HOW DID STUDENT ACTIVISTS BEAT NIKE?

Yesterday student activists won arguably the most impressive victory in the more than fifteen fight to end Nike’s sweatshop abuses. The “Just Pay It” campaign, run by the United Students Against Sweatshops, under the leadership of USAS staffer, Rod Palmquist, forced Nike to the bargaining table and got them to do something they have refused to do to date - take financial responsibility for the welfare of Nike’s subcontracted workforce.

At issue was $2.2 million dollars in severance and back pay due to approximately 1,800 Honduran workers who had been producing Nike products for the college bookstore market.

Here is an excerpt from the joint statement released by Nike and the trade union federation (CGT) that was representing the workers.

Nike and CGT are concerned for the workers in Honduras and have agreed to take important steps to support former employees of Hugger and Vision Tex. Through this agreement, Nike will contribute to a workers relief fund of $1.5 million to be administered jointly by CGT, the Solidarity Center, the Worker Rights Consortium and supervised by professor Lance Compa of Cornell University.

As someone who has fought this fight with Nike for more than a decade, I am so very grateful for what USAS and the Honduran workers have accomplished. This is truly a watershed moment. But now is not the time to rest on the laurels of this victory. We must analyze why it worked and develop plans duplicate its success. That is one of the mistakes that was made in the first go-around with Nike on these issues back in the late 90s. We had them on the ropes and we backed off. We cannot afford to do this again.

So, what were the key elements of the “Just Pay It” campaign that created the winning dynamic?

1. USAS picked and froze their target - Nike. This was not a generalized campaign against sweatshops, they did not go after “the industry.” Circumstances created a scenario where they focused on one company (Nike) in one country (Honduras).

2. USAS was clear in their demand - “Just Pay It.” There was no ambiguity to what they wanted from Nike. Workers were owed $2.2 million dollars and they wanted Nike to pay this amount. Because of this clear demand, they were not drawn into the subterfuge of public relations nonsense that Nike has been so successful at promoting over the years (Codes of Conduct, Corporate Social Responsibility, independent monitoring, etc.). Again, the demand was clearly laid on the table, “pay these Nike workers the $2.2 million dollars they are owed.”

3. USAS mobilized at the grassroots level. When Nike refused to meet their demand, the USAS ground forces mobilized workers, students, professors, non-profits, consumers, etc.

4. USAS made it fun and exciting. From small leafleting actions outside Niketowns, to creative demonstrations on college campuses, to bringing Honduran workers to the USA to tell their stories first hand; students had a blast taking on this corporate bully.

5. USAS held universities accountable to their public commitments. Students made excellent use of the foundation that had been laid by the first generation of USASers. If schools had licensing relationships with Nike AND belonged to the Worker Rights Consortium this meant that there was a framework for accountability. In accessing this framework, USAS was able to pressure the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cornell University to cut ties with Nike over this issue. And had Nike not made the move they did yesterday, I am sure that other schools would have followed suit in the fall.

6. The Honduran workers were willing to fight and were wanting of the collaboration with students and consumers. I believe this was actually the linchpin of this campaign and will be the linchpin of future campaigns. These Nike workers, despite their fears and disappointments, were willing to stand up and fight. When they did, they inspired and empowered students and consumers to join them and the solidarity actions of the students and consumers then re-inspired and re-empowered workers. It was a fluid and symbiotic relationship that ultimately led to victory. Nike workers around the world must learn of this victory and know that there is an army willing to support and work with them when they are ready to fight.

Now that students have led the way, the task is laid before us - we must replicate this victory. Nike must be pressed in multiple factories and in multiple countries. The template has been created and now the work must be done.

Peace, Jim Keady

VICTORY: NIKE AGREES TO PAY $1.5 MILLION TO HONDURAN WORKERS

Team Sweat:

Today we won a groundbreaking victory in the fight against Nike’s sweatshop abuses!

Nike announced this morning that they have come to an agreement with the Central General de Trabajadores de Honduras (CGT) and will pay $1,500,000.00 to a fund for monies owed to workers for back pay and severance.

