Three years after the chief of clothing giant Nike, Phil Knight, promised to improve standards in the company's factories, its workers still continue to suffer repression and poverty wages, a new report released on May 16 has found.
On May 12, 1998 Nike CEO Phil Knight made a major speech pledging to reform his company's labour practices. Our report shows that three years later, Nike workers in sweatshops abroad still work for wages they and their children can't live on, are forced to work long overtime hours, and face harassment, violent intimidation and firing when they organise to defend their rights or tell journalists about labour abuses in their factories, said Leila Salazar, corporate accountability coordinator of Global Exchange, an international human rights organisation based in the United States.
Global Exchange's 105-page report, Still Waiting for Nike to Do It, examines Nike's performance in relation to commitments made by Knight on May 12, 1998.
In a speech to the National Press Club in Washington, DC, Knight made what were, in his words, some fairly significant announcements regarding Nike's labour practices.
Noting that the controversy over sweatshop conditions had made his company's product synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime and arbitrary abuse, he announced that Nike would adopt new labour policies on health and safety, child labour and independent monitoring, among other issues.
Knight later described the speech as a watershed event that signaled a sea change in the company culture.
The Global Exchange report provides detailed analyses of Nike's performance with respect to each of the six areas of reform cited by its CEO and concludes, Nike has misled consumers and let down the workers who make its products, who continue to suffer extreme injustice while Nike touts itself as an industry leader in corporate responsibility.
The report also provides a detailed, 70-page account of the issues that Knight avoided in his 1998 speech and which Nike has continued to neglect during the last three years, among them raising workers' wages, ensuring that they have the right to form independent unions, and eliminating long hours of forced overtime.
In 1998, for example, Knight promised to involve non-government organisations (NGOs) in factory monitoring, with summary statements available to the public.
Three years later, Nike has arranged only one audit of one factory by one non-profit group. Nike won't say when, if ever, summary statements of NGO factory monitoring will regularly be released to the public.
The company also pledged to expand education programs, making free high school equivalency courses available to all Nike sports shoe workers. Today, less than 2% of Nike workers have participated in these programs, primarily because their wages are so low they cannot afford to give up overtime income in order to take a course.
In 1998, Knight announced a plan to fund university research and open forums on responsible business practices, including funding four programs in United States universities in the 1998-1999 academic year.
Nike held one forum in 1998, but has refused to allow factory research by reputable academics. Most of the academic research the company claims to have funded is not available to the public.
The company's CEO said that he would ensure that the minimum age for factory workers was raised to 18 for footwear factories and 16 for apparel factories. But Nike workers' wages are not enough to support their children, so many of those children will be forced to work from a young age.
Knight also pledged adherence to US Occupational Health and Safety Administration standards in factory air quality. But Nike gives factory owners advance notice of air quality testing, allowing them to change chemical use on the day of the test.
During the last three years Nike has continued to treat the sweatshop issue as a public relations inconvenience rather than as a serious human rights matter, said Salazar.
Nike executives evidently think that by tinkering around the edges of labour reform they can diffuse criticism and scrutiny. It is indefensible that consumers and, most importantly, Nike factory workers are still waiting for Nike to take concrete steps to guarantee the people making its products aren't facing abuse and intimidation.
[From Global Exchange <http://www.globalexchange.org>.]