Nike’s ‘corporate responsibility’ is a sham

By Kristina Cañizares

May 29— On May 12, 1998, Nike CEO Philip Knight stood before the National Press Club and vowed to implement a six-pronged plan to improve labor conditions in his company’s 600 contract factories. The speech didn’t appear to be a palliative: Knight seemed genuinely concerned that activists and journalists had found Nike to be fostering sweatshops and lax safety standards abroad.

Knight was brave: He described his company’s product as “synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime and arbitrary abuse,” and announced a series of reforms that included new labor policies for health and safety, child labor, independent monitoring and workers’ education. “A sea change in company culture” is what he called the move.

As for the details, Knight promised to meet the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards in indoor air quality.

He said the minimum age for Nike factory workers would be raised to 18 years for full-time employees and 16 part-time ones.

He ensured Nike would include non-governmental organizations in its factory monitoring.

He vowed an expansion of Nike’s worker education program, making available free high school equivalency courses, and an expansion of Nike’s micro-enterprise loan program to benefit 4,000 families in Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan and Thailand. And, lastly, Knight promised to fund university research and open forums on responsible business practices.

Given Knight’s remarks were made to the National Press Club, it wasn’t surprising they were absorbed by prominent news organizations.

A May 1998 New York Times editorial argued Nike’s reforms “set a standard that other companies should match,” and the Washington Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. called the new measures a “breakthrough for American and international human rights campaigners.”

Long-time critics of Nike remained cautious, arguing Nike’s workplaces would still be sweatshops even with the proposed reforms. But generally there was the impression that bad press can lead to good reform and that Knight’s announcement was a victory.

Now three years have passed. And Global Exchange, an international human rights organization that has monitored Nike’s labor practices since 1988, has issued a report following up on Nike’s promises.

“Still Waiting for Nike To Do It” is the title of the 115-page investigation and the title pretty much says it all. According to Global Exchange’s researchers, Nike has fallen short on all of its six areas of reform.

Perhaps most troublesome in Global Exchange’s report is that Nike has not make good on its promise to institute OSHA standards.

Toluene, a chemical solvent known to cause central nervous system depression and liver and kidney damage, is still being used in Nike sneaker manufacture.

And although the amount of Toluene has been reduced, Nike seems to be providing factory managers advance notice of testing, “giving them considerable scope to change chemical use to minimize emissions on the day the test is conducted,” according to the report.

Moreover, Nike has not regularly made the results of those tests available to the public.

Among the report’s other findings are that only one nonprofit organization has been permitted to conduct one audit of one Nike factory; that Nike’s education program has expanded, but wages paid in Nike factories are not high enough for the majority of workers to give up overtime income to take courses; that Nike refused reputable academics access to Nike factories to conduct research; that there is evidence Nike contract factories employ workers under 16; and that the company continues to abide factories that demand 70 hour work weeks from their employees.

“While Nike touts itself as an ‘industry leader’ in corporate responsibility, Nike workers are still forced to work excessively long hours in high pressure environments, 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,” concludes the report.

Medea Benjamin, Global Exchange’s Corporate Accountability Director, adds: “There have probably been some improvements [in Nike labor standards], but we have yet to see any meaningful improvement in the areas of living wages or the right to organize.”

Equally troublesome is Nike’s $3 billion public relations campaign, which seems to have silenced many of Nike’s former critics. Nike has skirted around the problem of labor abuses by promoting its reforms without providing proof they are being instituted. And most media organizations have accepted Nike’s PR as news.

Newsweek, for example, reported in 1999 that Nike has “set the apparel-industry standard for reform of wages, hours and minimum working ages in its contract factories.”

The Journal of Business Ethics has called Nike an “ethical transnational,” and Business and Society has praised the company for its cooperation with human rights groups and adoption of a factory code of conduct.

In February 2001, Fortune Magazine voted Nike the #1 most admired company in the apparel industry when, less than a month earlier, 300 striking workers at the Kuk Dong factory in Atlixco, Mexico were attacked and beaten by local police in riot gear. Workers had been attempting to form an independent union demanding fair wages and better food in the factory cafeteria.

