football for Champions League final between Bayern Munich – Borussia Dortmund made in Pakistan in the city of Sialkot, world capital of football production
globalization causes rapid change in a developing country
production process: company Forward Sports in Sialkot on Pakistan´s border to India produce Champion´s league football
veiled women produce high-tech product for German sports company Adidas
checking each single ball, weighing, measuring whether the product is perfectly round
Forward Sports: founded in 1990 by owner Khawaja Masood Akhtar, one of the biggest manufacturer of footballs in the world; 20.000 footballs made daily, 90% for German sports company Adidas
Production sites: Footballs for Nike, Adidas, Puma produced in low-wage countries like China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Pakistan > either exploitation of the poor or creating new jobs
Child labour is a sensitive issue: in 1997 Pakistani suppliers, representatives of Unicef and the International Labour Organization signed the Atlanta Agreement in which the industry agreed to stop the use of child labour
Case of Saga Sports: Nike cancelled its contract with the company in 2006 because children were caught stitching footballs. Saga, once one of the city´s biggest employer is bankrupt today
Forward Sports has developed a monitoring system and sports goods companies send their own people into stitching factories to make sure there are no children there
Globalization and Sialkot: different stages:
At first Sialkot profited from globalization: Football production contributed to the city´s prosperity one of the richest in Pakistan, 750.000 million people live here, low unemployment rate, per capita income twice the national average, paved streets, decent residential areas
Then falling demand for hand-stitched footballs, most of the stitching factories had to close; new demand for cheaper balls glued or stitched by machines; China is now the biggest manufacturer of glued footballs; Pakistan only in second place with footballs glued by machines, many people lost their jobs------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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