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Issue No 29 | ![]() |
03 September 1999 |
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NewsClothing Farce: Only the Smalls are Home Grown
Athletes and officials wanting to wear Australian-made clothing at the 2000 Olympics would be left in nothing but T-shirts and socks, as SOCOG steps up its "cat and mouse" game on offshore production.
The Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union says Olympic management has "no moral right " to force Australian sportspeople to wear garments made by exploited labour. And the union warns that unless Olympic management promptly agrees to "an adequate independent inspection of all the relevant overseas production facilities" it will "expose all of the tactics used to conceal crucial information from the Australian public." SOCOG claims it has already inspected the facilities and found them to comply with the Code, and last week ruled out an investigation by SOCOG Board member and former union official Anna Booth. Under pressure from unions to release details of where overseas goods are being produced, SOCOG this week claimed that 83 per cent of garments will be made locally, while refusing to disclose the names of the Indonesian, Malaysian and Fijian manufacturers. But unions claim SOCOG would have needed to count every sock as an individual garment to reach this figure. The Labor Council has asked SOCOG to call an emergency meeting of its Monitoring Committee on the Licensed Goods Code of Conduct and is threatening to pull out of the Code if their concerns not addressed. "It appears SOCOG is placing the union movement in a position where we need to seriously consider whether we want to be a party to a Code of Conduct," Labor Council secretary Michael Costa says. "The union movement is not prepared to endorse goods being made overseas when it appears there is little if any possibility of monitoring whether the companies are adhering to the Code of Conduct. "The secrecy surrounding Pacific Dunlop's refusal to name the companies being used overseas is testimony of this."
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![]() ![]() ![]() From the Kibbutz to cyberspace, Andrew Casey profiles the work of an Internet class warrior. ![]() ![]() Sean Kidney has been combining business savvy with social justice for more than a decade. He gives us his take on unions and the Net. ![]() ![]() As the United Nations attempts to begin counting the votes from East Timor�s independence referendum, the capital Dili is rapidly spiralling out of control. ![]() ![]() Read KFC worker Claire Hamilton's speech to last week's Second Wave Rally. ![]() ![]() Is Labor under Kim Beazley fundamentally changing its social appeal and turning itself into the Australian equivalent of Bill Clinton�s Democrats? ![]() ![]() Our regular update on papers and articles for union officials and students. ![]() ![]() An upcoming conference asks some hard questions about the politics of immigration. ![]() ![]() The release of statistics showing decreasing crime rates has threatened to delay the next NSW election. ![]() ![]() A new CD of poems and songs pays tribute to our rich locomotive history. ![]()
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