the citizens are out on the streets organizing against this draconian piece of legislation!
    Here in BC we seem to sit back and wait for it to affect us personally.
    If it's so great for us the people why is it so secret?

  • G West

    4 years ago

    YEP

    And nope, I don't agree. Huge parts of the population that used to have decent health care now have none.

    I have friends who've just spent two years teaching in rural China - both of whom have just returned to Canada with serious chronic respiratory problems - who were in perfect health when they left here.

    I have a good friend, Chinese btw, who teaches at Peking University and who is experiencing an almost equal disregard in her field of intellectual inquiry as she did during the cultural revolution. Talk to some academics and intellectuals and not just the folks who are buying all those cars.

    Stay in the big manufacturing cities and be impressed with the high-rises and the consumer culture if you like. But if you actually find out what conditions are like in the places where these people work and live in slave-like squalor (and their factories are frequently NOT the ones the Chinese picture in their promo bumpf either) - and you'll soon change your mind.

    Read what the few dissidents who've managed to get out of China and into print in the West say.

    You'll soon change your mind. All that glitters is NOT gold.

  • dorothy

    4 years ago

    smell the sorghum

    Well, it is clear that we all know what the dirty backside is of the shiny successes we are so fond of reading about.

    Why is, it, then, that we cannot take for granted, that if Walmart and others of their ilk set up shop in our fair city, they will shrivel and die? I will not set foot inside their doors. Will others? Will those who write here and express their dismay? Seeing that Canada has oil and steel and supposedly lots of venture capital (at that time I did not know most of it went into casinos), I spent my first ten years in Canada hunting for a can-opener made here. If I had found one, I would have paid what it cost, but I never did.

    I am just surprised that anyone is marvelling at the existence of sweatshops in China. Did anyone think the ruthlessly feudal thinking had changed overnight, or even at all? Has anyone here worked with people coming directly from China, or a Chinese cultural setting? I have, and I am not surprised…

    To working man and his question:

    “those poor Chinese girls would be much better off if they had no jobs at all, wouldn't they?”

    I would say: No, they would have been better off not to have been born into a situation of serving as a cheap commodity, on the backs of which others could pretend to understand the finer things in life. Quality over quantity. As long as we prescribe to the religion of it being OK that some people grovel in the dirt, because it’s better than having absolutely nothing, and it means we get everything cheaper, we are treating everybody like crap, including those generations who are brought up to accept such ‘standards’.

    Everybody gets to shine, or nobody shines in reality. That must be our standard, else we will suffocate in our own filth. You can choose whether you will take that literally or metaphorically. It works either way.

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Well put dorothy

    That does deserve a Best Comment! And no, no Walmart, no Nike and no products with solvents made in China for me either - as long as I can determine the country of origin from the list of ingredients.

    Sadly, not often enough.

    Too bad about the Haitian children who died after ingesting medicine made with a deadly solvent labeled as glycerin. It happened about 11 years ago btw.

    You think we'd just be hearing it now if the victims had been Canadian or American?

  • southdeltawalker

    4 years ago

    Library Power-"China Blue"

    We have to get films like "China Blue" into our library systems.

    Every library has a suggestion for purchase page. Start using it...start with a suggestion to purchase "China Blue"-here is the link for more info. http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/china.html
    Thank you.

  • Jim Van Rassel

    4 years ago

    Vanoc Olympic size Yacht-the last straw

    Vanoc Olympic size Yacht-the last straw
    ROBBINS calls on British Columbians to legally avoid taxes wherever possible Jun 21, 2007

    Glen P. Robbins, President and CEO of ROBBINS Sce Research (1998) announces that ROBBINS 'insiders' report that Vanoc has "either purchased or leased a multi-million dollar Yacht for the express purpose of entertaining elites associated with the Olympic Games." This yacht purchase/lease plus major upgrades was not reported in the just released budget.
    Sources tell ROBBINS that the purchase or lease of the multi million dollar Yacht took place "over one year ago".
    This news comes on the heel of a recent CKNW news report indicating that nearly 50 million dollars of taxpayer's money has been set aside for bonuses.
    Robbins now takes the position that anyone who reads this information ought to pass on to friends and associates, to commence a campaign to "whenever and however within the context of a reasonable person's understanding of the law, to take every effort to NOT pay provincial taxes".
    Concludes ROBBINS "clearly the game of politics and even a residual understanding of the expectations of democracy would suggest that this province under this leader (among others) exists exclusively to rob people of their tax dollars and retain these dollars for their family, friends, associates, girlfriends, boyfriends, misstresses, concubines, drinking buddies, and other associated criminals, and miscreants with a minimum provision for paid social services. "It's a con job, its corrupt, and we should stop giving them money whenever, however, wherever this is legally possibly." ROBBINS researchers and sponsor Jim Van Rassel of Coquitlam suggests that "we are at the end of our ability to put up with this lowering of ethical standards in government. Taxpayers are at the end of their rope, a rope which would be more fitting around the Premier's political neck."
    "The Premier seems more intent on taking money for his friends Olympic party and yachting, on selling long held assets of the province, including endowment lands for aboriginal chiefs and generally treating taxpayer money like it is his own." (how far from the real truth is this?)
    Both Robbins and Van Rassel want this Premier out of office fast, and demand that changes be made with equal dispatch with Vanoc including full transparency and accountability. Mr. Pattison, where are you on all of this?
    If taxpayers stop volunteering payments to the provincial government they will begin to take more seriously the level of charges coming at them.

    -30-

    Glen P Robbins 604-942-3757 Jim Van Rassel 604-328-5398

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Interesting

    Thanks Jim; and thanks to you too Glen.

    Keep digging. I think there are some interesting facts buried out in the Callaghan Valley as well.

  • BC Dude

    4 years ago

    I'm 100% behind any action

    I'm 100% behind any action to get rid of G Campbell and his throng of alickers (they must be really proud of themselves) for following their leader as they are all guilty of selling out OUR BC! And for what? "Follow the Money"
    July 1st 2007 Canada Day is a great day to organize against these arrogant thugs!
    I would hope that the SCC will look into our BCSC's scandalized delays in the BC Rail scandal!
    I don't think I'm alone on this one?

  • BC Dude

    4 years ago

    Can Vancouver Fend off

    Can Vancouver Fend off Olympics Sweatshops?
    I doubt if they want to, as there is too much blood money to be made!
    Remember "Blood Diamonds"!
    Now China it seems has found a whole culture of slaves! What next? We are trading with this country, WHY?
    Cheap slave made stuff.
    I don't buy from any boxstores and haven't for years, Wal-Mart, Target, Homedepot, $1 stores, etc. I just don't buy stuff.

  • DJT

    4 years ago

    No, Canada/ BC cannot fend

    No, Canada/ BC cannot fend off sweat shops. What the hell do you think the six dollar an hour "starting wage" is analogous to?

  • G West

    4 years ago

    Just for you working man

    http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/24/news/detain.php

    Some more 'positive' news about the way things are 'done' in China.

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