Word: nike
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...past few weeks, the Nike motto appears to have changed from "Just do it!" to "Just do it our way, or else!" In a disturbing display of industrial and financial power, Nike Chair Phil Knight recently reneged on a promised $30 million donation to the University of Oregon, and the company cancelled a multi-year, multi-million dollar apparel contract with the University of Michigan. The reason: both schools are affiliated with the human rights monitoring group the Workers Rights Consortium (WRC). Nike, a member of the Fair Labor Association (FLA)--a monitoring group backed by the government, several apparel...
...midst of Nike's many specious criticisms of the WRC, however, it has lodged two valid complaints. First, it is unreasonable to demand that corporations pay a living wage without defining what that living wage is. Second, in order for any monitoring group to be successful, it requires corporate input. Sweatshop monitoring exists to provide the public with full and accurate information about the conditions under which apparel is being manufactured, thereby giving consumers the tools they need to make informed decisions about what to buy. Yet, the ultimate end of sweatshop monitoring is to induce changes in the working...
...transparent nature of the WRC plan has clearly discomfited the industry. Nike went so far as to cancel a sports equipment deal with Brown University, citing the school's role as a founding member...
...Nike overreaction is best illustrated by an incident which took place last fall, when I took two university-based "anti-sweat" activists to Indonesia. We were contacted by union officers at the sprawling Nikomas Gemilang factory, where more than 18,000 young Indonesians were making shoes for a Nike contractor; they wanted us to visit the factory. We weren't on the property for more than three minutes before a breathless Taiwanese manager chased us down and told us that no one could visit the factory without Nike's permission and, further, that we could not even see the dormitories...
...Nike, predictably, criticized our visit as unhelpful. In retrospect, we did not even need the factory visit. With the help of some Indonesian students, we spoke with scores of workers and did some rudimentary "faux bargaining" calculations. Had the workers won a meager seniority clause increase of 15 cents per worker per day for each year of seniority, a worker with four years' experience would earn $1.70 a day, instead of $1.10. This does not sound like much money, but in this huge factory, it would cost the contractor $10,000 a day! No wonder the vast majority of Nike...