In August 2004 the world’s athletes gathered in Athens for the Summer Olympic Games. Global sportswear firms spent vast sums of money to associate their products with the Olympian ideal.

This report looks behind the branding to ask fundamental questions about the global sportswear industry--questions that go to the heart of debates on poverty, workers’ rights, trade, and globalization. Corporate profits in this industry are created at the expense of the dignity, health, and safety of vulnerable men and women, contravening universal ethical principles. Yet the Olympics movement, particularly the International Olympics Committee, has been remarkably silent in the face of these contraventions.

This report argues that the Olympic movement has the power to ensure that the sportswear industry improves employment conditions and standards for millions of workers. Apart from asserting the moral imperative, the International Olympics Committee (IOC), as the primary holder of the rights to use the Olympics logo, and as the protector of the Olympics brand, can and should enforce changes by building into licensing and sponsorship contracts commitments to respect labor standards. The movement should be using its influence to ensure that workers in the sportswear industry are employed under fair, dignified, and safe conditions.

Table of Contents:

Executive Summary;
Introduction; Faster, Longer, Cheaper: Too long and too hard; Poverty wages; Employed -- but on precarious terms; Bullied, humiliated, abused; Trade unions undermined;
Winning Profits, Losing Rights: The global sportswear industry: Making money in a competitive market; How buyers buy; Flex and squeeze: the supplier’s response; Whose responsibility?; Fair play for workers;
Time to Play Fair: Make the change;
Appendix: Play Fair at the Olympics Campaign partners, Background research reports;
Notes