The “Red Card” Campaign Diary

How Has Football Contributed Towards The Elimination Of Child Labour?

A Diary Of Some Of The Most Significant Events

13 December 2002, MADRID (ILO News) - The Real Madrid football club and the International Labour Organization (ILO) teamed up to raise a "Red card" to the child labour in its worst forms - a practice that traps one of every eight children - or some 180 million worldwide - in exploitative, often dangerous work.

Real Madrid and the ILO would bring the "Red Card to Child Labour" campaign to Madrid's Santiago Bernabéu Stadium on 18 December - World Football Day - when the football team marked its centennial anniversary with a match against a world selection team.

In a pre-game ceremony at 9.30 p.m, football players entered the stadium accompanied by 22 children wearing T-shirts with the logo of the Campaign and raise special red cards to demonstrate support for the campaign to end child labour.

A 30-second ILO video on child labour would be shown on the stadium's giant television screen at the beginning of the ceremony. Antena 3 TV would broadcast the campaign spot at half time of the match. As the only official match to be played in the world on that day, the match was expected to receive a large television viewership and extensive media coverage worldwide.

At a public ceremony in the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium at 12.30 a.m. on the eve of the match, Kari Tapiola, ILO Executive Director and Florentino Pérez Rodríguez, the President of Real Madrid, would be signing an agreement of mutual collaboration on the Red Card campaign. The agreement had been facilitated by the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) and the Spanish Employers' Confederation (CEOE).

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5 December 2002, Geneva - Global March, Clean Clothes Campaign and ICFTU Sent a Reminder to FIFA that Labour Exploitation Still Exists. The petition among other things called FIFA president, Joseph S. Blätter, to stop labour rights violations and the ongoing use of child labour in sporting goods production around the world.

“We have been corresponding with you since May 2001 on this issue, however, we have yet to receive concrete answers providing evidence that FIFA is making the necessary efforts to implement its own Code of Labour Practice for FIFA licensed goods,” it read in part.

The petition said during the World Cup Campaign 2002, millions of supporters, including celebrity professional football players, international trade union networks, children and youth showed their support to make football a fair game.

“The public, your audience of football matches, demanded that no child should be stitching footballs and adult workers should be treated fairly,” it added.

The authors of the petition further observed that had been amply demonstrated, through past and recent reports, that there needs to be an industry-wide, transparent labour monitoring and verification system for all products.

“Therefore, your statement in a letter from FIFA to the Clean Clothes Campaign dated 16 April 2002, "We cannot be held responsible for the labour conditions in factories" is unacceptable coming from an organisation that, through its licensing system via FIFA Marketing AG, has large commercial interests in the production of sporting and other goods.

“In a communication from your former General-Secretary of 18 February 2002, we were in fact told that further correspondence with the Global March was not appreciated. But instead of continuing to harp on the past, we would much rather like to look at the future obligations of working together to make a real difference,”

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May 31, 2002, Washington - U.S. Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), with other members of the House and Senate, called on the global organization that runs the World Cup Soccer competition (FIFA - Federation Internationale de Football Association) to honour their own Code of Labour Practice and cease the use of soccer balls made using child labour. FIFA adopted its Code in 1998 under pressure from human rights groups, international trade unions, Harkin and other members of the United States Congress.

"The FIFA Code was among the first voluntary corporate codes adopted with much fanfare," Harkin noted. "The full implementation and independent monitoring of its results are a crucial test of how much stock to put in such codes as effective tools for stopping abusive child labour. If FIFA continues to endorse the use of brutally manufactured goods in global events like the World Cup, they aide in the abuse of basic human rights, ignore the inhumane treatment of children in places like Morocco, India and Pakistan where these soccer balls are made and defy the very premise of this competition," he added.

In 1996, Life Magazine published an expose on child labour abuses worldwide, including in the manufacture of soccer balls (Life Magazine, June 1996, p.38-48). Under considerable pressure from the world community including Harkin and other members of the U.S. Congress, FIFA voluntarily instituted their Code of Labour Practice, which clearly prohibits the use of child labour and promises fair wages for adult workers in the production of FIFA licensed products.

Harkin and other lawmakers were considering congressional hearings, as well as sanctions against sporting goods that were manufactured with the use of child labourers. Earlier in the same month, as part of the debate on trade promotion authority (TPA), Harkin authored legislation that passed ending the use of the worst forms of child labour in international commerce a principle U.S. negotiating objective in all new American trade agreements.

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19 May 2002, Global March, Argentina - The Argentina National Team showed their solidarity to kick child labour out of the world during a match against Germany. The players raised a banner that read, "The only work for children should be to go to school". The match was held on April 17 2002 at the Gottlieb-Daimler Stadium in Germany.

The players in the Argentine team were: Pablo Oscar Cavallero; Mauricio Pochettino; Walter Adrián Samuel; Facundo Quiroga; Pablo César Aimar; Matías Jesús Almeyda; Cristian González; Juan Pablo Sorín; Javier Adelmar Zanetti; Claudio Javier López; Gustavo López; Germán Adrián Burgos; José Antonio Chamot; Diego Pablo Simeone; Marcelo Gallardo; Santiago Solari; Javier Pedro Saviola; Diego Placente.

With the same banner the players from the clubs River Plate, Chacarita Juniors, Boca Juniors and Racing Club entered the stadium during the last match of the local championship.

In a related development, The campaign activities in Italy on the 18th of May, which mobilized 50 cities simultaneously, also saw the Pope John Paul II giving a message in his Sunday Mass on the 19th of May praising the work being done by Mani Tese and the Global March Against Child Labour on the issue of child labour. He stated,

“Yesterday in Italy the Global March Against Child Labour and the association Mani Tese (Hands Outstretched) observed a day dedicated to sensitising public opinion to the serious problem of the exploitation of child labour. May this initiative be a favourable occasion for seeking effective ways to resolve this intolerable phenomenon.”

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7 May 2002 - The murky world of FIFA licensing and sponsorship was under attack with the world soccer body branded as socially irresponsible and acting in bad faith and deceit for profiting from but ignoring abuse and exploitation in the production of footballs and other soccer-related products.

Speaking in Tokyo, where World Cup 2002 would kick off in, Neil Kearney, general secretary of the Brussels-based International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation (ITGLWF), branded soccer “a dirty business” and said FIFA’s neglect of the labour behind its lucrative licensing and sponsorship deals was “bringing shame on the game”. The ITGLWF was one of the three global union organisations, which negotiated a Code of Labour Practice with FIFA in 1996.

Mr. Kearney said that more than 750,000 workers produce FIFA-licensed goods or are employed, directly or indirectly, by FIFA’s main sponsors. Tens of thousands of these, including children as young as 10 years, work up to 16 hours a day for starvation wages. Working conditions are often horrendous, health and safety hazards abound and, in China, the personal restrictions on workers in a number of factories border on forced labour. Workers who object or try to organise to improve conditions are harassed, beaten-up and often fired.

“Tragically” said Mr. Kearney, “the situation has actually worsened since the exposure of the widespread use of children in football stitching forced FIFA to address the problem for the first time and negotiate a comprehensive Code of Labour Practice which they themselves touted as the mechanism that would rid the soccer industry of worker exploitation, including child labour.

“True, some of the children formerly employed in football stitching in Sialkot in Pakistan have left the industry but child labour has emerged elsewhere particularly in India and worker rights’ abuses have rocketed in the sporting goods industry and in new football stitching centres such as China. FIFA appear largely to have turned a blind eye while pocketing millions of dollars in licensing and sponsorship arrangements including US$24million from Adidas alone.