A SHORT HISTORY ON THE FIGHT AGAINST NIKE’S SWEATSHOPS

In the late 1990’s the Nike sweatshop issue broke into the American consciousness.  News exposes brought the realities of low wages and abusive workplaces into the homes of millions of consumers.  During the early days of the ad hoc campaign to improve conditions at Nike subcontracted factories, domestic and international NGOs focused on working in solidarity with factory workers to help them get their unions recognized by Nike.  The idea was that helping independent unions fight for collective bargaining agreements was the best means to assure justice in the workplace.

The criticism poured on to Nike, as students, activists, religious groups and organized labor picked up on the rallying cry.  In the face of this criticism and the implications it might have on their bottom line, Nike responded with a very clever and extremely effective move.  They stopped defending against the allegations and they said that they would address the problems.  How were they going to do it?  MONITORING.  To this end, they would, over the next decade, help launch the Apparel Industry Partnership, the Fair Labor Association, and the now defunct Global Alliance; they would offer monitoring visits to students and university officials; they created an ever-growing Corporate Responsibility division and one might argue that they helped spawn the explosion in the corporate responsibility industry; they signed onto non-enforceable agreements with the United Nations, the World Wildlife Fund, CERES, etc.  All of these efforts were and continued to be focused on the principle that MONITORING will solve the problems in Nike’s production plants.  With the focus on monitoring, Nike maintains control.  No one can truly monitor a Nike factory without Nike’s permission.  By this simple, but ingenious shift in the debate, Nike has been able to maintain the status quo and continue to make billions in profits at the expense of workers rights.

Team Sweat is going to change this.