This movie gives a brief history of Nike and leads into the labor abuses that have plagued its contract factories. What I expect someone who watches to get out of it is that the way Nike has done and is doing business is causing alot of suffering and hardship for hard working people in 3rd world nations. Ultimately, Nike only cares about making money and has only addressed these issues because the people have demanded it. In addressing them, Nike has only made empty promises and has made no real effort to change anything except their image. Nike needs to be put back in the spotlight, and word needs to get out that their “responsibility report” is nothing but smoke and mirrors so they can keep on doing the same things as before. A movement to hold Nike accountable needs to commence, and the only way this can be done is by people getting involved.
When I first started this project, I hoped Nike would turn out to be doing the right things. As I delved into the information online, I found much evidence to the contrary. This upset me a bit, but I kept searching. When I found the responsibility report, I was sure I had found just what I needed to clear Nike’s name. It turns out that Nike is just doing what corporations do, and telling people what they want to hear while they make no real committment to change. This project has left me very disappointed in Nike – I respected them more when they turned a blind eye to the labor abuses than when they straight up lied about doing something about them. The class that I am doing this blog for will be over soon, but my interest won’t go away. Just know that I will be steering clear of Nike products from here on out until I hear of some real change happening. My friends all know how I feel about this subject, and so will plenty more to come. Hopefully people listen and spread the word on.
was just reading a report about a plant called Star that makes T-shirts for Nike in Honduras. The report tells a story about workers that got together and formed a union and filed all the necessary papers with the correct agencies. They were supposed to be under the special protection of the state, but all the founding members were fired, and 55 of 58 total members eventually were illegally terminated as well. After staging many protests they eventually got their jobs back and were paid for lost wages, but only after alot of fighting for it. This all happened at the end of last year. This report concerns me, because it also details the way things are run there, which just shows me how little Nike is doing in its contract factories. The workers hardly ever see their plant manager and when there are meetings with him, he speaks to them very badly. The workers told of how he recently told them they used too much toilet paper, and they weren’t worth that much. He also told them they could go pee outside, and he told them he should get some plants like poison ivy and let them wipe with the leaves. This doesn’t sound like a very good work environment to me. One of the biggest things that upsets me is that when the Nike people visit the plant, they don’t talk to workers – only management to find out how things are going. This shows that Nike doesn’t really care about how the workers are being treated, they just want their people to come back with good reports. This method of doing things is totally contradictory to Nike’s responsibility report, as it shows no real responsibility by Nike to handle problems with labor abuses, and totally confirms my thoughts that Nike isn’t really doing anything to correct these problems. No good.
As you have probably seen on the news lately, people are making themselves heard when it comes to protesting the Olympics in China. This seems rather silly to me after working on this blog for the past few months. I wonder if any of these people have ever hassled Nike about having factories in communist China and taking advantage of the fact that labor is so cheap there. I really wonder if any of these torch-thieves have been wearing Nike shoes as they protested. The simple fact is that Nike endorses the Olympics and Nike has partnerships with Chinese factories – maybe they should be getting some of the heat. You know, Nike probably is getting a whole lot more flak than we hear about, it’s just that the corporate-owned media doesn’t like to put controversial corporate practices in the spotlight if they can help it. And sometimes I wonder why I don’t subscribe to cable TV – I get sick of the bias just from the few minutes of the news I catch at friends’ houses!
On April 1st, more than 20,000 workers at a Nike contract factory went on strike. They were demanding a 20% increase in their $59 per month wages and better lunches. This is already 15% above the minimum wage in Vietnam, but due to inflation their money isn’t going very far. They didn’t get exactly what they asked for, but they did get a 10% wage increase and free lunches. I see this a a good sign, because if the workers didn’t feel like they had a chance to actually get anything out of the strike, they wouldn’t have done it. These workers know that they have rights are are prepared to defend them. If things were still being run how they were 20 years ago, I don’t think workers would have even tried this for fear of being beaten or losing their jobs. In the past, Nike might just have pulled out of this factory leaving a ton of people without work. Good deal! They demanded a raise and even got one – and free lunches.
