Poor Labor Practices

Factory workers endure abuse on the job lacking a voice or ablility to do anything about it. Since Nike contracts out for their factory managers, it has been hard for Nike to regulate what goes on when they are not on their tour or walk through. “A Korean supervisor in a Vietnam factory was found guilty of beating 15 Vietnamese about the head with a shoe “upper”, and another Korean supervisor was charged with sexual molestation.” (Saporito 3) In this instance it was not an U.S. supervisor, nor was it a military officer but someone of a different nationality. The hard part is that there are no independent unions and meaningful corporate codes of conduct to discipline management. So workers must turn to the courts for help which is a long fought battle that no one wants to attempt. In one case that made it to, a Vietnamese court recently found a Korean supervisor guilty of beating workers and extradition may be sought for the accused sexual molester who fled. In Indonesia 24 discharged Nike workers are challenging the legality of their dismissal before the country’s Supreme Court (Saporito 3). These are major breakthroughs in the court systems to have someone tried and convicted in these distant countries whose courts are often corrupted.

Factory conditions are consistently getting press here in the U.S., as many are angry with Nike for not providing for their overseas employees. The following account is of the conditions in a Chiniese factory:

Twelve hour shifts several days a week; wages as low as 16 cents and hour; 16 workers to a dorm room; pregnant women fired. Workers are not allowed to talk. There is constant pressure to produce—workers are yelled at. If you don’t meet your high production quota you must stay until you do-without pay. The factory is noisy, filled with dust and fumes. Workers have fainted, overcome by the long hours and the glue fumes. One worker died; another lost an arm; other has had their fingers broken by the equipment. Most workers have never heard of the Nike code of conduct. There is no union and workers are afraid that if they complain, they will be fired. When a group of workers stopped working in March to protest had not been paid, they were fired. The supervisor warns workers in advance of any inspection, the factory is cleaned and if workers are interviewed it is in the presence of factory management. (“The Neediest and the Greediest” 4)

To break these allegations down some more, it has been alleged that 13-15 year old children have been working for up to 17 hours a day making the equivalent of $0.15 an hour. There were also allegations that there was physical and verbal abuse in the workplace. More than 2,000 workers (57% of respondents) indicated that they had seen workers being shouted at or mistreated by supervisors or managers. Examples of verbal abuse given by the workers included the Indonesian equivalent of phrases like Fuck You! You Idiot! , You Whore! and You Pig! Examples of mistreatment included wage deductions, having their ears pulled, being pinched or slapped on the buttock, being forced to run around the factory yards and having to stand for hours in factory yards (being dried in the sun ). Workers also complained that they are forced to work excessive amounts of overtime, that it is often extremely hot in work rooms, that access to drinking water is limited and that they receive very low wages (Bissell 1). Workers at the Lian Thai factory in Thailand only receive the minimum wage of 162 Baht ($US4.25*) for working an 8 hour day and say they need about 200 Baht ($US5.25*) just to cover the basic needs of one person (Bissell 10). In Indonesia, the minimum wage first year worker only receives Rp250,000/month ($US34*). the income earned by farming. Although it is not Nike’s fully responsibility to take care of health and safety into consideration it is the work of subcontractors.But again taking into consideration companies reputation and as a moral responsibility Nikeshould take action against the working conditions of the work place and workers
2)
Wages –
Is the major issue I think Nike is facing. The company is constantly getting allegations and criticism on this point. In the case it’s mentioned that an 11 year old Indonesia makes 14 cent per hour, this amount cannot be compared with the minimum wage in US. But I think it all depends on value of currency of a particular country if a countries currency is lower than the US dollar at the end of the day the workers are getting paid in US dollars. That’s what Nike’s spokes a woman, Donna Gibbs argues on. She countered that this statement was in fact false. According to Gibbs, the average worker makes 240,000 Rupiah which is 103$ a month working a maximum of 54 hours a week which is pretty much sufficient for a worker to fulfill his basic needs. According to my analysis and perspective Nike should follow the basic wage rule of a country, which Nike is following, it is Impossible to set a minimum wage rule to all the countries, as mentioned above all the value of currency differ from country to country

The Vietnamese press contain frequent allegations of verbal, physical and sexual abuse of workers, charges echoed by Thuyen Nguyen of the New York City-based Vietnam Labor Watch. Nguyen also says that Nike contractors require overtime work far in excess of permissible limits.
Nike was severely embarrassed on the child labor issue in 1996 when a major story in Life magazine featured a photograph of a very young Pakistani boy sewing a Nike soccer ball. Evidence continues to emerge of young persons under the age of 16 employed in Nike contract factories. In the absence of economic development in their communities, however, excluding children from factories may force them into even more dangerous and degrading work. Global Exchange believes that payment of a living wage to adult workers would be by far the most effective means of benefiting children in areas in which Nike's goods are made.
In the early 1990s, Nike products were being manufactured in six Indonesian factories, employing more than 25,000 workers. Four of these factories were owned by Nike’s Korean suppliers. As Nike’s presence in Indonesia increased, the factories supplying its products (about six million pairs of shoes per year) came under greater scrutiny. Reports by a variety of NGOs and labor activists claimed that these plants were rife with exploitation, poor working conditions, and a range of human rights and labor abuses. Many Indonesian shoe factories did not even pay the minimum daily wage (at the time, 2,100 rupiah or about US$1). They petitioned the Indonesian government for exemptions to the legal minimum wage, claiming it would cause them “hardship” to pay. According to official Indonesian government calculations, this minimum daily wage only covered 70% of the basic needs of one individual – let alone a family. Nike’s Korean suppliers were seen as especially stingy with wages and abusive to local workers. “One worker at Naga sakti Para Shoes, a Nike contractor, said that she and other Indonesians were ‘terrified’ of their South Korean managers: ‘They yell at us when we don’t make the production quotas, and if we talk back they cut our wages.’”
Nike was also criticized for failure to follow child labor laws by hiring children who were not allowed to work and forcing them to work overtime for below minimal pay. For example, “according to Global Exchange, in one factory, owned by a Korean subcontractor for Nike, workers as young as 13 earning as little at 10 cents an hour toiled up to 17 hours daily in enforced silence” (Hill, 2009).

