Forced Overtime: Workers’ most common complaint was being forced to work excessive overtime ? more than 72 hours per week during peak periods. Nike’s code of conduct calls for working hours to be limited to 60 hours.
Poverty Wages for Shoe Workers: The second most serious complaint cited by footwear workers was low wages. The vast majority of Nike shoe workers interviewed told surveyors their basic wages at the time of the survey were between $33 U.S. (Rp 251,000) and $39 U.S. (Rp 300,000) per month ? which comes to about 16 – 19 cents an hour. This wage does not even come close to covering the costs of a family’s basic human needs. Since these interviews, the cost of living has continued to deteriorate, and Nike contractors’ increases in the nominal wage have not been adequate to account for inflation and currency devaluation.
Even Lower Wages for Apparel Workers. Nike apparel workers in Indonesia earn even less than Nike footwear workers. The survey found that 31 percent of the 1,200 Nike apparel workers interviewed earned less than the equivalent of $33 U.S. dollars per month (Rp 250,000). That is 25% percent less than what even Nike says that it takes to meet one person’s minimum physical needs, without taking into consideration providing for family members or savings. According to surveyors: “Workers struggling to survive on wages this low are in a desperate position.”
Shoe giant Nike has suspended a manager in its Ho Chi Minh City factory in response to a labor group’s charge of worker abuse in Vietnamese manufacturing plants. A U.S.-based company spokesman told USA Today that a manager had been suspended for abusing workers. The paper reported that labor activist Thuyen Nguyen of U.S.-based Vietnam Labor Watch inspected Nike facilities in Vietnam last month in escorted and surprise visits. Nguyen said he found violations of minimum wage and overtime laws as well as physical mistreatment of workers. His 12-page report on working conditions in Vietnam is the latest in a series of troubles Nike has faced with its subcontractors in Vietnam. Last year, a South Korean factory floor manager working for Nike subcontractor Sam Yang Co. was convicted of beating Vietnamese employees with a shoe. At least 250 Vietnamese employees walked off the job at the Sam Yang factory last week to protest poor working conditions and low wages, state-run media reported. “Workers at the factory work in overheated and a noisy environment,” the official Laborer newspaper reported. “The requirements from the health care department for labor conditions have not been met.” A second Nike subcontractor, Taiwanese firm Pou Chen Vietnam Enterprise, has been cited for physically abusing workers at its plant. Among other things, a floor manager at the Pou Chen plant forced 56 women employees to run laps as punishment for wearing non-regulation shoes. Vietnamese press at the time of the incident said 12 of them fainted and were taken to a hospital. That incident occurred on March 8, International Women’s Day. The manager accused of making women run laps has been suspended, Nike spokesman McLain Ramsey told USA Today. Nike has repeatedly come under criticism for not clamping down on poor labor conditions in factories it hires to produce its line of footwear and apparel. “While Nike claims it is trying to monitor and enforce its code of conduct, its current approach to monitoring and enforcement is simply not working,” the paper quoted Nguyen as saying. Ramsey confirmed Nguyen’s visit to the Ho Chi Minh City plant and also told the paper that Nike officials are “as distressed as he is” about the report. “Nike has a full investigation going and encouraged local police to do the same,” he told the paper. In the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, a senior labor official reiterated complaints that workers in Nike-contracted factories faced inhumane treatment. “Violations of labor rights generally are occurring in their smaller contractor joint venture or wholly-owned ventures in which the Vietnamese side has minimal control,” said Tu Le, a senior official from the Vietnam Labor Union. Nguyen’s report was to be released today in New York. Just weeks ahead of the report, Nike announced it had hired former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young and his Goodworks International group to review a new code of conduct for the company’s overseas factories. The measure was aimed at quelling mounting criticism that working conditions at factories in Indonesia and Vietnam were substandard. Nike uses five manufacturing plants in Vietnam, where it takes advantage of low-cost labor and relatively high production standards. About 3 percent of Nike’s output is produced in Vietnam, a Nike spokesman said in an earlier interview.
Michael Jordan became the first athletic mega businessman. His role as a spokesman for Nike turned that athletic-shoe and- apparel company into the world leader, earning both him and Nike millions of dollars.