Here is the official joint statement from Nike and CGT.

Nike and CGT Statement
26 July, 2010

Beaverton, Ore. (July 26, 2010) – NIKE, Inc. and the Central General de Trabajadores de Honduras (CGT), representing the former employees of the Nike contract supplier factories Hugger and Vision Tex, have reached an agreement to help improve the lives of workers affected by the Hugger and Vision Tex factory closures in Honduras.

Nike and CGT are concerned for the workers in Honduras and have agreed to take important steps to support former employees of Hugger and Vision Tex. Through this agreement, Nike will contribute to a workers relief fund of $1.5 million to be administered jointly by CGT, the Solidarity Center, the Worker Rights Consortium and supervised by professor Lance Compa of Cornell University.

Nike will also work with its Honduran suppliers to offer vocational training programs and to prioritize hiring of former Hugger and Vision Tex workers as jobs become available over the next two years. Nike will also cover worker’s enrollment in the Honduran Institute of Social Security (IHSS) to obtain health care coverage for a year or until they find new employment, whichever comes first.

Nike and CGT are pleased to have worked together to create a resolution that helps the former Hugger and Vision Tex workers in Honduras to receive needed financial and medical support. Nike and CGT are committed to working together, in conjunction with other stakeholders in Honduras, to develop long-term, sustainable approaches to providing workers with social protection when facing unemployment.

Much of the congratulations for this victory needs to go to the workers in Honduras who did not give up their fight for justice, as well as the United Students Against Sweatshops (www.usas.org) and the Worker Rights Consortium (www.workersrights.org), who supported these workers every step of the way.

This victory proves that we can and will win the fight for justice in Nike’s factories!

Peace, Jim Keady

NIKE SPENDS $25 MILLION ON CSR ANNUALLY BUT REFUSES TO PAY $2.2 MILLION IN SEVERANCE TO HONDURAN GARMENT WORKERS

By Ana Arias
Posted On: July 18 @ www.justmeans.com

Sometimes the CSR decisions of big corporations are as perplexing as a jigsaw puzzle with missing parts. Why the company would hire a 135-people CSR department, amass a 74-people compliance team and spend approximately $25 million annually on CSR efforts while simultaneously refusing to cough up the $2.2 million owed to Honduran garment workers in legally-mandated severance is beyond comprehension.

According to United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), who are staging a heavy-duty anti-sweatshop “Just Pay It” campaign against the apparel giant, in January 2009 two of Nike’s factories in Honduras by the names of Vision Tex and Hugger were closed. To boot, Nike failed to pay the 1,800 workers their severance and additional legally required benefits. Each worker is due about $1,300, which the student group says is equivalent a US manufacturing employee losing around $15,000 to $20,000. Seems Nike’s talking out of two sides of its mouth. Shocking, right? It sure doesn’t smell like the kind of CSR home most of us would want to be involved with. To say nothing of the bad rep it creates for legitimate corporate social responsibility programs in ethical organizations.

On one hand, Nike is apparently insisting that they’re not responsible for what occurs in its sub-contracted factories. Yet they claim to be “driven to do not only what is requires by law but what is expected of a leader.” Yikes. I hope ethical CSR leaders cringe as much as the rest of us when we learn of such blatant inconsistencies. And on the other hand, the company’s code of conduct mandates that all of its suppliers comply with the particular country’s manufacturing laws in which they operate, inclusive of legally-mandated severance payments. “In the event a Nike factory closes down, as was the case with both Hugger and Vision Tex,” writes USAS’s International Campaign Coordinator Rod Palmquist, “then the buck stops at Nike’s doorstep.” It sounds to me as if Nike would be a highly qualified candidate we could designate to the Corporate Hall of Shame ballot.

