Before the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, the Play Fair at the Olympics Campaign – the biggest international worker rights mobilization of its kind ever undertaken – brought the world’s attention to the underside of the sportswear industry: the abysmal working conditions endured by the young women and men, and children, who make the shoes, jerseys, footballs and other items in contract factories and subcontract facilities around the world.

In anticipation of the Beijing Summer Olympics, in the spring of 2008 MSN wrote a paper for the Play Fair Campaign entitled “Clearing the Hurdles: Steps to Improving Wages and Working Conditions in the Global Sportswear Industry.” The paper found that substantial violations of worker rights were still the norm for workers in the sportswear industry.

Clearing the Hurdles identifies four central hurdles that need to be overcome by the sportswear industry to make real progress on the litany of worker rights violations plaguing the industry.

These are:
•    Lack of respect for freedom of association and the right to bargain collectively;
•    Insecurity of employment caused by industry restructuring; and
•    Abuse of short-term labour contracting and other forms of precarious employment.
•    poverty wages

Prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, MSN coordinated the Play Fair Campaign in Canada, which included a public forum in Vancouver on our proposal to the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the adoption of an ethical licensing policy. MSN also supported the Play Fair Campaign leading up to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, England.

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