Around the world, the workers who make sportswear and sports-goods continue to toil under harsh conditions. Battling insecure employment, low wages, insufficient to cover even their basic needs, these workers are being forced to work overtime without being compensated. Why should these people be subsidising billion dollar profits and millionaire bosses for companies such as Adidas, Asics, New Balance, Nike and Puma? Why are sportswear companies spending millions on Olympic sponsorship deals when the workers who actually stitch their garments and glue their sports shoes are living in poverty? This is the reality while nations prepare sportsmen for the Beijing Olympics, the world’s biggest sporting event.

For years, key sportswear brands have argued that they can’t raise wages single-handedly. On the other hand, Play Fair 2008—an international campaign taking place in the lead up to the 2008 Olympic Games to push for respect for workers` rights in the global sporting goods industry—believes that these companies can collectively control the sportswear and sports shoe markets.

Play Fair 2008, initiated by global unions including the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and International Textile Garment and Leather Workers` Federation (ITGLWF) and the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), intends to ensure that sportswear- and athletic goods-producing companies follow fair labour practices down their supply chains.

Play Fair 2008 India Campaign, a part of the global campaign, addresses this issue by persuading the Indian Olympics Association (IOA) and the Sports ministry to ensure that there is observance of good labour practices in sportswear and sports-goods production in India.  A study conducted by New Delhi-based Centre for Education and Communication (CEC), a member of the International Campaign Committee of the Play Fair India Campaign, has some startling revelations. This is just the tip of the iceberg. The study revealed how the production process of soccer balls in Jalandhar has been increasingly informalised, thereby evading labour laws and generating employment insecurity. Workers earn less than Rs. 2,250 per month, that is, below the prescribed minimum wage for semi-skilled and unskilled workers in the state.

Among other things, the India Campaign demands that the government and the IOA have explicit provision for procurement, based on fair labour practices. It also demands that the government implements policies, which promote socially responsible behaviour in international business activity, regulate production process, respect the right to organise, and ensure observance of decent work practices including minimum wages, legally permissible working hours and adequate health and safety measures.

The India Campaign also hopes to connect 10,000 torchbearers from India in an Alternative Olympic Flame Relay. Launched by Play Fair 2008 and called ‘Catch the Flame’, this is an electronic relay race to bring public attention to the need for the Olympics movement to stamp out abuses of labour standards in workplaces that make goods for the Olympics. 

Play Fair India Campaign is jointly organised by HMS, UTUC, CEC, Fedina and SAVE. It is a campaign against the exploitation of workers in the garments and sportswear industry. It envisions defending the rights of workers—the right to organise, to living wages, to social security, to legal work hours and to safe working conditions in these sectors.