From Karin Finkenzeller, Katunayake, Sri Lanka
Excerpts from an article published in Zeitonline
Milanti’s face is the picture of bewilderment. A section of the website belonging to Decathlon, the discount sporting goods retailer, has just been translated for her – a part where the company pledges fair business practices despite its low prices.
“In Decathlon, responsibility is one of our core values,” it reads. “Therefore, in the factories of our suppliers or subcontractors, we are committed to observe and ensure the application of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights developed by the United Nations under the “Protect, Respect and Remedy” framework, within our Social Charter.”
While the website notes that the “Social Charter” pertains to such things as “child labour, working hours, discrimination, etc.,” it provides no additional details. Milanti, in any case, has just finished a 12-hour shift at one of the 12 Decathlon suppliers in Sri Lanka, and she has no claim to vacation time or sick pay. “I thought people in Europe had it better,” she says, bewildered. Milanti’s name has been changed to protect her identity and many details about her life and those of her coworkers have gone unmentioned in this story.
That expansion can easily be seen in Germany, where hardly a week goes by without another branch of the French chain opening up somewhere in the country. The company, based in the northern French town of Villeneuve-d’Ascq outside of Lille, made an initial, unsuccessful attempt to penetrate the German market in the 1980s, but ran up against stiff competition from outdoor specialist stores. This time around, though, customers have become well-versed is seeking out the best deal on the Internet and are now welcoming the discounter with open arms.
By the end of this year, Decathlon will have 46 stores in Germany and will soon become market leader. And it continues to scour the country for large retail spaces (30,000 square meters / 320,000 square feet) located on main arterials that can be reached by at least 250,000 people within 20 minutes or less. Those who have suboptimal real estate for rent are ecstatic about Decathlon’s expansion. City centre retailers, meanwhile, are less excited, as are mayors worried about maintaining the vitality of their municipality’s pedestrian zones. Because the market for sporting goods hasn’t grown in Germany since 2000, every article Decathlon sells at a discount price is an article that another store doesn’t sell.
As she does every day, Milanti walked the 1.5 kilometers to work after spending the night with her husband and children in the same bed. The family lives in a so-called boarding house, huge numbers of which have sprung up outside the multiple free trade zones in Sri Lanka, providing shelter to the army of workers. They tend to be little more than barracks with tiny rooms in which residents sleep and cook. The area around Katunayake, near the Colombo airport, or near Wathupitiwela, located not far away, is full of such boarding houses.
Many of the beds are shared. When one woman heads off for a nightshift, another who has just arrived home lies down to get some sleep. The boarding houses don’t have bathing facilities, with Milanti having washed herself with water from an outside well and a tiny piece of soap. Even in good months, Milanti’s wages hardly amount to more than Rs.26,000 (150 euros). A quarter of that total goes to rent and electricity, with an additional quarter going to childcare, with school ending in early afternoon.
Sri Lanka producing high-quality products, wages high
Sri Lanka’s global textile exports were worth $4.6 billion in 2016, and the country is far from being the cheapest producer of such goods. Wages paid in Sri Lanka are slightly higher than in Bangladesh, for example, which is why Sri Lanka tends to produce more high-quality products. That is beneficial to Decathlon, since the company insists that quality can be had even at a low price and that workout tops and running shoes don’t have to be replaced after just a couple of uses. The Sri Lankan minimum wage of 13,500 rupees monthly for a 45-hour work week – the equivalent of around 77 euros – isn’t enough for survival even under the most basic of conditions. As a consequence, seamstresses work at least two hours of overtime each day. The law allows for 60 hours of overtime per month.
“A family of four needs at least 51,000 rupees to survive,” says Chamila Thushari. For the last 22 years, Thushari has been the head of Dabindu Collective, a women’s help organization based in a tiny office not far from the Katunayake free-trade zone. Posters in the office extol the benefits of matriarchy and demand equal pay for men and women, and it is a place where seamstresses like Milanti can go for advice and support.
“Many of the woman have only just turned 16 when they come down from the north or from the country’s interior to the industrialized west. They know little of the world and also don’t know their rights,” says Thushari. “They eat poorly to save money. Anemia is widespread.”
According to Sri Lankan labour laws, Milanti and other seamstresses have a claim to 14 days of paid vacation each year in addition to sick pay. Initially, those rights were not extended to the free trade zones, but the country’s highest court forced the government to do so. The rapid growth of such zones in recent decades, though, combined with the government’s goal of providing jobs to the army of poorly qualified young people from poverty stricken parts of the country, has led to a highly complex web of subcontractors and temporary work agencies that regularly disregard even the most basic of social standards. Even local labour market experts have difficulty penetrating the structures that have been established.
When contacted, the company replied that it performs regular checks at the companies it works with. “Among other criteria, the evaluations review whether workers’ social rights, such as social insurance, paid vacation and sick days, are correctly observed in accordance with local laws.” Decathlon doesn’t deny that there might be shortcomings, but the company also declined to answer questions as to whether it was aware of the specific conditions in Sri Lanka and whether it thought changes needed to be made.
Decathlon producing all of its textile in Asia since 80s
To keep prices that low, Decathlon has produced all of its textile articles in Asia since the 1980s, says company spokesman Ludger Niemann. The company says that 65.1 percent of all its products were produced in Asia in 2016. And sales are likewise on the rise on the continent, with the first stores opening in China in 2003.
Milanti and her coworkers work shoulder to shoulder in long rows inside a warehouse. For lunch, rice with vegetables is served, sometimes with a bit of chicken, other times with egg. The food is good and there is enough of it, says Milanti. But, she adds, the 30-minute break sometimes isn’t enough to get through the serving line. And those that don’t make it have to head back to their sewing machines hungry.
Decathlon refuses to disclose the names of its suppliers. In contrast to competitors like Adidas and Nike, which have presented information regarding their supply chain to an association of international labour unions, human rights activists and labour rights organizations – and which have pledged complete transparency by the end of the year – Decathlon has preferred to remain rather vague. They have promised to make information public, but have yet to provide any specifics. And nothing has appeared thus far. It is a strategy that puts Decathlon in the same category as companies like Kik and Primark.
But a bit of searching in the Internet is enough to dig up the requisite information, and managers of the suppliers on site in Sri Lanka are often proud to confirm their association with Decathlon. Sri Lankan companies like Crystal Martin Ceylon and Hela Clothing, for example, work together with the French sporting goods chain. Both of them are vast companies with several thousand employees, many of them women like Milanti. “It has always been the case that we don’t seek out publicity,” says Decathlon spokesman Ludger Niemann. “This attitude isn’t just an element of French culture and family tradition, it is also an expression of our self-image. We simply want to be good without having to call attention to that fact.” (Main Picture courtesy: WordPress@Clark U)
