June 15 – FIFA has defended another attack on its record of protecting construction workers building the 2018 World Cup stadia in Russia, saying that a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report is mis-representative of the situation.
FIFA said in a statement that “while incompliances with relevant labour standards continue to be found — something to be expected in a project of this scale — the overall message of exploitation on the construction sites portrayed by HRW does not correspond with FIFA’s assessment.”
Human Rights Watch maintain that many still face exploitation and labour issues with Jane Buchanan, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, saying: “FIFA’s promise to make human rights a centerpiece of its global operations has been put to the test in Russia, and FIFA is coming up short. Construction workers on World Cup stadiums face exploitation and abuse, and FIFA has not yet shown that it can effectively monitor, prevent, and remedy these issues.”
A 34-page report by HRW titled ‘Red Card: Exploitation of Construction Workers on World Cup Sites in Russia’ details an investigation of conditions at six World Cup sites finding workers struggling with “unpaid wages either in full or part, several months’ delays in payment of wages, work in temperatures as cold as -25 degrees Celsius without sufficient protections, and employers’ failure to provide work contracts required for legal employment.”
The survey interviewed Russian nationals as well as foreign workers from Central Asian countries, Belarus, and Ukraine.
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