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Summit rugby league footballs linked to Indian child slave labour
Sydney Morning Herald - October 1, 2013
One year after Fairfax Media exposed Sherrin Australian rules and Canterbury rugby union balls being made with illegal, under age, pitifully-paid labour, Summit rugby league balls have taken their place in the slums of Jalandhar in northern India.
A Fairfax investigation revealed the balls discovered being stitched in India were identical in material, stitching, design and colour to those it bought in Australia.
The 13-digit barcode used by Summit to identify the ball was the same in both countries, and several stitchers independently told Fairfax Media the balls were being sent to Australia.
The balls were found to be on sale at Harvey Norman for just $9, prompting the company's executive director John Slack-Smith to launch an immediate investigation.
On Monday afternoon, Mr Slack-Smith said all Summit products were being withdrawn from sale until further notice.
"We have taken a decision today to remove all Summit products from sale until we have further clarification on the allegations made," he wrote in a text message.
Earlier, he had said it was "simply not right" if child labour had been involved in the production of the balls. "It's not what we believe in, it's not what work towards and we simply won't tolerate it," Mr Slack-Smith said.
The company would refund or replace all Summit balls in question if the allegations are correct, he said. "At all points we are going to act with urgency and do what is right." he said.
But Mr Slack-Smith said Harvey Norman was standing by Summit until it had made its own investigation. "We are working with a reputable supplier, people know it extremely well. [Summit] have proven themselves reputable and we believe they are acting properly."
Summit's website boasts "a history that includes being the match ball for the Australian Wallabies, State of Origin, Queensland Reds and Commonwealth Games Rugby". It says it has also "partnered with the AFL, A-League [and] NRL".
The company initially denied the balls belonged to it. "They are not ours," spokesman Wayne Rowlands said, refusing to reveal the name of the factories where Summit balls were made in Jalandhar.
In a later email, however, Mr Rowlands wrote: "the balls were original from our factory" (sic). He went on to allege that photographs showing child labour were staged, "somebody has taken the picture just to blackmail the Summit brand".
Fairfax Media took un-posed, independent photographs and videos of Ramandeep and several other Summit brand stitchers in Jalandhar. Ramandeep was already sitting, stitching, when Fairfax arrived at his house.
When Fairfax visited pockets of Danishmandi, the same Jalandhar slum where dozens of workers stitching Sherrin and Canterbury balls were uncovered last year, Summit balls were in almost every house.
At least two dozen families showed us Summit balls. They explained the balls came to them from contacts at a Jalandhar factory. Home workers are paid a fraction of the minimum wage compulsory inside the factory walls.
"I know these balls go to Australia, to foreign countries and have huge market price, but we are not getting what we deserve," stitcher Ashwini said.
Mala, now 45, began stitching as a 13-year-old and as a young mother felt compelled to put her two sons to work, too. They now stitch in a factory. It is the only skill they have.
Revisiting the slums of Jalandhar after a year, Fairfax found the problem of child labour in the sports balls industry stubbornly resilient. Several brands previously exposed had disappeared from the slums, only to be replaced by others.
Families were wary of protecting their industry, and in several homes young girls were hidden away, or sent out of the house, as soon as we arrived.
The smallest girl we saw working, sitting on a low stool and stitching a soccer ball, appeared to be no older than seven.
Just 13 and toiling six days a week
Aged just 13, Ramandeep is too slight to fill out the clothes he inherited from his father. He has never been to school.
Instead, he spends eight hours each day crouched over the synthetic ellipses of Summit "Classic" rugby league balls, painstakingly stitching them together with sharp, heavy needles and coarse, wax-lined string. "I have been working the last one year full-time," he said.
The work tears at his fingers and strains his eyes. His back, he said, is sore from sitting, hunched over, morning to night. Ramandeep works, alongside his mother and sister, six days a week, "and on Sundays, if there is work to do".
At his feet is a pile of yellow-and-white half-finished balls – work, he said, that he will complete before the factory's sub-contractor comes at the end of the day to take them away, and replace them with more.
To stitch two panels of a Summit league ball together takes him 40 minutes. He is paid five rupees, less than 10c. A typical day earns him 70 rupees, about $1.20.
Ramandeep does not know anything about the Summit brand – he cannot read and write English, or any language – and has never heard of rugby league. The southern cross emblazoned on the ends of the balls mean nothing to him.
But children under the age of 14 are forbidden from work in India, and the Right to Education Act demands he attends school.
"It's compulsion," his mother Rani explains, using the Hindi-Urdu word "majburi", which carries connotations of coercion and of helplessness.
"We need food daily, so we need earning daily." The rent for the family's single-room slum takes up most of their income at 2000 rupees a month, she said. "If we are given more money, our lives will improve," Ramandeep said. "Everyone wants a good future."
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