Nike Child Labor Essay

Nike is one of the top sports clothing industry in the world. However, for years there are fresh allegation for Nike, which dogged by sweatshops and child labour (Daily Mail Reporter, 2011). On the 13 July 2011, Nike has revealed several cases of worker abused at factory.

Many nations do not respect human rights till today. Rights which are birth right of human in developed countries are still not universally accepted. Rights such as freedom of speech, equality without discrimination towards gender, race, religion, language or any other status should be respected and taken into account. Nike has been accused of abuse in factories overseas where its products are manufactured. The abuse includes both physical and mental abuse to their employees working in the factories. There have also been reports of workers being underpaid and overworked. It is Nike’s responsibility to take good care of its stakeholders, which include factory workers and families, the factory management besides Nike

Unfortunately, the same factor that contributed to Nike’s exponential growth (low-cost labor and production) also contributed to hurting Nike’s public image as a leader in “athleticism, health and fitness, and innovative marketing and design” (Locke, 2002). Nike was criticized for unethical practices by their subcontractors, which included underpaid workers, poor working conditions, child labor, and abuse (Locke, 2002).

Nike is one of the most well established companies who sponsor famous athletes that impact their buyers in a more inspirational and positive way. Although Nike has been keeping their illegal sweatshops in hiding and not revealing the truth to its consumers. Nike could solve these problems of their illegal sweatshops and fix their business image and still be one of the biggest companies.

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.

Nike at this time knew the situation could not be resolved. Nike has changed there working environments for their employees from past mistakes. Hopefully Nike and the Universities

The highly recognized name brand—Nike— fails to notice the faults that are happening in factories that are violating a few disturbing rules. The company’s reputation has decreased due to demands and claims Nike; implying that they utilize sweatshops to produce more products at a lower pay. The company has been sued numerous times for abusing and exploiting their employees in factories for years. Another problem that Nike has faced throughout the years was making employees work in poor environments that affected the health of many— which contributed to being abused by the manager for not going to work. Nike distributes and sells merchandise of high quality for a high value. The company is giving the satisfaction of quality service to their

For years, Nike has been sourcing from factories that seek to meet the company 's minimum standards for good labor performance. The policy of Nike is to evaluate potential contracted factories before they enter the supply chain. Throughout their business relationship with Nike to assess compliance with high standards of social and environmental performance, including country-related risk for issues including forced labor, human trafficking and slavery Nike (n.d).

Although Nike may be technically removed from responsibility in some areas, it clearly has the obligation to be certain that exploitation by subcontractors do not occur. Certainly the pay and working conditions that the workers of subcontractors receive is due in large part to the contract that has been negotiated by Nike. If Nike had chosen to make improved working conditions a part of the arrangement, them those benefits may have been passed on to the workers. Still, Nike is a publicly owned firm whose goal is to improve the wealth of its shareholders. The workers in these Asian countries were happy, even eager, to accept the conditions that were provided as a manufacturer of Nike. The reason is that those wages were probably equal or superior to wages available from other sources. If Nike were to leave the country because of the pressures placed upon it, the workers would undoubtedly suffer greatly.

Social responsibility: In the late 1990s, Nike found protestors outside of Nike stores, and the press making Nike into a villain. Nike was being accused of child labor and sweatshop allegations. Shortly after this, in 1998, the CEO Phil Knight promised change (Greyser, 2009). In 2005, Nike released a transparent list of the factories the company used globally. In this same year, Nike released the first version of a corporate social responsibility (CSR) report, which detailed working conditions and pay scales in each of its factories. In this report, it also admitted to problem they were facing and the various solutions they planned to roll out to fix the issues.

After several years of record breaking performance Nike's global labor practices were brought to the attention of the public as early as the 1990s. Which included publishings in Harper's magazine that a   Nike subcontractor paid woirker's just under 14 cents an hour. Other reports include

Nike should not be allowed to claim they are an ethical company especially when they are still outsourcing to impoverished countries in Asian. The company takes advantage of low living standards and lack of democracy in those countries. There was nonexistence of labor movements in countries like Indonesia. The government never allowed

They should be responsible for the legal, social and philanthropic aspects of its subcontracted factories. They are not paying their employees the legal minimum wage, caring about the working conditions and welfare of these employees and just not taking into consideration the well-being of others. Ten years ago, the company had been subjected to negative press, lawsuits, and demonstrations on college campuses alleging that the firm’s overseas contractors’ subject employees to work in inhumane conditions for low wages. With the introduction of the fair labour association and worker rights consortium, Nike is slowly trying to improve the working conditions on subcontracted factories and hopefully in 10 years, they would be able to re-establish themselves as a morally acceptable company.

Nike had been criticized for these issues and media and other organization help to publicize these violations. At first Nike ignored the criticism calming the Indonesian factories were owned and operated by independent

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