Nike is Leading the Race .... to the Bottom

[marmar]

from AlterNet:


Nike Is Leading the Race ... to the Bottom

By Zack Knorr, AlterNet. Posted March 9, 2007.



Despite promises to clean up its act, Nike is making a U-turn on its commitments to improve the sweatshop conditions for its workers overseas.

For years, Nike has insisted that it cares about worker rights and is improving working conditions at its overseas factories. Now the company is abandoning one of the only factories in its supply chain that respects the rights of workers

Embarrassed in the 1990s by exposés of the deplorable conditions in its factories around the world, Nike made a public promise to clean up its act. Nike pledged that its supplier factories would respect the rights of workers, including the right to organize a union.

There has been a huge gap between Nike's words and the company's actions. Despite the company's pledges, conditions remain poor throughout Nike's global supply chain and unions are scarce. For most workers, Nike factories today look pretty much like Nike factories ten years ago.

But a few factories have made real progress. Workers at these factories have taken Nike at its word and demanded that factory management follow the standards in Nike's code of conduct. And under pressure from labor rights groups, the factories have responded and ended their sweatshop practices.

One of these factories is BJ&B in the Dominican Republic. At BJ&B, workers sewing Nike baseball caps used to suffer the abuses typical of Nike's contract factories: degrading insults from supervisors, long hours of forced overtime. Anyone who spoke out and demanded better conditions was fired. .....(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/workplace/48982/

[hobbit709]

1. Never bought anything with Nike on it

Never will. Even before the conditions were made public, I considered it way overpriced merchandise.