Saturday, March 29, 2008

Adidas workers on £11 a week in China

"THE German sportswear giant Adidas has paid a reported £50m to sponsor this summer’s Beijing Olympics with the slogan “Impossible is nothing”.

For the thousands of Chinese workers who earn a basic £11.36 a week making Adidas’s expensive trainers at factories in the industrial city of Fuzhou, one thing does seem impossible: to get fair play."

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article3646424.ece




Saturday, March 22, 2008

corporate responsibility

Workers at Tesco paid just 8p an hour


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/22/ntesco122.xml

The report from the UK Daily Telegraph describes how Tesco exploits its workers in Malaysia.
I have emailed Tesco customer service to ask them for an explanation, and would suggest that other Tesco customers do the same.

Tesco Customer Service [customer.service@tesco.co.uk]

Monday, March 10, 2008

minerals = money

"A disturbing article this week in the FT reports how cassiterite sourced through the use of child and slave labour has made it into the supply chains of global electronic goods manufacturers. Cassiterite is a derivative of tin ore necessarily used in circuitry and its use has, ironically, enabled devices to become more eco friendly. But at what cost?"

http://blogs.zdnet.com/sustainability/?p=114&tag=nl.e622

Africa has wealth, not only in human resources, but in minerals; but this wealth is not used to benefit the people that live there.