Khmer sweat for London Olympic?

British athletes, triple jumper Phillips Idowu (L) and heptathlete Jessica Ennis (R) pose with fashion designer Stella McCartney (C) during the unveiling of the new British Olympic Team GB kit designed by Stella McCartney Photo: AFP

Cambodian workers on £10 a week making Olympics 'fanwear’

Adidas, the sportswear company, is facing an investigation over claims that Cambodian workers are being paid £10 a week in basic wages to make official merchandise for the London Olympics.

13 Jul 2012

By Dean Nelson, Phnom Penh

The Telegraph (UK)

"The minimum wage in Cambodia is horrendously low – $66 a month," she said. "But the living wage for a worker with two children is $260."

It is one of the 2012 Games' largest sponsors, believed to have invested £100 million, and manufactured the official Team GB outfit designed by Stella McCartney.

But at the company's Shen Zhou factory on the outskirts of Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, The Daily Telegraph discovered that poor machinists were working up to 10 hours a day, six days a week, to produce the official Olympics merchandise that thousands of fans will buy in stores throughout Britain.

Living in squalid conditions, workers said they earned a basic salary of $61 (£40) a month for working eight hours a day, six days a week, plus a $5 allowance for health care. They said they could take their wages up to $120 (£78) by increasing their hours to 10 per day.

Adidas insisted on Friday that workers at the factory made an average of $130 a month, and would get a pay rise later this year, along with other garment industry workers.

Anna McMullen of the campaign group Labour Behind the Label, said that was still lower than what they regarded as a living wage for a Cambodian worker with a family. "The minimum wage in Cambodia is horrendously low – $66 a month," she said. "But the living wage for a worker with two children is $260."

Campaigners said the treatment of the workers amounted to a breach of an agreement with the London Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (Locog) that merchandisers must pay workers a sustainable living wage. A Locog spokesman said yesterday it was concerned by the allegations and would investigate.

The Shen Zhou factory manufactures the adidas "fanwear" for the 2012 Olympics.

Soun So-phat, a 30-year-old mother of two, said she sent half of her money home to her parents, who look after her young daughters in their provincial village.

She had left to look for work in the capital because she could not earn enough money from planting rice to feed her children.

Now she can feed them, but the money she has left over is not enough for her to eat properly. "It is hard work. I send home $60 per month and I live on $40. I eat three times a day but it's not good food," she said.

She lives with five other workers in a single room where they sleep three to a bed on hard, wooden cots. They share an attached squatting lavatory and cook a few feet away. Wet clothes hang on lines over head. "It is difficult but we have to earn money," she said.

Toch Srey-noun, 32, who works as a pattern cutter making adidas garments, said she had no idea how much they cost to buy. In an adidas store it was $39.99 – the amount she earned in two weeks.

"I work here to get money for my family," she said. "My father and my husband died. I have a 10-year-old son. I send around $50 per month to my mother."

A spokesman for adidas confirmed that the Phnom Penh factory produced Olympic "fanwear" but denied that the workers' pay and conditions were in breach of the organising committee's standards.

"Adidas is confident we comply with all Locog standards. Workers at the factory earn an average of $130 a month, which is well above the minimum wage," he said.

A Locog spokesman said: "We understand that the Shen Zhou factory is part of the International Labour Organisation labour rights programme, which means that it is inspected.

"We regularly remind all of our licensees of the importance we place on the sustainable sourcing code they have each signed up to."