I was glad to learn of progressive community and university leaders who are putting pressure on and affecting Nike’s financial bottom line because of the company’s complete disregard for the Honduran garment workers. In Portland, Nike’s backyard, a panel of community leaders urged Nike to enforce its code of conduct by paying up worker severance immediately. The University of Wisconsin-Madison became the first college in the country to cut its Nike contract over sweatshop abuses in April, causing Nike to lose $1 million in Badger gear yearly sales. Cornell University announced in June that it will let its Nike contract expire by December’s end, unless the company steps up to the plate and pays the workers what they’re owed. Extra kudos to Cornell, as Nike is the exclusive sponsor of the university’s athletics program.

I’ll conclude with a few more figures and a wild but plausible idea to provide more perspective. Last year, Nike’s estimated spend on sponsorships was $260 million and $200 million on advertising. The likes of superstar LeBron James is getting approximately $90 million over a seven-year period, and France and England’s World Cup soccer teams are getting annual amounts of $54 million and $44 million respectively. Now imagine the ripples of positive change that could take place if Nike’s CSR team surprised company executives and the world by taking the company’s $25 million CSR budget and re-allocating $2.2 million of that that budget to pay the Honduran garment workers for the what they’re owed. It’s far-fetched, I know. But Nike could do it if it wanted to.

STUDENT ANTI-SWEATSHOP ACTIVISTS WIN HISTORIC BREAKTHROUGH

Re-posted from www.beyondchron.org

by Randy Shaw

July 21, 2010

In a move that could radically alter the rules of the global economy, a factory in the Dominican Republic backed by the United Students Against Sweatshops is producing t-shirts and sweatshirts at the same prices as Nike and Adidas, while also paying workers a living wage. Knights Apparel has already passed Nike as the top college supplier, defying experts who have long argued that Nike’s sweatshop wages made it impossible for those paying workers fairly to compete.

Knight’s success comes after more than a decade of painstaking work by college anti-sweatshop activists, whose creation of the Workers Rights Consortium built a market for living wage alternatives to sweatshop goods. The students’ success is also the latest example of the power of “positive” boycotts, currently used by UNITE HERE to steer guests to union hotels through INMEX and earlier by the United Farm Workers to offer consumers alternatives to Gallo wine.

Having studied the proliferation of sweatshops since writing a book about Nike’s labor practices in the late 1990’s, I know the sheer number of experts arguing that the global “race to the bottom” is inevitable and beyond the power of activists to change. Fortunately, student anti-sweatshop activists ignored these claims, and have now defied the conventional wisdom.

Students Defy Stereotypes
The story of Knights Apparel is really two stories, with the nuts and bolts of the company’s creation and business plan covered in the July 18 New York Times. The story not covered was the long battle by college students to rewrite the rules of the global economy, as they sought to accomplish what most economists and pundits said was impossible.

The struggle began in the late 1990’s, as students responded to revelations that the clothing with collegiate logos sold in their campus stores were made in sweatshops. Campus anti-sweatshop groups soon formed, and soon won agreements from administrators not to sell sweatshop goods so long as alternatives were available.

Creating these “no-sweat” alternatives was the tricky point. The students addressed this by attempting to beat the capitalists at their own game: they created a Workers Rights Consortium that would help to create a sufficient market for no-sweat goods to support their manufacture.

In other words, the students used the “Field of Dreams” approach. They told manufacturers that if they created apparel and paid a living wage, business and sales would come.

And Knight’s Apparel has turned the students dream into reality. Its product will be on over 260 campuses by September, and over 400 by winter quarter.

The company’s shirts will sell for the same price as those made by Nike and Adidas, whose goods are typically made in places like Bangladesh (15 cent minimum wage) or China (85 cents). In contrast, workers are paid $2.83 per hour at the Alta Gracia factory in the Dominican Republic (whose minimum is 85 cents) that makes Knight’s Apparel.

That’s what possible when you don’t have folks like Nike’s Phil Knight making tens of millions of dollars annually off the poverty of third-world workers.

Perhaps as surprising as this outcome is the fact that it took place over more than a decade, as the movement continued as key student activists graduated and myriad other causes and issues emerged. Students are not typically associated with long-term campaigns for this very reason, which makes the success of United Students Against Sweatshops that much more impressive.

