Nike's labour practices are not the way to just do it

The next time you see Nike's familiar swoosh on US basketball star Michael Jordan's hat, just think how much the sneaker giant paid him to wear it. And then work backwards to find out how Nike made so much money.

Women workers employed by Nike subcontractors in Vietnam, for instance, earn a below-minimum daily wage of $1.6 to produce thousands of pairs of shoes a day.

Every shoe then retails for between $100-200 in a Sydney store.

A recent slew of academic research and investigations by labour activists have revealed under-wage labour, demeaning conditions and breach of safety laws on a global scale in sweatshops around the world.

One report on Nike factories in Indonesia by Australian academic Peter Hancock titled Nike's Satanic factories in West Java describes a Nike factory as ''a very large high-security prison''.

Another report, Sweating for Nike by Australian group, Community Aid Abroad, reported failure by Nike's subcontrators in Indonesia, Vietnam, China and Thailand to uphold worker rights.

A US businessman of Vietnamese origin, Thuyen Nguyen, in a report on Nike factories in Vietnam describes overworked, underpaid and highly stressed workforce made up of mostly women.

To be sure, Nike is not the only multinational company to exploit Third World workers and it is not even the worst. But activists say that being the market leader and a major employer of low-wage labour in Asian developing countries, where Nike goes other manufacturers follow.

Nike has not commented publicly on the three reports yet, but last year it developed a code for its subcontractors. The company says subcontractors are bound by local laws, and adds that without its factories thousands of jobs in countries like Vientam, Myanmar and Indonesia would be in jeopardy.

Says Nike's Asia-Pacific Regional Director Tony Peddie: "Neither Nike nor any of its subcontractors are in a position to dictate the labour laws of any country."

On Monday, President Bill Clinton announced a new code of conduct to stop sweatshop labour in the Third World agreed on by activists, labour unions and international manufacturers like Nike and Reebok.

It stipulates a guaranteed minimum wage pegged to local conditions, a maximum 60-hour a week work with one day off and no employment of minors.

Compliance would give manufacturers the right to put a 'no-sweatshop' label on their garment or shoe products. But activists say the measure does not go far enough, and also leaves monitoring to the multinationals themselves.

In 1997, Nike will have an expected revenue of $4 billion.

Its secret is the astronomical mark-up on the lucrative product: a sneaker that costs almost nothing to make, but can be sold for hundreds of dollars. Nike also gives its products an image by getting high-flying sports sponsors.

In Australia last week, Community Aid Abroad launched a consumer campaign against Nike to draw attention to what it says is the footwear company's failure to protect the basic human rights of the people it employs.

The campaign is coordinated with 20 other international groups, including Christian Aid in Britain, Clean Clothes Campaign in the Netherlands and NCOSS in Belgium. It involves signing protest postcards which the group will deliver to Nike.

Campaign Coordinator Tim Connor says the campaign is focusing on Nike in Indonesia because it is the biggest, and the belief that other manufacturers will change their practices if Nike does.

But he added that while Nike's treatment of workers is bad, it is not much worse than any other company.

Hancock's report is perhaps the most disturbing revelation so far. 'Nike's Satanic factories in West Java' investigates one of the company's South Korean contractors, Kukje, in Banjaraf in Java.

The report is Hancock's doctoral thesis for the Centre for Development Studies at the Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. Hancock spent eight months last year in Banjaran, researching among female Nike workers.

His most dramatic find is that companies like Kukje, which had earlier been treating their workers well, suddenly increased daily quota per worker from 200 to 300 shoes, cut their holidays and demanded compulsory overtime after getting the Nike contract.

Hancock says Nike would certainly be aware of the conditions under which the subcontractor employed its workers, and it was Nike itself that ''enforced massive changes in administration and production procedures'' before the contract was awarded to Kukje.

Another Nike subcontractor in Banjaran, Taiwan's Feng Tay company, employs women below 25 in the most demanding sections of production: stitching. Staff turnover is highest in the stitching section because of high pressure, long working hours, forced overtime and few holidays, Hancock's thesis says.

Women are most vulnerable because they are young, relatively uneducated, usually unmarried and with very little experience in dealing with authority and almost no knowledge of their rights.

Groups like Community Aid Abroad have welcomed the code of conduct, but say Nike's guidelines omit important clauses like the right to organise and bargain collectively.

The group admits that in some countries political and legal conditions limit workers' ability to organise and bargain, and it says it is up to the manufacturer to give its workers that right.

Ironically, it is in a socialist bastion, Vietnam, where workers rights seem to be violated the most.

Thuyen Nguyen's research says women between 15 and 25, employed by a South Korean Nike subcontractor in Vietnam, are treated ''like slaves''.

The women were humiliated and sometimes even beaten for poor workmanship. Some women complained they had been punished by being forced to kneel and hold their hands in the air for 25 minutes.

UNI