Nike Sweatshops 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.

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).

But, omnisciently speaking, both entities faced severe scrutiny and criticism from United States and international citizens for their capitalistic business practices. Furthermore, a vast number of American citizens, mainly teenagers, had been killed over Nike Air Jordan sneakers because of their high price tag, while the cost to produce the shoes were rapidly declining due to Nike’s unprecedented offshore production. Bill Bigelow’s, The Human Lives behind the Labels: The Global Sweatshop, Nike, and the Race to the Bottom accurately portrays this capitalistic mentality when mentioning, “children as young as 6 are ‘sold and resold like furniture, branded, beaten, blinded as punishment for wanting to go home...’ For pennies an hour, these children work in dank sheds, stitching soccer balls with the familiar Nike swoosh and logos of other transnational athletic equipment companies” (Bigelow, 113). What is most disturbing to fans of Nike and Jordan were their comments and proposed remedies on the matter. Essentially, Jordan did nothing to curtail the number of kids being killed for his shoes and, as far as his affiliation with capitalistic Nike, Jordan did not want to cause any kind of rift between himself and the corporation that made him millions

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 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

I am writing this letter to express my concerns over Nike's labor practices in Asia. There has been much debate and controversy recently concerning Nike's Asian labor practices. It is very difficult to determine which side of the argument to defend, as both acknowledge the problems yet put a completely different spin on the facts. I will try to show that Nike has created a cloud of smoke in Asia that the public cannot see through.

Internationally recognized companies such as Nike make use of sweatshops and aid in the exploitation of labor workers in many parts of the world. A sweatshop is an industrialized provision that is known to have poor working conditions, infringement of labor law, and long hours coupled with low wages. In today’s world, sweatshops are prevalent all across the globe; however they raise the most concern in developing nations. Nike is one of the world’s most renowned sportswear companies, but has been involved in several controversies in relation to the possibility of them making profit out of sweatshop labor. In the late 1900’s most Nike products were manufactured in countries like South Korea and Taiwan, however, this changed when the labor

Many companies and schools in the United States buy their products from factories that have their workers working in horrible conditions. "That is employing over 50,000 workers to work in these conditions" (Jensen, Davidson 279). They have the workers work from 5 A.M. until nighttime inhaling dangerous chemicals and working in temperatures that get as high as 130 degrees. These high temperatures cause heat stress, burns, and injuries to workers. Many of the factories that the United States buys from are in another countries. In these countries they have horrible working conditions. Working in these places called sweatshops should be banned. Sweatshops are "a shop or factory in which employees work long hours at low wages

1. What responsibility does Nike have for conditions of work at foreign factories making its products?

One of the biggest and most popular brands in America, Nike, who targets athletes of all ages to be better athletes engages in unethical behavior by exploiting people from other countries by providing bad working conditions and low wages. Nike produces athletic equipment as well as apparel that is not only appealing to athletes, but also to the general public. However, the people that work for Nike and make these products are people being physically abused by supervisors and have to deal with horrible working conditions. According to an article written by Zaid Jilani, he said that thousands of women in Indonesia are being exploited by companies such as Nike where the wages being paid to these women are not enough to survive. Nike is well aware of what they are doing to these people in Indonesia, but still continue with it because the profits they receive at the end of the day is more valuable to them than the poor working conditions they offer to these Indonesian women. This shows that Nike uses the the Utilitarian approach because the company weighs out the pros and cons of the situation and still decides to produce products in Indonesia where it’s perfectly legal to pay low wages and have bad working conditions even though it is

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.

Sweatshops are a short cut, but they are not a necessity for success. Take the well-known company Nike for example. Years ago, they were scrutinized repeatedly by the public and by associations such as the USAS for their use of overseas sweatshops. There were allegations against them about mistreatment of employees in Vietnam where woman would have to run outside until they passed out if they did not wear the correct shoes to work (Hartman 2003). There were also claims that Nike workers in Indonesia were making no more than 14 cents an hour. These testimonies against Nike were severely impacting their sales due to the large tie between Nike and universities everywhere. Nike has many contracts with school’s bookstores to sell personalized apparel through the campus and with the word that they were mistreating employees overseas, the youth population was boycotting their products (Featherstone 2002). According to Rob Harrison, editor of Ethical Consumer, Nike has come a long way in these past 20 years to have more transparency with the public. Although they do not share all their overseas information, they have third parties inspect their factories and post their reports on the Fair Labor Association

Everyday people get dress without ever glancing at the Tag. A tag that tell a shocking story if researched. That this exactly what I did; found my Adidas running shoes and researched the story of how it was made. For years, companies like Adidas have used sweatshop to produce their good at a low cost while selling the merchandise at higher price. The Real World: Introduction to Sociology defines sweatshop as “A workplace where workers are subject to extreme exploitation, including below-standard wages, long hours, and poor working conditions that may pose health or safety hazards”. Through research, it is clear that brands like adidas use sweatshops to produce their over price products which leave their employees in horrible condition for just pennies.

During the late 80s and early 90s Nike was faced with a series of labor strike back at home due to unethical labor practices by its independent countries in third world countries. It is well known for Nike to outsource almost all its production from third world countries at cheap prices and sell them in U.S. market at an abnormal profit. The company began outsourcing its products from Japan where labor was competent and wages were very low. The living standards were raised which prompted Nike to outsource its products from Thailand, Pakistan and Indonesia since wages in these countries were extremely low and labor for these products were competent due to rapid development of the Japanese economy. The outsourcing of footwear products from Asian countries enables Nike to earn high profits and enjoy a competitive advantage over its rivals in the footwear industry. The company invests the high profits realized in marketing its products through celebrities. For instance, Michael Jordan was used to advertise the positive image of Nike Company (Lipschutz and James, pp. 87-96).

Nike’s CEO’s and management made a decision to begin using sweatshop labor in order to save money and begin aggressive marketing. They used this aggressive marketing to have a one up on their competitors, in fact, Nike spent 280 million dollars alone on advertising in 1994 (Schwartz, 2000). Nike would give great athletes million dollar contracts to endorse and wear their clothing. For an example, Andre Agassi received 70 million dollars to endorse Nike's tennis clothing line. The choice to start aggressive marketing is the reason why Nike entered into this crisis and started making unethical decisions. Once the top management of Nike realized the profitability and popularity of hiring professional athletes to wear and endorse their clothes, regular advertising would not suffice. The company became greedy and were willing to use cheap abusive labor so that they could pay professional athletes millions of dollars (Schwartz, 2000).