New report exposes sweatshop conditions in factories making NFL jerseys

[Omaha Steve]

http://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/nfl_sweatshops/

Posted on February 4, 2010 by dsalaborblogmoderator



by Ron Moore

Women paid 10 cents to sew $80 NFL jerseys; forced to work overtime, cheated of wages, constant harassment, trapped in abject poverty in a Salvadoran sweatshop

Sunday’s Super Bowl will feature talented players, technicians and referees all who benefit by working under the gold standard of teamwork; collective bargaining. But there’s a dark underbelly to the lucrative sports industry that is as plain as the jerseys on the player’s backs. NFL jerseys have been sewn under illegal sweatshop conditions at the Chi Fung factory in El Salvador for at least the last four years, according to a new report by the National Labor Committee. Often forced to work 12-hour shifts, workers were at the factory 61 to 65 hours a week, including 12 to 15 hours of obligatory overtime, which was unpaid. The workers were paid a below-subsistence wage of just 72 cents an hour, which meets less than a quarter of a family’s basic subsistence needs for food, housing, healthcare and clothing.

According to the report an assembly line of 28 workers had a mandatory production goal of completing 2,300 NFL jerseys in the regular nine-hour shift, from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The production goal was 255 jerseys per hour, which meant that each of the 28 workers in effect had to sew nine jerseys per hour, or one jersey every 6.6 minutes. The workers were paid just 10 cents for each $80 NFL jersey they sewed. This means that their wages amounted to just a little more than one-tenth of one percent of the jersey’s retail price.

“It does not have to be this way,” said National Labor Committee director Charles Kernaghan. “If the NFL and Reebok doubled the wages, so the workers and their families could climb out of misery and at least into poverty, the direct labor cost to sew the Peyton Manning jersey would still be just 20 and a half cents, or less than three-tenths of one percent of the shirt’s retail price.”

“The $250 million NFL-Reebok licensing mega-agreement has done nothing to lift workers across the developing world who sew NFL garments out of abject poverty,” said Kernaghan.

FULL story at link.

[Political Heretic]

1. Long shot I know, but I emailed this to Rachel Maddow's show

Given that the super bowl is upon us, was hoping that perhaps...maybe... she might give this story some national airtime.

Would probably not happen until Monday unfortunately so I dunno... be hey it can't hurt to try.