WORKERS IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES PAID 10 CENTS FOR MAKING NFL JERSEYS

Super Bowl Sunday: Women Paid 10 Cents to Sew $80 NFL Peyton Manning Jerseys

NFL jerseys have been sewn under illegal sweatshop conditions at the Chi Fung factory in San Salvador for at least the last four years. In 2006 and 2007, it appears that the NFL jerseys being sewn at Chi Fung were a subcontract order from another garment factory called Partex. In 2008 and 2009, it is unclear if Reebok placed the orders for its exclusive line of NFL jerseys with Chi Fung directly, or whether production continued under subcontract agreements. At any rate, according to Chi Fung’s website, they are an “approved Reebok producer.”
In the year 2000, Reebok agreed to pay the NFL $250 million over the next ten years to be the exclusive apparel distributor for the National Football League. However, the NFL-Reebok mega-deal has done nothing to lift workers across the developing world who sew NFL jerseys out of poverty.
In 2008 and 2009, two production lines at Chi Fung were dedicated to NFL jerseys. The workers could easily rattle off the names of the team jerseys they have sewn—Colts, Vikings, Cowboys, Patriots, Ravens, Jets, Steelers, Giants, Green Bay Packers, Dolphins, San Francisco 49ers, Panthers and Raiders. Most of the jerseys they sewed carried the names and numbers of NFL star players such as Peyton Manning, Number 18, of the Superbowl-bound Indianapolis Colts.
. The workers were paid just 10 cents for each $80 Peyton Manning NFL jersey they sewed. This means that their wages amounted to just a little more than one-tenth of one percent of the jerseys’ retail price!