Similarly egregious, Nike’s public relations push has included sponsoring socially responsible business conferences and funding media projects.

In October 2000, for example, attendees of one such meeting in Atlanta, the Natural Step Conference, were shown a film describing Nike’s newfound commitment to social justice.

Meanwhile, a BBC documentary found that harassment, measly wages and underage workers were still typical at a Nike contract factory in Cambodia.

Nike’s other maneuver to quiet critics has been to create and fund its own inspection and monitoring organizations, which tend to issue biased reports.

In 1998, Nike co-founded the Global Alliance for Workers Communities with the World Bank, The Gap and two universities.

It also has poured money into the Fair Labor Association, a coalition of corporations and nonprofits brought together in 1996 by Clinton’s Apparel Industry Partnership.

Neither group is independent of Nike, which basically means they have no incentive to conduct investigations that serve the interests of Nike’s workers over the company’s.

So much for Philip Knight’s fine words. On May 15 he proudly trumpeted, “This third anniversary of the speech was a good opportunity to let the public know that we have listened to their feedback and our response can be measured in deeds — not words — when it comes to corporate responsibility.”

But Nike’s efforts at corporate responsibility are a sham. Global Exchange’s investigation strongly suggests that public relations is Nike’s only real political concern.

To quote Global Exchange’s Jason Mark: “The company has treated sweatshop abuses as a public relations inconvenience, not a serious human rights issue. Our report demonstrates the US public has every right to be suspicious of this company.”

Source: The Independent Media Institute

High court overturns damages cap

Washington, DC, June 4— Victims of on-the-job mistreatment may collect unlimited cash awards to make up for what they would have earned if they had been treated fairly and stayed on the job, the Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The 8-0 ruling was a victory for workers’ rights and civil liberties groups, and a setback for employers who hoped to harness jury awards that can often run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The court ruled in the case of a woman whose male coworkers at a DuPont plant in Tennessee harassed and demeaned her, including refusing to associate with her after she was chosen to speak to girls visiting the plant for Take Your Daughters to Work Day.

Lower courts ruled for Sharon B. Pollard and agreed she deserved to be compensated for money she presumably would have made if working conditions had not forced her to leave the plant.

But the lower courts also ruled that a 1991 law capped her compensation at $300,000, instead of the $800,000 she sought.

Other federal courts have not applied the 1991 cap to the “front pay” that Pollard sought, and the Supreme Court found the limit unjustified.

Congress left the door open for front pay awards by authorizing “such affirmative action as may be appropriate,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the court.

Further, unlimited front pay should be available both to workers who stay on the job and those who leave, Thomas wrote.

“I would hope that employers would take from this 8-0 decision the clear message that they have nothing to gain by making life unpleasant and difficult for those whom they have discriminated against,” said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women’s Law Center, one of more than a dozen organizations that signed friend-of-the-court briefs supporting Pollard.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor did not participate in the case, presumably because she owns DuPont stock.

Pollard’s case now returns to the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals for a final accounting of her damage award.

Source: Associated Press

Union workers seize plant in South Korea; 130 injured

Seoul, South Korea, May 28— Armed with steel pipes, union members seized control of South Korea’s largest nylon manufacturing plant on Monday. About 130 people were injured, some of them seriously, company officials said.

About 300 union members fought with security and management officials at the plant, owned by Hyosung Corp. in Ulsan, 160 miles southeast of Seoul.

The plant shut down after the clash with union members, who blocked company officials and other workers from coming in and out of the facility, company officials said. The plant was still under control of the unionized workers late Sunday.

The union members were reportedly upset by an earlier company decision to relocate workers whose jobs could now be done by machines. The protesters feared the relocations were a prelude to mass layoffs.

Hyosung is one of the world’s largest nylon producers with $1 billion in 2000 sales.

Source: Associated Press