Olympic volunteers ask: Enjoyable or exploitation?
Unpaid Olympic TOKYO — volunteers do almost everything: guide athletes around, greet dignitaries and translate for lost fans.
IOC officials acknowledge the games couldn’t be held without them; invariably smiling, helpful and praised by presidents, prime ministers and monarchs.
The billion-dollar Olympics are awash with cash. But volunteers work for free. That’s the case next year at the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, where about 80,000 volunteers will be needed. Just over 200,000 have applied with orientation and interviews for Japan residents starting this month.
Most don’t seem to mind, thrilled about a once-in-alifetime chance and largely unaware that their unpaid labor enriches Olympic sponsors, powerful TV networks, and the Switzerland-based International Olympic Committee.
“To me, it’s very clearly economic exploitation,” Joel Maxcy, the president of the International Association of Sports Economists and a professor at Drexel University in Philadelphia, told The Associated Press.
Maxcy described a situation in which volunteers assemble the product but “someone else is collecting nearly all of the money derived from those labor efforts.”
Volunteers are lured by the powerful Olympic brand, the glamor of being behind the scenes, a sense of altruism and, for younger volunteers, a hope the work might lead to connections and a full-time job.
“I’m willing to work for free if I can get a chance to see and talk to Olympians from all over the world in person,” said Yutaro Tokunaga, who attended a recent Tokyo orientation for volunteers. The 26-year-old said his employer is giving him five days of paid Olympic leave.
One aspiring volunteer, Masanobu Ishii, said he wanted to convey the spirit of “omotenashi,” which translates as showing Japanese hospitality.
Volunteers also get involved out of civic duty or patriotism — and the chance to brag to friends.
Many older volunteers often don’t need the money.
Olympic volunteers typically pay their own lodging and transportation to the host city. They get meals on the days they work, some training and uniforms to treasure. In Tokyo, they will get up to 1,000 yen daily (about $9) to get to work on the city’s vast train system. Tokyo organizers also provide some insurance.
Almost two-thirds of the applicants for the Tokyo Olympics are Japanese, and almost two-thirds are women.
A study done for the IOC on volunteers at the 2000 Sydney Olympics said their value was at least $60 million for 40,000 volunteers.
Now, 20 years later, Tokyo organizers will use twice that many.