The Power of “Positive” Boycotts
In addition to defying the belief that apparel companies cannot survive by paying a living wage, the students also showed the power of shaping consumer behavior by providing positive alternatives.

Back in the 1990s, the students faced a choice. They could relentlessly urge students to avoid sweatshop apparel without providing “no sweat” alternatives, or they could help build a market for the latter.

Recognizing that students were going to buy clothes with their college logo, the students wisely chose the latter strategy. And Knights Apparel has finally made this no sweat alternative a reality.

It is the same “positive” boycott strategy that UNITE HERE uses with its INMEX program. The union knows that people need to stay in hotels, so rather than simply tell them which to avoid the program promotes hotels where visitors should stay.

During the UFW grape boycott, consumers were so focused on only buying union grapes that growers clamored to get the union thunderbird on its packages. The UFW could also readily promote alternative wines to Gallo, which helped the effectiveness of that boycott.

Global Impact
While the success of “no sweat” clothing in the collegiate submarket will not entirely rewrite the rules of the global economy, it does provide a roadmap for other market sub-groups. For example, there are thousands of organizations that sell apparel with their logo, and Knight’s Apparel now provides a viable no sweat option.

As unions, religious organizations and community groups turn to producers paying living wages, it will spur the development of additional factories, expanding the market beyond the t-shirts and sweatshirts sold on college campuses. And now that Knight’s Apparel has created a model for collegiate clothing manufacturing, pressure might build for similar alternatives elsewhere in the apparel industry.

Activists have long argued that another type of apparel world was possible. Now students have helped make this socially responsible alternative a reality.

ACTIVISTS CONTINUE TO PRESSURE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON PRESIDENT TO CUT TIES WITH NIKE

Re-posted from The Daily at the University of Washington

Activists Continue to Pressure Emmert with Open Letter
By Tiffany Vu
July 21, 2010

Several campus labor-advocacy groups have published an open letter to President Mark Emmert, asking him to pledge not to renew the UW’s licensing contract with Nike.

The Presidential Advisory Committee on Trademarks and Licensing (ACTL) unanimously recommended in early June that Emmert allow the contract to expire in December, saying that Nike had violated the UW’s Code of Conduct for licensees.

The dispute stems from allegations that Nike has failed to compensate workers from two closed Honduran factories, Hugger de Honduras and Vision Tex, both of which were subcontracted to produce licensed college apparel for Nike.

Signers include several members of the UW’s faculty, ASUW officials, campus groups such as the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP), United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), and local labor groups, such as the King County Labor Council and Washington State Fair Trade Coalition. City- and state-level officials, such as Seattle City Councilman Nick Licata and State Representative Maralyn Chase, have also signed the letter.

“We showed them the facts, asked them where they stood, and they said, ‘Of course we support workers’ rights,’” senior SLAP member Matt Reed said. “It’s a clear-cut issue — the only controversy is that the University of Washington is failing to take a stand.”

The University of Washington is one of several schools facing the question of whether to continue granting licensing rights to Nike based on the Honduras case. The University of Wisconsin—Madison ended its contract with Nike in April, while Cornell University has notified Nike of its intention to allow their contract to expire at the end of the year.

In the wake of the decisions at UW—Madison and Cornell, other collegiate institutions, such as New York University, Rutgers University and the University of California system, have been reported to be reconsidering their contracts with Nike.

The letter emphasizes that, like Cornell, the UW can end its $1 million licensing contract, which allows Nike to sell products branded with the UW’s logos, without ending its $32 million athletic contract that helps finance the school’s sports programs.

Reed said that Emmert had been aware of the situation as early as April 2009 and created the ACTL for the purpose of determining the appropriate course of action for the university. However, Reed expressed disappointment with Emmert’s lack of action on the case and doubted that it would change.

“I’ve lost almost all confidence that President Emmert will make the right decision,” Reed said. “I hope he realizes the importance of this, that by leaving this issue unresolved or passing it on, it’ll look poorly on his past activism.”

Associate Vice President Norm Arkans said that Emmert would base his decision on the “merits of the situation.”

