Anti-poverty activists kicked off a week of campaigning to step up the pressure on Olympic organisers and sports clothing manufacturers over the use of sweatshop labour at a meeting on London on Monday night.
Campaigning charity War on Want condemned revelations from their recent report that Bangladeshi workers making clothes for official Games sportswear partner Adidas, Nike and Puma earned on average only 16p an hour.
War on Want has urged the government to establish a human rights commission to ensure protections for foreign workers employed by British firms or their subsidiaries.
And British activists were joined by a delegation from the Bangladeshi National Garment Workers Federation (NGWF) who arrived in London to call for decent treatment for workers producing goods for Olympics-linked brands.
NGWF assistant general secretary Arfira Akter, herself a former child garment worker in Dhaka, said she was raising the issue so that her daughter and others like her did not have to suffer as she had.
Ms Akter and the union's president Amirul Haque Amin will address a War on Want and TUC co-ordinated meeting this weekend to raise awareness of the issue and urge consumers and ministers to exert pressure on the firms to end the use of sweatshop labour.
War on Want's recent report Race to the Bottom alleges that two in three workers in one Addidas factory were clocking up more than 40 hours' overtime a month.
There were also widespread reports of verbal and physical abuse and sexual harassment.
The findings have added to the pressure on London 2012 chairman Seb Coe who was also recently criticised after it was revealed the official Olympic and Paralympic mascots were being produced in sweatshop conditions.
War on Want sweatshops campaigner Murray Worthy said: "Lord Coe has called the Games 'a powerful lever of change, improving lives across the world' yet this research shows the appalling abuses committed by a company the Games have endorsed.
"We hope London 2012 organisers will make clear that they believe these conditions are completely unacceptable."
The War on Want conference will take place on Saturday March 24 from 10.30am at Toynbee Hall, 28 Commercial Street, London E1 6LS. Register in advance at www.waronwant.org
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