Nike once again demonstrates its "commitment" to worker's rights.

[Pale Blue Dot]

Nike Is Leading the Race ... to the Bottom

http://alternet.org/workplace/48982/

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.

Citing Nike's own code of conduct, workers and activists demanded that Nike take responsibility for conditions at BJ&B. Nike, looking for opportunities to rid itself of its sweatshop reputation, said it agreed: Conditions should be improved and Nike would force the factory to clean up its act.

The result was dramatic improvement in standards for workers at BJ&B. Among other gains, workers were able to form a union to defend their rights -- one of the only unions in any Nike factory anywhere in the world. And workers negotiated a groundbreaking union contract that called for an increase over the poverty-level wages that are the industry standard.

Sounds great, right?

Last week, Nike demonstrated the sincerity of its commitment to worker rights -- by announcing the closure of BJ&B. Nike says the factory isn't "competitive" and announced that it will move cap production to Bangladesh and Vietnam, two countries where working conditions are bad, unions are illegal, and caps are a few pennies cheaper than at BJ&B. Factory management suspended the entire workforce and set a closure date of May 22.

:grr: