Essay on Sweatchop in Indonesia

With the above mentioned, there is a huge expectation from Nike in regards to their corporate responsibility but there have been many criticisms and protesters against Nike with regards to their labour noncompliance and several other CSR issues. One of the major claims of these protesters against Nike is that the organisation works virtual slave plants as a result of their use of sweatshops. The employees in these sweatshops are exposed to terrible working conditions such as low wages and forced overtime, where they are forced to work 65 hours per week and

The factories are also known for providing very poor living arrangements for the workers to live in through the extent of their contracts. There has been evidence found of individuals being forced to live in extremely overcrowded and dirty quarters with poor bathroom facilities. Workers and organizations all around the world have tried to push the Nike corporation to put a stop to these sweatshops, but none has prevailed. In some of the factories that Nike owns, the workers have attempted to form a union to protest the conditions of their contract, but they have never succeeded. The Nike corporations fight the unions by shutting down the factories and relocating the jobs to a different non-unionized factory (Bain). Nike has been criticized ever since the start for allowing these conditions to continue, and to this day, this problem is still

The working conditions in Nike factories overseas were far below the standards accepted in the developed world. Though these standards of living were normal and acceptable in those countries, the disparity between the developed countries and the underdeveloped countries stresses Nike’s responsibility towards its employees. Substantial long working hours and overtime were the norm by Nike employees who are anxious to remain employed. In some locations, Nike factory laborers worked for seventeen hours in silence. Workers were not allowed to use the bathroom more than once in an 8-hour shift and they were not allowed to drink water more than twice per shift; this is sheer wickedness and inhumane (Watch, 1997).

Nike Inc., the sports apparel multinational company has been under suspicion and scrutiny for their practice of the unfair treatment and negligent labor habits in their offshore factories. They have been criticized for human rights abuse, child labor law violations, as well as minimum wages and trade union relations violations within a number of Asian countries. They subsequently misguided the public in an attempt to make one believe there is no substance to the allegations of their involvement. The abusive and exploitative treatment and working conditions in these factories has been touted as inhumane in nature as well as an implored violation of worker’s human rights (Figure 1).

The athletic apparel industry in which Nike is involved is a major money maker in the United States, but the fact that none of the factories are located in North America has brought some heat to the company. Nike controls more than 40 percent of the U.S. Market for sports related goods, but doesn’t have a single sneaker factory in this country (Miller 1). Nike continues to make millions of dollars yet exploits workers overseas by paying them very little, while requiring long hours without overtime pay in factories that are not up to “American” standard. Nike subcontractors employ nearly 500,000 workers in plants in Indonesia, China and Vietnam (Saporito 1). The exploitation of workers in Third World counties, where the majority of Nike’s

Nike is a widely known and respected athletic company, but they treat their employees with the least amount of respect such as, “verbal and physical abuse, shockingly high rates of sexual harassment, forced overtime, denied sick leave, inadequate access to medical care”(O’Rourke). Many people are unaware of how poorly these sweatshop workers are treated every day. It seems like Nike is very unwilling to change, because of how inconsistent and unfair the labor conditions are in countries with their sweatshops. Many people worldwide who buy Nike products are unaware of the labor conditions in the sweatshops, but American consumers need to promote efforts to improve the labor conditions for Nike employees.

Conditions for these workers have allegedly been made by campaigns of poor conditions, with commonplace harassment and abuse. Nike has sought to respond to these allegations by putting into place a code of conduct for all of its suppliers, and working with the Global Alliance to review around 21 of these factories, and to pick up and respond to issues.

The manufacturing workforce is made up of young women, who are exploited for their labor, and this is even confirmed by Nike itself. One of Nike’s internal reports concluded that close to two-thirds of the 168 factories in Asia making Converse products failed to meet Nike’s guidelines for manufacturing (Kazi). The hypocrisy here is incredibly important to point out, that not only do Nike’s products “bring inspiration and innovation” to a select few, and not the people who make them, but the factories in which they are made do not meet the standards put in place by the company. Further discussing Nike’s mission statement, which states, “If you have a body, you are an athlete,” the very people that endure such hardship of making Nike products cannot to even protect their bodies from toxic chemicals and respiratory problems.

