"FC Barcelona urged to ditch Qatar Airways sponsorship", 12 July 2015

An online petition calling on Futbol Club Barcelona to ditch shirt sponsor Qatar Airways unless it 'treats its workers fairly' has reached over 40,000 signatures in less than 24 hours. The plea asks last year's Spanish treble winners to take a stand against the poor conditions it claims female Qatari workers face on the airline. It says: "The women who work for Qatar Airways face an extremely grim reality: cabin crew are being exploited, imprisoned without charge, forcibly confined on company premises and automatically sacked if they become pregnant. "These abuses are an everyday event not only in Qatar Airlines but in the Qatari national employment system." It goes on to ask that the Catalan club uses its position of power to leverage more rights for the under-represented workers, saying: "Barcelona’s millions of fans see the team as 'more than a club', revered not only for the quality of its players - like Neymar, Andrés Iniesta and of course, Lionel Messi - but for its allegiance to ethics, fairness and social justice."That's why we're asking the world’s most respected football club to cut ties with the airline until workers conditions improve"...