NIKE's Labour Troubles Essay

As such, it applied cultural relativism to justify the use of child labor, unsafe labor practices, and near slave labor in its factories. Since then, Nike has been a driving force to ensure fair labor practices across the apparel industry. In 1999, Nike was a key contributor to the establishment of the Fair Labor Association, an organization that is “…dedicated to protecting workers’ rights around the world” (Fair Labor Association, 2016). Today, Nike continues efforts to ensure that contract factories comply with its Code of Conduct to improve labor standards in overseas factories (Nike, 2016). Because of Nike’s efforts to expand and enforce social responsibility at its factories and given the lessons learned from its sordid past, it is unlikely that Nike would resort to any of the straw men fallacies. However, given the pressure by investors to expect solid returns, one hopes the company continues its altruistic social responsibility efforts while veering away from the Friedman Doctrine and its assertion that “… the only social responsibility of business is to increase profits” (Hill, 2011).

In Vietnamese factories, workers making Nike merchandize have been found to be forced to work over 600 hours of overtime a year, which is more than 400 hours a year above the legal limit in Vietnam (“Fact Sheet”). Workers have reported being coerced into the overtime hours through threats of unemployment or forced indirectly by the low pay to volunteer for the hours in order to support their families. This in other words is a form of slavery. There are only 24 hours in a day and to spend 16 hours or more at work in order to keep a job is a complete denial of a right to life, or in other words a human rights violation.

Since the 1990s, Nike has been embroiled in controversy over its use of sweatshops. Including numerous media reports of workers earning very little an hour (14 cents per hour), and even workers abused by sub-contractor (Allarey, 2015). Incidents such as these are ingrained in Nike’s history and not quickly forgotten. However, as CEO I would like to attempt to correct wrongs.

This paper describes the legal, cultural, and ethical challenges that confronted the global business presented in the Nike sweatshop debate case study. It illustrates Nike’s part in the sweatshop scandal and it also takes a look at the ethical issues that surround this touchy subject. This paper

The labor practices issues has became the biggest challenges for Nike. The unethical act of Nike caused a huge loses and experiencing dramatically dropped in net profit. In early 1998, the founder of Nike Phil Knigh have been announced that the Nike will taking actions to the sweatshops issues by raising the minimum age of worker to avoid the problem of child labor. Moreover, Nike will be strengthen the management over the sweatshops issues as well.

Similarly, Nike’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices were in question. Truly, their CSR was insufficient and lacked in moral obligation to the communities in which they operated. Conversely, supervisors in the overseas factories were just trying to ensure they met production goals and kept costs low so Nike would continue to do business with them (Nisen, 2013). As a result, Nike expanded their compliance staff, invested in the training of staff and overseas suppliers, developed additional auditing protocols, hired third-party auditors to check their internal audits, and spent millions of dollars to improving working conditions in overseas factories who made Nike products (Locke, 2013). According to a case study, “Nike auditors and compliance staff to be serious, hardworking, and moved by genuine concern for workers and their rights” (Locke, 2013, p.

Nike workers are earning as little as $.14 cents per hour, this reveals the impact of slave labor as workers are highly underpaid for the amount of tasks they are required to do, but continue to work there as they can't afford to be unemployed.

As one attempts to assess the business ethics of Levi Strauss and Nike in this writing assignment, we are again compelled to revisit the critical distinction of conduct that is legal, yet still unethical. In both instances, Levi Strauss and Nike behaved with the parameters of legal conduct, yet few would argue that profiting from exploitive work conditions is an ethical behavior of any socially responsible organization (broad view social responsibility). Obviously, it’s very tempting to just condense this argument to the point of “bad companies boosting profits from lower labor costs via exploiting foreign workers in sweatshops”. I am going to take a much broader approach here in my assessment, as

In 1964 Nike was establish under the name Blue Ribbon Sports, yet it only needed 7 years until it became the undisputed leader of athletic brands in the world. However, as the saying goes that you need lifetime to build a reputation and five minutes to destroy it the story of child labour or what became publicly known as sweatshop cases unfolded in 1991 when a picture by The New York Times of a child sewing a shoes that had Nike logo was revealed to the world. Although employing a child is alone a catastrophic event, however, the margin of the dilemma widened when critics commented that workers like that child were not provided with the necessary equipment that will prevent them from being in contact with toxic chemicals. Moreover, investigations revealed that workers were only making 11 cents a day where majority of them were children.