Nike requires that compulsory work hours be no more than 60 per week, or less if local law requires it.70
Although wages are so low that Nike workers will frequently choose to work more than 60 hours just to make ends meet, factory work is arduous and Global Exchange and other rights groups do not believe that factory owners should have the right to
Impose such a long working week. Workers should have the flexibility to refuse overtime if other issues in their lives mean that they need to do so.
One of the questions in the 1999 Urban Community Mission study asked Indonesian
Nike workers what their major complaint was with conditions in their factory.
Being compelled to work excessive overtime was overwhelmingly the issue which the largest number of Nike workers identified—1,555 of the 4,000 workers interviewed gave it as their most important complaint (UCM and PFC 1999).
Independent research into conditions in Nike factories has found considerable evidence of workers being required to work more than the 60-hour limit. In March 2000 the author interviewed workers from three Nike contract factories in Indonesia, PT
Nikomas Gemilang, PT ADIS71 and a third factory which workers asked not be named for fear of reprisals. At the Nikomas Gemilang factory workers were frequently being required to work more than 70 hours per week. In some sections they were working from 7:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. Monday to Friday with only two breaks and then working half days on Saturdays and also on Sundays. Workers who refused overtime were humiliated in front of other workers:
Nikomas Worker (through interpreter)—Workers [are] often required
In October 1998 a recently fired Nike worker from the Formosa factory in El
Salvador, Julia Pleites, reported that workers at Formosa were required to work from 7
a.m. in the morning until 6:30 p.m. or 7 p.m. at night almost every day and were denied the entire day’s pay if they

To add to all these allegations, there were also allegations that there was bad air quality in some of the factories. There had been a violation of the OSHA guidelines for exposure to certain VOCs or volatile organic compounds. Over the years of investigation, there had been an improvement, but they fail to take in account the affect these toxic gases had on women s health, especially since women make up 80% of the workers (Bissell 12). refused to work overtime (NLC 1998)
The factory is noisy, filled with dust and fumes. Workers have fainted, overcome by the long hours and the glue fumes. One worker died; another lost an arm; other has had their fingers broken by the equipment. Nike has made important progress in reducing the use of toxic chemicals in sportshoe production. Unfortunately, on the few occasions in recent years that genuinely independent health and safety experts have been allowed access to Nike contract factories, they have found serious hazards including still dangerously high levels of exposure to toxic chemicals, inadequate personal protective equipment, and lack of appropriate guards to protect workers from dangerous machinery. There is also considerable evidence of workers suffering stress from spending large amounts of time in high pressure and frequently abusive work environments.
After disclosing 18 months ago that the air in parts of the plant had levels of cancer-causing substances that exceeded local standards by 177 times, the critic, Dara O'Rourke, applauded the factory for improving ventilation, reducing the use of hazardous chemicals and training managers on safety issues.

Mr. O'Rourke, an environmental researcher at the University of California at Berkeley, praised Nike for a turnaround, noting that it was substituting less harmful chemicals for dangerous ones and had taken the unusual step of allowing a critic like him to inspect the factory, which is outside Ho Chi Minh City. Nike, the world's largest athletic shoe company, let Mr. O'Rourke visit the factory in December while he was in Vietnam working as a consultant for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization. Mr. O'Rourke criticized the factory, which is owned and operated by a Korean contractor, for making insufficient use of protective equipment like masks and gloves and for having excessive heat and noise in parts of the plant, which has 9,200 workers
Nike was the subject of considerable scandal in 1997 when one of the company’s own factory monitoring reports, conducted by accounting firm Ernst and Young, was leaked to The New York Times (Greenhouse 1997). The report documented serious health and safety issues in the Tae Kwang Vina factory in Vietnam, including exposure to dangerous levels of toxic fumes from organic solvents. Particularly concerning was exposure to Toluene at between 6 and 177 times the Vietnamese legal limit (TRAC 1997). Toluene is a chemical solvent that can cause central nervous system depression, damage to the liver and kidneys and skin and eye irritations. There is also a body of scientific evidence linking exposure to Toluene vapors with miscarriages.1 The leaked report noted that exposure to Toluene and other chemicals had resulted in “increasing number of employees who have disease [sic] involving skin, heart, allergic, throat” (TRAC 1997).