Case Study Lesley Aponte MGT/448 Professor Luis Rios-Silva September 20, 2014

Starting s business is never going to be easy; a person encounters small issues to even major issues. The company I read about was Nike. Although Nike is a successful business it has legal issues that it is coming across for many years now. The legal issues that Nike is having have to do with the manufacturing of the business. Nike only does the marketing and design and does not do any of the manufacturing, the manufacturing is done in another countries, which consists of Vietnam, which was South Korea, and in the 1970s the Nike shoes were made in Korea and Taiwan. By the 1980s a majority of Nike shoes were made in Indonesia and China. The issue that is going on is the labor issues that is going on in these countries with the workers is that they are working more than 60 hours and not getting paid enough they are getting paid about $.20 an hour.
The situation that is occurring is that different human rights organizations and anti-globalization protesters feel that for the hours and labor all those employees put in that this is unfair labor practice and it is unjust. The thing about the United State labor laws is that they are different in other countries labor law but at the same time the workers are still getting less than the amount that is considered minimum wage which can be $3.00 a day and the employers working at the manufacturing company that is owned by Nike is making about $2.10 a day which is less than minimum wage and in Vietnam the pay tends to be less, which is $.20 an hour and $1.60 a day which all adds up to 40 hours a month. When one of the women workers was interviewed by a reporter named Roberta Baskin if asked if the what would happen if the worker was sick or needed to leave because she had something she needed to take care of something such as a sick relative would she be able to leave and her reply was that it was not possible if you have not made enough shoes, saying that she had to meet the quota before the workers could go home. The problem, which people see is that Nike, is aware of this and is allowing these working conditions to continue in Vietnam. Nike in response says that they do not approve of these conditions and will work to eliminate hazardous, unfair, and strenuous working conditions. In Nike defense it does tend to be a bit more difficult to able to keep watch on a manufacturing company that is across the world. Nike has created organizations to be inspectors of the manufacturing companies that are practicing unfair labor, they have specially hired people to train them on what to notice and be aware of when they go to these different companies that are located around the world and if the organization does not meet up to the standards than they will proceed to close it down. The government of these countries also play a part because they also know what is going on and allow this to continue, knowing that in a majority of these countries cost of living is at least 3 dollars and the workers are receiving less than that at least by a dollar.
Managers in this situation are trying to deal with the worker’s working conditions and pay but becomes difficult when you are in the limelight and the focus is on the organization as a whole and everyone looks to the supervisor for any mistake wither it may be minor.
The Nike organizations has had to deal with this situation for many years and people tend to point the finger more at Nike because this has been a successful organization and a popular brand yet there are many others organizations that have the same practice yet they have no protestors, which makes a person think is it only because the organization is successful that they are attacking them or is it really for the well being of the workers.