“We understand that a lot of people, including the university, are concerned about conditions under which trademarks are made,” Arkans said. “That’s why the university has taken steps in the past to deal with manufacturers and ensure that workers get what’s due [to] them.”

Arkans also emphasized that Interim President Phyllis Wise, whose appointment to Nike’s Board of Directors last year was a point of controversy, would have no part in any decision-making with regards to contracts with Nike.

“Another senior university official will be given the authority to make business decisions with Nike,” Arkans said, though he was not able to identify the official. “Whatever happens in the future with Nike when she’s interim president, it won’t be her.”

Debra Glassman, a business professor and member of the ACTL, hoped that the UW would join other schools in pressuring Nike to improve its labor standards by choosing to end its contract with Nike, much like what happened when it joined numerous other schools in cancelling its contract with Russell Athletic in 2009.

“Individually, we’re a very small part of Nike’s business,” Glassman said. “It’s definitely the hope of the ACTL that many schools will take similar actions, because together we can have an impact.”

At press time, President Emmert was on vacation and could not be reached for comment.

Reach reporter Tiffany Vu at news@dailyuw.com.

DO YOU WANT TO EDUCATE YOUR CAMPUS OR COMMUNITY ABOUT NIKE’S SWEATSHOPS?

VICTORY, BECOMES DEFEAT, BECOMES VICTORY

Re-posted from www.axisofjustice.net

by Jake Sexton

July 20 2010

We got a very positive bit of news this week, about a new clothing factory opening in the Dominican Republic town of Villa Altagracia. The clothing industry is notorious for its exploitation of some of the world’s poorest people, paying workers starvation wages, treating them like criminals, and making them live in perpetual fear of losing their only means of survival.

This new factory will allow its workers to join unions, and pay them a “living wage” that is more than three times the national average for garment workers in that country. The clothing will primarily be sports wear with college logos, aimed at American university students. The brand will be named after the workers’ home, Alta Gracia, and will be run by a now-socially conscious clothing company called Knights Apparel. The NY Times article above gives concrete examples of the way that this new factory is having a positive impact on people’s lives.

What brings this story home to me is the factory’s history (not mentioned much in the article). The factory used to be owned by a company called BJ&B, which also made college clothing for big corporations like Nike and Reebok. It was discovered that the factory was grossly abusing and exploiting their workers, who then start fighting for their right to unionize and receive better treatment. This campaign received the support of many major social justice organizations in the United States, and the workers won. They formed a union and fought for better contracts with better wages.

And then the contracts started to dry up.

I attended a conference for United Students Against Sweatshops, where a dozen workers from factories in a dozen countries came and spoke to us about their working conditions and their struggles. A Dominican worker told us how Nike and Reebok were no longer buying clothing from the BJ&B factory, and the workers were losing their jobs, and were on the verge of losing everything they had fought for. It was a terrible feeling, that even when you win, you lose. At that conference, we realized that it wasn’t enough to fight for these workers’ right to unionize, we now had to fight for big corporations to continue doing business with unionized factories. We had won a major victory, but we had to continue fighting for it to make a difference.

So now, years later, that same BJ&B factory is now owned by a company that is determined to treat their employees with respect, and pay them wages which will allow them to actually plan for a better future, not just feed their children and pay the rent. But while this is a major victory, we have to realize that victories can easily turn into defeats, that successes can become failures.

If we actually care about a new way of doing business, where workers are treated fairly, and businessmen don’t run away and look for the next impoverished people to exploit, we have to push for this, and keep pushing. We have to encourage people to buy from socially responsible companies like this. We have to push companies to imitate the beneficial model of Knights Apparel and Alta Gracia. If we don’t, this attempt could fail, and big companies everywhere could use it as evidence that their model–the one in which people are used, abused and thrown away—is the only one that “works”.

To get involved, hook up with our friends at United Students Against Sweatshops, Team Sweat, and other organizations that are fighting this fight.

