Pro/Con: The Nike Debate

Nike does not act as evil global monster

It has come to my attention that students on this campus are considering a boycott of Nike Corporation products. Before my liberal-minded friends decide to embark on such an endeavor, I would like to share personal knowledge and experience of what Nike is today, what it stands for, and what role the corporation plays in our global drama.

I will begin by conceding that multinational corporations like Nike have repeatedly contracted the work of companies in third world nations where workers have been physically abused, forced to work overtime, made to toil in sweatshop-like conditions and underpaid for the hard labor they endure.

Today, Nike and other global employers must be expected and required to respect the dignity of the individual, provide a workplace that is free from harassment or abuse, and provide just compensation for reasonable hours of work.

The Nike Corporation currently employs 500,000 workers in 32 countries, many of which are in Vietnam and Indonesia. Job vacancies attract hundreds of people seeking employment in a Nike contract factory where workers will receive about US$1.50 to US$3.00 for a day’s labor. While a seemingly small amount to us, the resulting yearly salary of $545 to $566 is far more than the average $250 to $300 for a Vietnamese worker. A recent study by Dartmouth College found that Nike workers have money left at the end of the month for discretionary spending or even to save. Compare that to a U.S. worker making minimum wage in inner city Chicago. You can bet that that individual does not have money left at the end of the month to invest.

Nike has taken a lot of heat as attention was focused on its operations, while in reality Nike has made efforts to create fair working conditions. Nike wrote the sporting goods industry’s first Code of Conduct in 1992. In 1996, Nike was the first company to join President Clinton’s Coalition on Fair Labor Practices. In 1997, after complaints about the Code’s lack of accessibility to workers, Nike created the sporting goods industry’s first Code of Conduct card for distribution to management and workers in 11 languages.

On the domestic front, people continue to become enraged by the price that Nike tags to its “swoosh.” Complaints that Nike’s advertising of exorbitantly priced shoes to youth who can’t afford such a large investment in an image fail to acknowledge that Nike has made an obvious effort to sell the benefits of physical activity. While Nike’s commercials periodically show Jordan’s flight across the court or Michael Johnson ripping down the track, they just as often show young girls proclaiming the power of engagement in sports or communities aiding youth by encouraging athletics (the Participate in the Lives of America’s Youth program).

Having visited the Nike campus in Beaverton, I can tell you that Nike is an ideal corporation with benefits of which most American workers would be envious. Nike treats its domestic employees with the respect and compensation due to any individual. Outside of the U.S., Nike has increasingly pressured contracted companies to treat their employees fairly and continues to pursue a system of just compensation. Many people are confused by angry accusations that Asian workers receive only a few dollars for a day’s hard work but should realize that in a place like Vietnam, it only costs 40 to 43 cents a day for food. How much do you spend each day on food? ($8.00 dinner at the “Bon”…)

Nike has made mistakes in the past and has yet to rectify either their act or their image, but if your idea is to boycott Nike and buy instead from Reebok, I can only laugh at your na•vetˇ. Nike is not alone in their overseas policies. If anything, Nike is a proactive corporation that sets an example with its fair practices in employment and treatment of workers.

If you must protest Nike Corporation operations, I would encourage you to do so by writing letters to folks like Michael Jordan, who makes $20 million a year advertising for Nike and answered a question on the subject discussed above with, “I don’t know the complete situation. Why should I?” I would assert that this type of ignorance is the real evil in the overseas labor issue.

Nike workers live at sub-human level

Considering that Portland is the birthplace of the Nike corporation, it is not surprising that in the Lewis & Clark College community there might be an awareness of controversial issues surrounding the company. However, concern with conditions of workers in overseas factories responsible for the manufacturing of Nike products has reached a national level.

Central to the question of the circumstances of labor in third-world factories, where Nike will produce more than 70 million shoes this year, is the abuse of workers often paid at a level below that which allows them adequate nutrition or proper housing. In a report produced by Newsweek, the base wage of Indonesia’s Nike suppliers was revealed to be even lower than that of the national minimum wage of $2.59, resting at $2.23.

In an interview for a 1993 CBS television program on Nike, the Indonesian Director General of Labor said: “Frankly speaking, we are not happy with the low level of the wage. We would say Nike should pay a decent wage, but there’s not much the government can do about it. If it insists on higher wages, then companies like Nike will pull out of Indonesia, taking thousands of jobs with them.”

Nike Chief Executive Officer Philip H. Knight defends the Indonesian operations, saying that sneaker assemblers in Indonesia earn an average of double the minimum wage. The reason for this, that workers have no choice but to work overtime, brings up yet another question of worker’s rights.

If workers in the Nike assembly lines were able to organize themselves in protection of their rights, conditions such as forced overtime could be prevented. The right of workers to organize and bargain collectively are the most fundamental of all workers rights, internationally recognized and set down by the International Labor Organization (ILO). And though Nike says it “allows independent trade unions in all of its concentrated factories,” their Code of Memorandum within the company Code of Conduct makes no mention of the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively.

Nike’s code of conduct, however, ironically says that “… in the areas of human rights and equal opportunity; or in our relationships in the communities in which we do business — we seek to do not only what is required, but whenever possible, what is expected of a leader.”

It becomes difficult to swallow such statements when Nike continually pays its workers below minimum wage, thus forcing them into living conditions that qualify as sub-human. A report from the Asian American Free Labor Institute exposed conditions within the P.T. Nikomas factory in Serang where most of the accommodation was in a long single story barrack-like structure, often built close together. These were divided into tiny rooms, three meters by three meters, with concrete walls and floor, in each of which two, three, or even four young women were living or, in some cases, a couple with children. Sanitation was reported as extremely poor, and the few toilets and laundry facilities were shared by many people.

Though little of what Nike’s code of conduct says of their values of human rights and equal opportunity can be taken to heart, their statement that they seek whenever possible to do what is expected of a leader is especially unfair. Due to Nike’s great commercial power, brand name companies such as Nike are in a position to do something positive about these labor conditions. The choice of targeting Nike on these issues rather than some other brand name, both for the American public, and this article, is dictated by the fact that it is a leader in its industry, not only in terms of market share, but in terms of innovation and new directions. Where Nike goes, other companies tend to follow.