NIKE CEO’S 2010 annual salary equivalent to ‘14,000 years of wages’for a Sri Lankan apparel worker

Adidas, the global sportswear firm is sourcing its apparel for this week’s Olympic Games in London from many low wage countries including China, Cambodia, India, the Philippines and Sri Lanka, a global union says.

This is under a $150 million sponsorship deal with the organizers of the London Olympics, noted Jyrki Raina, General Secretary of the Global Union Federation of IndustriALL.

In an interview, he said the global economic crisis puts more pressure on factories to produce at lower costs and workers, more than multinationals, suffer.

“For example, it would take a Sri Lankan worker 14,000 years to earn what the NIKE CEO earned in 2010,” he said, emphasizing that a strong campaign has begun by unions asking London organizers of the Games to ensure manufacturers of products used for the games came from workers who are paid a decent living wage.

IndustriALL was founded last month in Copenhagen when three international union bodies came together to form a new global union force representing 50 million workers in 140 countries across the mining, energy and manufacturing sectors around the globe.

In the interview with Radio Labour based in Europe, Mr Raina said UKbased NEXT is providing uniforms for the opening and closing ceremonies but refuses to publicly disclose where they are sourcing these products. “If they have nothing to hide, why be so secretive?” he asked.

He said it is cheaper for multinationals to manufacture in countries where there is poor enforcement of international labour standards. Few workers in the industry are paid a living wage.

“At the same time, because of the practice of outsourcing, multinationals don’t carry the burden of risks which are passed onto the factories and mostly to workers. They are paid poor wages and in many cases denied social security and work for many years in extremely precarious employment relations,” he added.

A report published in May which examined working conditions in the Olympic labour chain found that workers were not paid a wage that would meet their basic needs. “In Sri Lanka the workers earned as little as $79 per month which is one quarter of a living wage,” he said, quoting the report.

He said they have launched a public campaign calling on multinationals to do more than paying lip service to human rights. They need to pay prices that enable suppliers to pay a living wage and they need to ensure that factories have a capacity to meet deadlines that require long workers hours. They need to go beyond audits and engage workers and their unions in the efforts to truly understand what conditions of suppliers and factories are like, he said.

“We are calling on plants in Sri Lanka to engage in a dialogue with unions,” he added.