Clothing retailers Lowes and Bonds have been slammed over using Australian sportsmen in advertisements while having products manufactured overseas.Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union state assistant secretary Stephen Davies said the use of sportsmen such as tennis player Pat Rafter and former rugby league national representative Paul Sironen could not be allowed to continue without comment."It makes me angry that they play on the Australian icons and use them to flog their goods when a lot of the stuff is now being made in China," he said."It's not being 100 per cent honest."
Poppets Schoolwear hits back with 'buy Aussie' campaign Poppets Schoolwear factory lays off workers KingGee workers get ready to shut up shopFairy Meadow-based Poppets Schoolwear last week announced it would have to retrench 47 of its 76 employees because major customer Lowes had drastically cut its orders, taking its business offshore.After an appeal from the company's managing director Melissah Gervaise in the Mercury, a Warilla High School official has invited the company to hand out brochures and speak to school staff attending a development day to be held in Berkeley today.As many as 50 schools are expected to send participants.Lowes has not returned calls from the Mercury since last Thursday.Meantime, new polling by the new Manufacturing Alliance has revealed Australians would like to see a stronger Federal Government approach to local content and procurement.It said that 90 per cent of the 1044 people polled thought it quite important or very important for Government to give support and assistance to the manufacturing industry to retain production in Australia.The alliance was formed ahead of this week's ALP national conference and includes the right-leaning Australian Workers Union and left-wing Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.AMWU National Secretary Dave Oliver said the alliance was formed to address the loss of 77,000 jobs from the manufacturing industry in the past 12 months."Our survey shows the community is behind our push to urge Government to consider more Australian content in our nation's large-scale public and private infrastructure projects," Mr Oliver said."It showed 67 per cent agree the Government can take action to stop jobs from going overseas, and this is what we in the Manufacturing Alliance seek to ensure."