I have been thinking about the problem with Nike factories, and I wonder how hard it would be for them to just move productions back to the US. If they are truly trying to do the right thing, I think this is it. This would make a bunch of new jobs here in the US, as well as stopping the labor abuse problems in third world countries. This might cost Nike some money, but they have plenty. I don’t believe in working with criminals, and that is exactly what these factory owners are. If Nike can’t stop these places from keeping standards that are ethical, they need to stop doing business with them, period.
Nike recently released a report that showed some of the problems I have discussed previously. In preparation for the next olympics in China, Nike checked into its Chinese factories and how well they were really doing. It seems they found quite a few problems that are persisting, including falsification of documents and many cases of underage workers. In fact, there were 167 cases of underage workers who were now of age, and two cases of workers who were currently underage. This report was released publicly to show that they recognize the problem and that they are still doing whatever they can to fix it. I am pretty impressed at their honesty, but I would still like to know how they are going to put an end to this problem. On another subject, Adidas CEO Herbert Hainer recently spoke in an interview about competing with Nike and running into the same problems with factories in other countries. Adidas, like Nike, has a plan for eliminating these labor abuses in its factories and knows that in its quest to compete with Nike they must try to eliminate these problems as well.
Well, with Nike at least appearing to be doing an awesome job in the fight to save the environment and cracking down on labor abuses, it seems that the way Nike is causing change when it comes to other companies is by leading by example. Being at the forefront of the industry, other companies look up to Nike and are constantly compared to them. Other companies that rely on perverse tactics to generate substantial profits will have to produce some similar efforts to keep up or be left in the dust. Nike has set the bar pretty high, but I feel that this may induce a race to be the most environmentally safe and labor abuse free company. They say that necessity is the mother of invention, and these other companies will need some great ideas to be able to compete with the way Nike is handling this situation. Hopefully this kind of competition does incite some great new ways of puting an end to these problems. I am mainly interested in the ways they might keep the factories in other companies in check – making sure that they do as they say. Right now I don’t have all too much faith in the methods of taking factories’ words or interviewing workers. These sources can lie. If any shoe companies are listening, I’ll buy your shoes if your company is having its shoes made under good labor practices and you have to be able to PROVE IT. America is going green very fast, and there is a huge amount of consumers that would agree. Lets get this competition going.
After trying to analyze Nike’s responsibility report more in-depth, I noticed that when it comes to the sweatshop problem the actions being taken are for the most part very abstract ideas that don’t concretely outline specific ways that they are going to change the working conditions in these factories. The most specific thing it says is that they will survey contract factory workers on empowerment/satisfaction. As far as I know, most factories with terrible working conditions were surveyed throughout the time in which they were treating workers badly. The workers were trained by their superiors to lie and tell the surveyors what they wanted to hear. This was the only process outlined in the report as opposed to the other statements, which were goals. It isn’t stated how they want to achieve these goals, just that they are working to achieve them. I am going to E-mail Nike and ask how they plan to achieve these goals, such as “zero excessive overtime identified in contract factories”. Why do they have to keep using these contract factories anyway – aren’t they making enough money to use factories inside the US?
On Feb 14, 2008 Nike revealed a new shoe called “Nike Trash Talk” which is a shoe made from recycled materials and manufacturing waste which comes as a result of a partnership with Phoenix Suns all-star guard Steve Nash. Nash was interested in doing something good for the environment and together they put together this shoe which uses leather and synthetic leather waste stitched together for the upper, environmentally preferred rubber and Nike Grind material for the outsole, and scrap-ground foam from the factory for the mid-sole. I am totally in favor of the message that this puts out to customers and the competition. This kind of release challenges other companies to keep the same kind of standards in being environment-friendly. I still wonder how well factories in poor countries are keeping the standards that they say they are – this kind of outsourcing seems to instigate a kind of cutt-throat process that might appear to be following standards, but on the inside things might not be going so swell. I am going to get more information about how they intend to keep these places on the up-and-up and also keep up to date on some other aspects of design that could be questionable.