Today, Nike has a pretty good image when it comes to labor practices, however, this was not always the case. Nike was an early target for labor abuse activists for the very reason they found their success: their business model. Their business model was built on outsourcing their manufacturing and then spending the money they saved on aggressive marketing campaigns. Nike has approximately 700 factories, in which around 20% of workers are creating Nike products. The conditions in which these workers must endure have been a tender spot and easy target for allegations made by campaigns for poor conditions and commonplace

Nike’s executive who oversees all of the company’s effort to truly improve working conditions around their factories, said “We do see other issues of that similar nature coming up across the supply chain but not on a frequent level.” Nike had a lot of heavy criticism about 10 years ago because of its problems with child labour and use of sweatshops. Since then, Nike has taken steps to improve their working conditions at all of its 1,000 factories overseas. Making Nike a much more transparent and humane brand.

In the year 2005, Nike started disclosing its CSR activities after years of silence due to legal concerns. After several audits, Nike reported cases of abusive treatments, unsanitary health conditions, and terrible working environment in more than quarter of its South Asian plants. For example, 25 percent to 50 percent of the factory workers faced restrictions on access to toilets and drinking water during work hours. They were denied at least one day off in a week, and more than half of workers in factories worked more than 60 hours in a week. Furthermore, 25 percent of factories punished workers who refused to work overtime. In order to correct these problems, Nike adopted new strategies and came up with new approaches to improve social performance in supply chains. They worked with several branches of their industry, labor ministers, civil society, and competitors around the world in order to bring positive changes in working conditions and attain better standards of social and environment performance. Nike plans to change the management style around the world by focusing on being “leaders beyond borders.” Nike knew that they need to reach to

Business ethics mean Is the application of general ethical principles to the actions and decisions of businesses and the conduct of their personnel. Ethical practices directly affect on Image rating of the company. Company D-Athlone practices use of “Green” footwear materials, 1% will be contributed to the charitable services from yearly operating profit, ethical trainings are conducting to the workforce as well as work force diversity programmes conducting which result highest (81) image rating in the

Nike does all of their manufacturing in developing or under-developed countries. Because the labor there is cheaper than the ones in developed countries, Nike employs people at a rate that can barely sustain their daily needs. Nike is taking advantage of the cheap labor cost in these countries to gain more profit. First of all, they are using children that are well below the working age to work in huge factories. Secondly, most workers are working in sweatshop conditions, meaning, they are being abused of their human rights because they are working in such unsafe conditions. Finally, the wages that they are earning are very low. According to Daily Mail, “Nike admits that such abuse has occurred among the contractors that make its hip high-tops but says there was little it could do to stop it…. Some workers interviewed by the AP in March and April described

They were only interested in making the largest financial gain so their investors would remain happy. Their only concern was finding the cheapest factories that were run by people not concerned by cutting corners. When responding to the accusation of their unethical practices, they did not quickly respond to remedying the situation; a half fast response was sent out to the public to try and keep the public happy and reporters off their backs. What should have happened is the Nike managers should have had more concern for the people they were employing and not treat them as cheap disposable labor. They should have set up from the first instance a detailed code of factory conduct as well as upheld and enforced their code of ethics. “Take care of your employees and they’ll take care of your business.” (Branson,

Nike has been accused of the unfair labor practice of sweatshop labor. A sweatshop is a place with hazardous working environments, extreme temperatures and abusive employers, hence the term sweat shop. Sweatshop workers work long days exceeding 14 hours and earn less than the living wage (Britanica, n.d.). While these conditions may be shocking to Americans and Modern Western Nations the notion of abusive working conditions is more attractive to Asians and South Americans who are faced with the stark choice of terrible working conditions or unemployment and possible death by starvation. The accusation then is that Nike is using these labor condition inequalities to take unethical