Adidas is spending over US$200 million on sponsorships this summer and reaping billions in profit. But it continues to deny the severance pay owed to laid-off workers in Indonesia.
Tell Adidas to pay up!
The Olympics started yesterday, and if you’re watching, you’ve probably noticed that nearly every camera angle includes the Adidas logo. That’s because Adidas is paying US$122 million to “sponsor” the Games, in an effort to show the world that Adidas is a company that values the Olympic ideals of international friendship and cooperation.
But Adidas is refusing to stand for those values. For less than 2% of the cost of its sponsorship, Adidas could do right by thousands of workers who were illegally denied severance when their factory was unexpectedly shut down. Now we’re partnering with the Clean Clothes Campaign to hold Adidas accountable.
It’s bad enough that big corporations have all but turned the Olympics into a massive advertisement. We certainly won’t tolerate companies that wrap themselves in the Olympic ideals while cheating and exploiting their workers.
Adidas has put up an estimated US$122 to plaster its name all over the London Olympics, and it expects the sponsorship to yield billions in sales. But in a decision the Worker Rights Consortium has called “grossly irresponsible and immoral,” Adidas is refusing to give just US$1.8 million in long-overdue severance pay to workers laid off from its shuttered Indonesian supplier, PT Kizone.
For a year and a half, 2,800 ex-Kizone workers have been fighting for the severance pay they were promised when their boss suddenly closed the factory and fled the country. After workers and their allies rallied across Indonesia, Europe, and North America, Adidas finally met with union representatives in June. The company’s offer: food vouchers worth US$53 and valid only at one supermarket. For families facing difficulty covering rent and their children’s school fees this amounted to nothing but an insult.
While the US$53 vouchers -- worth roughly the cost of a London 2012 t-shirt -- are completely insufficient, the simple fact that the company finally agreed to meet with workers shows that the global campaign against Adidas is having an impact. Our friends at the Clean Clothes Campaign, United Students Against Sweatshops, and Labour Behind the Label think that an additional outcry from SumOfUs.org members during the Olympics might be the final push the workers need to win what Adidas owes them.
Thanks for standing in solidarity with workers,
- Rob, Kaytee, and the rest of us
**********
Background Information:
What happened at PT Kizone?
Adidas is responsible for ensuring that its suppliers are compliant with local and international law, but it’s clear that PT Kizone failed to follow Indonesia labor regulations requiring that employers set aside funds for severance pay. Nike and the Dallas Cowboys, who also sourced from Kizone, gave in to pressure from the Kizone workers last summer and handed over the US$1.6 million they owed . But Adidas has dug in its heels, so the workers are partnering with Labour Behind the Label, United Students Against Sweatshops, and now SumOfUs.org to turn up the pressure at a global level.
Can Adidas afford this?
Yes! 2012 is proving to be a banner year for Adidas. Not only is the company one of the top sponsors of the Olympics and the Euro 2012 tournament, its sponsorship of the German and Spanish national soccer teams are worth over US$77 million. And all these sponsorships are paying off: Adidas’s soccer sales alone are projected to top US$2 billion dollars, and its total sales will reach a record US$18 billion. And yet the company is still stalling instead of making good on its responsibility to laid-off workers.
Additional Reading:
Indonesia: ex-adidas workers owed $1.8 million, Labour Behind the Label.
Insulting offer of adidas food vouchers rejected by workers, Clean Clothes Campaign
Adidas says UEFA Euro 2012 To Fuel Record Soccer Sales, Bloomberg, June 21, 2012