Who is adidas?
The money: $8.3 billion annual consolidated revenue in financial year 2005
The labels: Reebok, adidas, TaylorMade
The boss: Herbert Hainer, Chief Executive Officer
The workers: In 2007, adidas-branded products were made by workers in more than 1,080 contract factories in 65 countries.
The locations: China, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, India and Indonesia to name a few. Also the Americas and some European countries. Source: http://www.adidas.com/
What's the problem?
While conditions have improved in a few of adidas' supplier factories, most workers producing for adidas still work long hours under extreme pressure for poverty wages. Among other things,adidas needs to do much more to ensure that trade union rights are respected within its supply chain. In 2006–2007 adidas removed orders from suppliers with a track record of respecting unions rights and placed them into a supplier factory with a history that is far from clean. adidas needs to be ensuring workers rights, decent wages and conditions are being upheld across all of its supplier factories, all of the time.
We are encouraging adidas to change – find out more at Offside! update
Poverty wages
adidas won’t commit to a living wage for workers making adidas products. We define a living wage as one which, for a full-time working week (without overtime), would be enough for a family to meet its basic needs and allow a small amount for discretionary spending.
We are on track to deliver on all our integration synergy targets for 2007 including €100 million in revenue synergies and €17.5 million in net cost savings. And net income will increase at a rate approaching 15%.
– Herbert Hainer, adidas CEO. Source: adidas quarterly report 2007
Who pays when adidas saves?
Rights denied
adidas continues to get its gear made in countries and free trade zones where it is either illegal, extremely difficult, or prohibited, for workers to organise themselves into trade unions. It is near impossible for workers to get better conditions (such as better pay) if they cannot get together and form a united, organised group to approach their boss.
Job insecurity
Two huge adidas supplier factories in Indonesia closed in November 2006 leaving 10,500 workers without jobs. A third factory employing more than 9,000 workers has been significantly “scaled down”. We are concerned that adidas’s actions are likely to be one of the main reasons the factories had to close. These workers were left high and dry with no work and not all of their back pay and entitlements. Find out more
Commitment phobia
adidas moves its production where it likes, whenever it likes and does not give any bonuses to factories that respect workers rights. adidas does not ban or severely restrict short-term contracts in its supplier factories. This means that workers can lose their jobs from one contract to the next and be left with nothing.
Find out more about how sports brands are tackling the problem of sweatshops in their industry in our Offside! report
What's the solution?
To take action now
Source: Oxfam Australia
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