Photo: Michael Kamber for The New York Times

JOIN TEAM SWEAT ON TUESDAY IN TAKING ACTION AGAINST ONE OF NIKE’S LARGEST INVESTORS

Tuesday morning at 9:30am (U.S. EST), Jim Keady, founder of Team Sweat, will be attending the annual meeting of TIAA-CREF. TIAA-CREF currently owns about a quarter of a billion dollars in Nike stock, making them one of Nike’s largest institutional investors in the world. Given this, Team Sweat believes that they have a moral responsibility to hold Nike accountable for the well being of Nike’s factory workers.

DO YOU WANT TO JOIN JIM KEADY IN TAKING ACTION TOMORROW?

1. YOU can send a personal message to TC CEO Roger W. Ferguson at RWFerguson@tiaa-cref.org and send a copy to trustees@tiaa-cref.org. We have provided sample copy immediately below, with more details in the release.

2. YOU can have even more impact if you also call 800-842-2733 or 212-490-9000 and ask for CEO Roger Ferguson. You most likely will have to leave a recorded message.

3. YOU can cut and paste the press release below and send it to any media contacts you have and/or you can make it a note on your Facebook page and share it with your friends.

SAMPLE EMAIL/PHONE SCRIPT

“I am concerned that TIAA-CREF is a major investor in Wal-Mart, Nike, Coca-Cola, and Costco in Mexico, companies that are involved in ongoing human and labor rights abuses, as well as other irresponsible corporate behavior. I want TIAA-CREF to put these corporations on notice that if they do not clean up their bad practices, TIAA-CREF will find other companies in which to invest. TIAA-CREF needs to either get more aggressive with these companies to improve their practices or to divest from their stock.”

PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NO KILL DATE

CONTACTS
Pat Clark: 718-852-2808; stopkillercoke@aol.com
Jim Keady 732-988-7322, info@teamsweat.org.

At The Annual CREF Meeting, Shareholders Call on TIAA-CREF to Walk its Talk on Social Responsibility

(July 14, 2010 – New York) TIAA-CREF, the nation’s largest pension system and self-proclaimed leader in corporate social responsibility, has come under fire from a coalition of academics and activists who are questioning TIAA-CREF’s commitment on a range of social responsibility issues.

“TIAA-CREF’s tagline is ‘financial services for the greater good,’ but it seems like the only good they are concerned about is the bottom line,” said James Keady, Director of Educating for Justice and long-time active member of the coalition that is attempting to hold TIAA-CREF publicly accountable on these issues.

Coalition reps will be at the upcoming CREF annual meeting on Tuesday, July 20, 9:30 AM, at TIAA-CREF’s NYC headquarters and they plan to publicly pressure the group to stop outsourcing jobs overseas; to stop firing whistle-blowers; to stop investing in sweatshops; and to stop paying its CEO 10 million dollars a year.

“After years of member lobbying, TIAA-CREF finally agreed to talk to some of the companies we have focused on,” said Keady. “Unfortunately, TIAA-CREF’s method of ‘quiet diplomacy’ over the past five years has not led to any substantive changes.”

The coalition believes that TIAA-CREF can and should do more. Its Policy Statement on Corporate Governance reads, “While quiet diplomacy remains our core strategy…the TIAA-CREF engagement program involves many different activities and initiatives, including engaging in public dialogue and commentary… engaging in collective action with other investors… seeking regulatory or legislative relief… commencing or supporting litigation.” “It is time for TIAA-CREF to get aggressive with these companies.”

###

NIKE URGED BY PENN STATE TO PLAY “POSITIVE ROLE” FOR HONDURAN WORKERS

JAKARTA POST: WHAT HAPPENS BEHIND THE SWOOSH

WANT TO PUT PRESSURE ON ONE OF NIKE’S LARGEST INVESTORS?

The pension fund, TIAA-CREF, currently owns approximately $230,000,000.00 in Nike stock and to date, they have done nothing significant in terms of pressuring Nike to pay living wages, negotiate union contracts, and clean up their environmental damage in the countries where Nike products are made.  TC has also placed Nike in their “social choice for social change” account, which is a signal to their investors that they believe that Nike is “socially responsible.”  Clearly the facts show that Nike is anything but socially responsible.