Another attack on Nikes practices came from the Global Exchange in 1997 when they published a report on the working conditions from 4 factories in Southern China. According to their reports in one of the factories, owned by a Korean subcontractor, workers as young as thirteen were working for a mere ten cents an hour for up to seventeen hour days in complete silence. Talking while working was prohibited and violators were fined anywhere from $1.20 to $3.60. Global exchange stated that these practices were in violation of Chinese labor law, which states that no child under 16 may work in a factory. Also that the minimum wage requirement was $1.90 for an 8 hour day. Though once again Nike defended themselves and assured that the monitoring systems they had in place was in fact working and that most, if not all, of the issues were addressed. Global exchange though obtained a confidential report of an audit stating that thousands of young women were working more than 10.5 hour days, six days a week, in excessive heat, noise and foul air. Also many workers suffered from skin or breathing problems and many were not

This paper especially focuses on the problem of Child Labor in Pakistan with respect to the case of the world-renowned sports brand Nike and its use of children in its factories in Pakistan. A set of laws that can be established to eradicate this evil from Pakistan have been elaborated upon in the paper, these proposals include the Trafficking Victim Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), the International Human Right Treaty by the General Assembly, International Criminal Court (ICC), penalty laws for businesses practicing child labor, system to inspect workplaces for child labor and holding employers responsible for the education of the employed children. The recommendations section of the paper deals with methods beside laws that can aid in the eradication of child labor and includes negative publicity, introducing a rating mechanism and dealing with competing (and ethically more sound) organizations.

American business should not be permitted to claim it is an ethical firm if it ignores unethical practices by its international suppliers. For the purpose of this assignment I will use the Nike Company to highlight its unethical practices. Despite the popularity of Nike in the American market, it has been accused of exploiting employees abroad. The corporate social responsibility stipulates that a company should maximize its profit and minimizes its cost in operations and manufacturing, also at the same time benefit the community it operates in. This paper will further elaborate on the global strategy employed by Nike Company as it outsources its goods and the unethical issues its

Ethics refer to what is defined as right or wrong in the morality of human beings and social issues are matters which could directly or indirectly affect a person or many members of a society. In this case study, Nike has been accused of subjecting employees in their subcontracted factories overseas to work in inhumane conditions for low wages. The CEO and cofounder of Nike lamented that “The Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages, forced-overtime and arbitrary abuse.” Initially, the firm purchased two shoe-manufacturing facilities in the United States but eventually had to shut them down due to tremendous loss

Nike is among organizations that are known globally. The headquarters of Nike are in Beaverton, Oregon and it has expanded to other countries in order for them to reach the markets which are untapped so that they can increase their profit margins. For a very long time now the organization has been sourcing its labor from other countries. This is because just as other corporations Nike is escaping the strict regulations which the United States gives them. They easily and readily find cheap labor in third world countries such as Pakistan, Taiwan, China, South Korea and Vietnam (Teather, 2005). This company views this cheap labor availability to be quite beneficial when it comes to the fulfillment of the needs of the customers while maintaining low production costs. The media has highlighted some of the malpractices that global companies such as Nike have bee part of. The paper will look at the cultural issue within Nike .it will also look at the social and ethical responsibility issues which Nike must deal with due to its status as a global organization.

The Pou Chen factory is located in a place where the minimum wage is far below the national average. It has 10,000 workers who make Converse sneakers. Most of the workers are women, and they earn only 50 cents an hour. The amount that they earn is not even enough to cover their food and very poor housing. In this factory, the women are both physically and verbally abused. Nike’s own investigations have proved these complaints to be true. The company made a statement saying that immediate actions would be taken to deal with the situation. It is interesting to note that, “an internal Nike report, released to the Associated Press after it inquired about the abuse, showed that nearly two-thirds of 168 factories making Converse products worldwide failed to meet Nike’s own standards for contract manufacturers. Twelve are in the most serious category, ranging from illegally long work hours to