Why all football fans should worry about Mike Ashley sweatshop allegations

By Simon Bird

Published 18:01 01/02/10

• 

Follow Simon Bird on Twitter

A sweatshop in Laos has been filmed churning out sport clothing on the cheap for SportsDirect, paying workers just £1 a day for a 12 hour shift.

Workers hunch over sewing machines enduring searing heat in a factory that the manager admits doesn’t meet international standards which demand they pay a living wage, in comfortable conditions, and don’t use child labour.

These are the slaves to the multi-million pound trade in stack ’em high, sell ’em cheap sports industry run by Ashley and revealed by the BBC’s North-East’s Chris Jackson and his Inside Out programme yesterday.

It is hard to tally the images from these factories, who take contracts from SportDirect agents to produce Lonsdale and Slazenger goods, with the opposite end of Ashley’s business empire, Newcastle United.

A quid a day for a machinist who would have to work for 164 years to earn what Alan Smith banks in a week.

The two are connected because the people who bag up the polo-shirts half 8,000 miles away - comically with 70% discount tags already attached ready for the SportsDirect stores - are the bottom run of the profit-making machine that helps fund Ashley’s business.

Ulltimately it helps pay the bills at St James’s Park and means Ashley can underwrite his £258 million stake in United.

After all the outrage at the mistakes, lies, misinformation and cock-ups there have been during his reign, perhaps this expose, half a world away, is easiest to ignore.

A quid goes further in Laos. We like our goods to be cheap. The trade gives locals a job. And I doubt Ashley personally checks the specific conditions in each the factories mass producing his brands in the Far East.

But ignoring this would be wrong. Newcastle United is currently inseparable from the SportsDirect brand. The name hangs in giant letters from the St James’s Park roof. Officially the stadium is called SportDirect@St James’s Park, until the end of the season.

Poverty wages hold countries back, rather than help then develop. Fairtrade is their only hope.

Fairtrade means tycoons like Ashley need to take a small hit on the bottom line, to make lives better in the harshest, poorest of environments.

If the man wants to restore pride in his empire, in SportsDirect and Newcastle United, he should be listening to the valid concerns raised by the BBC’s claims, which Ashley’s spokesmen told the programme were “inaccurate and misleading”.

It’s appears to be another example, among many over the years, of the low wages earned by workers producing famous sports brands. It is something fans should be concerned about.

In the past other companies have been caught, for example, employing kids in the developing world, to sew footballs. Youngsters barely in their teens scrimping a living producing cheap clothes for us.

The likes of Nike now list all their suppliers publicly, unlike SportsDirect, and that is the move Ashley must now take to ensure his produces his goods to the same charter standard as his competitors.

Fancy winning £3,000 for FREE this month? Play Mirror Football Streak for your chance to win cash prizes! Start predicting now!