Background

Nike is one of the largest, most popular, and most profitable shoe and clothing companies in the world. In 2000, the company earned $472 million from more than $9 billion in sales.

But the reality for the hundreds of thousands of workers overseas making Nike shoes and clothing is far less rosy. Workers making Nike products are regularly forced to work excessive hours, are not paid enough to meet the most basic needs of their children, and are subject to harassment, dismissal and violent intimidation if they try to form unions or tell journalists about labor abuses in their factories.

The company likes to say that it has made real improvements in its factories since it became the target of frequent criticism from labor rights and human rights groups. While it is true that, compared to ten years ago, workers in today's Nike contract factories are less likely to be burned to death in factory fires or poisoned by dangerous gases, workers still suffer routine abuses of their basic rights. The experience of Nike workers in China is a good example.

Nike in China

Nike buys shoes and apparel from an estimated 59 Chinese factories. It has been estimated that China accounts for 40 percent of the production of Nike sportshoes.

Workers making Nike products frequently face health and safety threats. For example, at the Sewon Factory in Jiaozhou City, iron bars cover the factory windows and an iron gate surrounds the factory, even though the plant suffered a fire in 1995. The management there has refused to remove the barriers from the windows. The factory has poor ventilation and no air conditioning, leading to extreme temperatures on the shop floor.

Incredibly long hours and forced overtime represents another threat to workers' health. At the Hung Wah and Hung Yip factories in Huizhou City, which make Nike clothing, workers complain of having to work 15 hours a day, seven days a week during peak production seasons. That means that during some parts of the year, workers, most of whom are young women can work up to 100 hours per week. Compensation, including overtime hours and bonuses, comes out to about 22 cents per hour for this work. When asked, workers biggest complaints are the lack of any leisure time, exhaustion, and the very low wages.

But when workers in China try to stand up for their rights, they almost always face repression. Although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the right to freedom of association (as does Nike's own code of conduct), any attempts to form independent unions in China are outlawed, and workers who try to form unions are often detained, imprisoned, or sent to forced labor camps. According to Amnesty International, some labor organizers in China have been detained in psychiatric hospitals. Despite repeated requests from labor rights groups, Nike refuses to make public statements calling on the Chinese government to allow workers to form unions in Nike contract factories. And when workers in other countries try to organize unions, they are frequently warned by factory owners that if they persist in their efforts, their factory will lose orders and Nike will move that production to China.

In general, Nike continues to treat sweatshop abuses as a public relations inconvenience rather than as a serious human rights issue. On those few occasions when Nike has taken steps to protect human rights in individual cases, it has only done so grudgingly and as a result of sustained public pressure.

Why International Right to Know?

Although Nike boasts of being a leader in corporate transparency, Nike's monitoring and factory assessment programs are not independent, lack full transparency, and so far have made very little effort to win workers' trust so that they can speak honestly about factory conditions without fear of reprisal. The kinds of abuses detailed above have only been uncovered through the determined efforts of non-governmental organizations.

International Right to Know legislation would put the responsibility of openness directly on Nike. The company would have to release information on any injuries that occur in its contractor plants and also make public the human rights policies including policies on freedom of association of its contractors.

Sources:

• "Still Waiting for Nike to Do It," by Tim Connor, published May 2001 by Global Exchange
• "Made in China: The Role of US Companies in Denying Worker and Human Rights," published in 2000 by the National Labor Committee