Sweatshops and Child Labor in the Production of Soccer Balls

When economists, activists, writers and fans turn up the heat in World Cup Fever, it feels like a Sweatshop. Though the debate sees the constant flipping of the two-sided coin of Globalization. As Franklin Foer said in a recent interview with Fareed Zakaria, "the World Cup is a paradox because it's at once a great spectacle of globalization fueled by multi-national corporations giving the world this common language of soccer, but at the same time it's a festival of nationalism, so people thought that globalization was going to smush nationalism and the World Cup proves that it can actually facilitate nationalism."¹

This comes reinforced by economic numbers, as Newsweek showed that, "Previous World Cup winner nations get up to a 4% GDP boost; the loser's GDP drops about .3%." We see the economic importance of the World Cup and Soccer through Foer, but what of Globalization's other impact on human rights, trade and labor? The Clean Clothes Campaign, along with Oxfam, recently released reports on the plight of women workers in Thailand producing soccer balls. Particularly the adidas Teamgeist (team spirit) football, used during this year's World Cup.

At this paradoxical interweaving of Soccer's position in Globalization is what two scholars claim, "evokes a transcivilizational issue." Reebok Chairman Paul Fireman made the decision to stop purchasing soccer balls from Pakistan if they continued to use child labor, revealing a progressive idealism in business. Fireman said, "We'd like to see everyone join with us, and although this will sound bizarre in the world of business, we'd rather see the world operate at a better level."²

This executive idealism is in unison with some of Soccer Culture's more altruistic moments. When child activist Iqbal Masih escaped slavery in Pakistan as a carpet weaver, he was murdered in the limelight of his crusade making him a martyr of the movement. This inspired another child activist, Craig Kielburger, of Canada to carry the torch of this crusade against child labor, eventually founding the Free The Children Foundation. Reebok had its role in this, granting Masih with the Reebok Human Rights Youth Action Award. Putting Fireman's ideal in the public spotlight, which could easily lead World Cup and soccer fans to associate the Reebok brand as a responsible globally influential company. As much as this is possible, a multinational like Reebok can't shake the corporate image so tainted by industry wide use of sweatshops.

The paradox grows ever more when considering Nike's dominate role with Brazil's iconic footballer, Ronaldo. As United Nations Development Programme Goodwill Ambassador, Ronaldo is lionized by his efforts in Brazil and Kosovo to lift children out of poverty and into education. Nike can only hope to gain a respectable bit of pride-by-association through their sponsor deals. For instance Nike is a major sponsor of the Homeless World Cup, which lifts football talent out of poverty and onto the field. Though when players and coaches react to accusations made against companies like Nike, it can affect major sponsorship deals of not just pro, but college level teams. United Students Against Sweatshops have organized pressure across the country to cut sponsorship deals. This even drove St. John's University's soccer coach, Jim Keady, out of the job for refusing a $3.5 million Nike sponsorship for the school. Drove him out the job, but into a life-changing journey to Indonesia to live with Nike factory workers, the inspiration for his documentary Sweat. At a grassroots level, as Andrew Ross has noted, Nike has had its troubles with soccer fans too. In his book Low Pay, High Profile, Ross points out England's Manchester United football club, whose fan based Stockholders "expressed their outrage to management at making a deal with the leading paymaster of global sweatshops", that being Nike.³ Also noted by Donnelly and Petherick in their essay Worker's Playtime?, "Although children are involved in the manufacture of sports and equipment other than soccer balls, and in other parts of the world…the focus has remained largely on the manufacture of soccer balls in South Asia. The authors go on to reveal that companies like Adidas-Salomon, Nike, Puma and Reebok continually violated their signed agreements prior to the 2002 World Cup to not use Child Labor.⁴

So do Child Laborers get playtime breaks, such as the 7,000 Pakistani children who got 6 cents an hour to make Nike soccer balls? One might ask Nike CEO Phil Knight what he meant when he said, "access to play should be a kid's inalienable right." ⁵ As much as companies have attempted to appease critics and weed out child labor from the soccer supply chain, the recent reports of the Clean Clothes Campaign expose that the problem also extends into other labor violations. Now that Adidas-Salomon owns Reebok its necessary to ask which faction of their efforts will take precedence: continued wage oppression or taking a global position in social responsibility. Its obvious of course how the corporations would respond to this, but the reality on the ground floor of factories is where action is louder than publicity. Both companies have codes of conduct and Adidas has a Standards of Engagement initiative with contracted factories throughout Southeast Asia. Unlike the boosts or drops caused by the World Cup in nationalistic economies, for multinational sport brands the championship kicks profits in one direction, up.