In the 90's there was a huge outcry when many large companies such as Nike and Reebok were found to use factories that violated worker rights (Balko 2003). Wal-Mart had garments made with child labour in Bangladesh (Organic 2007). Kathy Lee Gifford was producing her line of clothing in Honduras, employing under age girls (Organic 2007). These were top news stories and global campaigns were launched to boycott these companies. A "Just don't do it" campaign was launched to increase awareness of poor conditions in Nike factories. Protests and boycotts affected the bottom line of these companies and they began to adopt codes of conduct which banned underage workers and forced overtime, promoted safety policies and improved environmental practices
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
In this article he tries to prove his point of view of the sweatshop by proving and stating how the women suffer being there just so in the end we can have a brand accessory like Nike or Gap. Also he talks to his audience because he mentions that we can write letters to companies when workers’ rights are violated and to show support of their efforts to organize, “we can put pressure on our government to adopt policies and regulations that make companies accountable when they fail to address flagrant and persistent violations of workers’ rights.” As of today there are some major brands that have the ‘company code of conduct compliance staff’ in order to answer complaints and investigates the situation and report back and tell what they were going to do to fix the problem. But with all those advances made there’s still any changes in the workplace because he states that a “a little less child labor, fewer forced pregnancy tests or health and safety violations in the larger factories used by major brands” but they still give them poverty wages, long hours of forced overtime and massive firings of workers that tried
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
Wal-Mart is an American multinational retail corporation and one of the leading discount department retail stores (Wikipedia). It is the highest- grossing company in the United States (Fortune 2008a), and is by far one of the most successful companies worldwide. Wal-Mart offers a place to buy the majority of our goods under one roof like electronics, furniture, clothing, pharmacy, sports, food, books etc. Wal-Mart sells good at lower price than the others and this is even shown by its slogan “save money, live better”. It drives out smaller and sometimes even the expensive stores out of business due to its lower prices. Wal-Mart provides jobs for thousands of
In The myth of the ethical shopper, Hobbes (2015) states that although boycotts may have been successful in 1990, they are failing in 2105. He asserts that the way in which our clothes are now made has changed and so advocacy campaigns just don't work. One of the problems is that retailers don't have direct contact with their factories. Production is outsourced to the lowest bidders. Chains of sub contractors are set up and production is being split between thousands of factories. Labels from JC Penny, Wal-Mart and Joe Fresh were all found in the rubble of Rana plaza (O'Connor 2014), but none of them directly contracted those factories. With multitudes of middlemen accountability is difficult.
Wal-Mart is an American multinational retail corporation and one of the leading discount department retail stores (Wikipedia). It is the highest- grossing company in the United States (Fortune 2008a), and is by far one of the most successful companies worldwide. Wal-Mart offers a place to buy the majority of our goods under one roof like electronics, furniture, clothing, pharmacy, sports, food, books etc. Wal-Mart sells good at lower price than the others and this is even shown by its slogan “save money, live better”. It drives out smaller and sometimes even the expensive stores out of business due to its lower prices. Wal-Mart provides jobs for thousands of
Two Kinds is a short story written by Amy Tan in The Joy Luck Club in 1982. This short story is based on the protagonist Jing-Mei Woo and how her mother expects highly from her in life. This short story is considered to have an autobiographical effect because most of the events in the story reflect the real life events of Amy’s life. On the other hand, Hills Like White Elephants is a short story written by Earnest Hemingway. This story is based on the profound theme of personal responsibility and psychological relationships in a family.
Sweatshirts and Sweatshops For the essay “Sweatshirts and Sweatshops”, violations of Universal Standards and Logical Fallacies are made. The very first violation made in this essay was the amount of accuracy it did not have. The information given by the “WorldWeave Foundation”, mentioned the children’s age being between eleven and twelve. Due to the lack of information researched they did not have or could the wrong information. The reader does not have any sources or work cited to go with this information he provided.
put child labor laws in place. Along with that, the fear of the fact that exploitation may be occurring is one huge reason people favor boycotting manufacturers that use child labor. It’s a valid worry though as, according to the history article by Naoki Tanaka “Much Too Young to Work So Hard”, “Children were exploited because as workers their labor was cheap and because their age made them easy to order around.” Yes, as said in the article “Nike Pledges to End Child Labor And Apply U.S. Rules Abroad” by John H. Cushman, Jr.,children over there aren’t exactly earning a good wage, but neither is anyone else. Everyone over there is in poverty, which is why the kids need to go work in the first place. They’re going over to work willingly because it keeps them and their families alive (Faullmüller 112). So while many may worry about these children being exploited, the children need the money and boycotting whomever they work for deprives them of the opportunity to get said
From the beginning, Walmart did not have many threats. However, not only the competition is different, several global retailers such as Target, Carrefour, Costco, and Amazon, are working hard to keep efficiency. They are trying to work together to shrink the prices difference between them. Walmart has facing difficulties from every single angle. Not only the company has internal labor relation problems, but also it has some external threats from its competitors. The company must work hard to get possible solutions against its competitors, and to solve any internal problems regarding its labor relations. Even though Walmart does not have any problems
contemporary religion. The (main) reason for (1) turns out to be (as we shall see) the
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
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
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
Apparel and shoe manufacturers continued to offload the more costly yet easily replicated part so their business models to concentrate on brand building, marketing, sales and attaining greater distribution channels globally. These are the pressures all apparel and shoe manufacturers face, and it is particularly challenging in the athletic show industry (Kynge, 2009). Adidas, Converse, Nike and Reebok have been outsourcing production of their shoes for in some cases nearly three decades. Nike was one of the leaders in this strategy, seeing to create a more efficient supply chain and also drop the labor and union costs of manufacturing in the U.S. (Boje, Khan, 2009). Adidas, Converse and Reebok have all followed Nike's lead, with Adidas benefitting from the fall-out generated when investigate reports showed Nike using child labor throughout Pakistan and Vietnam (Boje, Khan, 2009). All four of these companies share a common prioritization of manufacturing operations, yet none of them with the exception of Nike has a comprehensive Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program in place to ensure ethical compliance to global standards of outsourcing in their industry (Nike Investor Relations, 2012). The intent of this analysis is to compare and contrast the four companies mentioned and their outsourcing practices. Their reasons for choosing to outsource are very much the same; the industry is shrinking