Oct 30 / ramirorejas

Nike sweatshops

Nike is the world’s leading supplier of athletic shows with about 36% of market share and $19.2 billions in revenue (2009). They are in charge of designing, marketing and selling, but not manufacturing their shoes.

The factories that are in charge of this are called sweatshops, given that employees often work long hours in poor conditions for a very low wage. About 800,000 people work on these, which are mainly located in China, Indonesia and Vietnam because of cheap labour.

In all of these countries, the minimum wage is not enough to survive. In China, workers make $1.75 a day; in Indonesia, $2.46 a day; and in Vietnam, $1.60 a day, even when three simple meals cost $2.10 a day. Workers usually need to work more than 100 overtime hours per month so that they can only survive.

Where are Nike’s values and ethics? They are always under great criticism because they are perfectly capable of increasing the wages of all their factory workers, but they refuse to do it. Other companies like Coca-Cola or Goodyear did not hesitate to do so when realizing minimum wages were not enough. Nike should follow their ethical example.

The first seems to change organizational ethical values. Just watch the following video to get an idea what of what Phil Knight, Nike’s Chairman, has to say about sweatshops (15:41 to 16:56):