That is why on Tuesday, July 20th at 9:30am - when TC holds their annual meeting of participants at 730 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 - TEAM SWEAT will be there!

We will be asking the TC Board of Directors to take the following actions:

* TC should make a formal request to Nike to pay the $2.6 million dollars in back wages and severance owed to 1,700 Honduran Nike workers.  If Nike refuses to pay, we will recommend that TC divests some of its holdings with Nike.  This would be in line with similar actions take by the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Cornell University, who recently cut their contracts with Nike over this issue.

* TC should make a formal request to Nike to create a pilot project in which Nike would take part in tri-party collective bargaining with a Nike shoe factory in Indonesia.  The result of this bargaining would be legally-binding and enforceable labor agreement that was signed by Nike, the factory management and the trade union at the plant.

* TC should make a formal request to Nike to pay for an independent assessment of the environmental damage done by the burning of scrap shoe rubber in Indonesian villages for the past 20 years.

If you would like to attend the TIAA-CREF annual meeting and take part in pressuring them to hold Nike accountable, please email Jim Keady at jim@educatingforjustice.org no later than July 10th as arrangements will need to be made to get member proxies so you can enter the meeting.

FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: CORNELL CUTS TIES WITH NIKE OVER LABOR ISSUES

Inside Higher Ed (www.insidehighered.com)
Another One Bites the Dust

July 2, 2010

And then there were two.

Absent “significant progress” toward the resolution of an ongoing labor dispute in Honduras, Cornell University will follow the University of Wisconsin at Madison’s lead and end its licensing agreement with Nike. The decision, issued by President David Skorton in an internal letter Monday, is being heralded by anti-sweatshop activists as a significant victory in a battle over Nike’s refusal to pay severance to displaced workers in its supply chain.

“I have made the decision to allow the licensing agreement to run through its expiration date of December 31, 2010, at which point I will allow our agreement to expire unless significant progress is made,” Skorton wrote the university’s Licensing Oversight Committee, which recommended the contract be severed. “I am doing this to allow Nike time to accelerate discussions I understand are underway between the company and union representatives acting on behalf of the displaced workers and to become more assertive in its efforts to remediate the Codes of Conduct violations.”

As the second institution – and the only Ivy League university – to take a stand on the labor issue, Cornell’s move is sure to escalate pressure on a company that has been increasingly under fire since the closures of two Honduran factories 16 months ago. At issue is an estimated $2 million in legally mandated severance owed to workers at two Nike supplier factories, Hugger de Honduras and Vision Tex, in Honduras.

While Nike has offered training and vocational programs, the company insists the payments are the responsibility of the subcontractors. That position, however, runs afoul of many university codes of conduct – including Cornell’s, which holds licensees responsible for the actions of subcontractors, the university’s oversight committee maintains.

In response to Cornell’s decision, Nike issued a statement suggesting the company is working to resolve the issue.

“Nike is very concerned for the affected workers of Vision Tex and Hugger and continues discussions with key stakeholders on this matter,” the statement reads. “In addition, we are in direct discussions with Cornell on our ongoing efforts in support of the workers in Honduras.”

Jack Mahoney, national organizer for United Students Against Sweatshops, said the Cornell decision was the product of an intense campaign on the campus, including a visit by displaced Honduran workers who shared their stories with administrators, faculty and students.

“I think this latest step by Cornell in conjunction with what happened at Wisconsin clearly is going to matter and give Nike some incentive to resolve this issue,” Mahoney said.

Moreover, past campaigns – such as one against Russell Athletic – have shown that once a few universities take a stand, others often follow.

“We’re going to have now both Wisconsin – a large important public school – and Cornell – an important Ivy – both setting a tone,” Mahoney said. “I think that really helps us on other campuses where students are having these conversations with administrators and want to point to the way that other universities are taking the lead on this.”

Conversations about pulling out of Nike contracts are already occurring on many other campuses. The University of Washington’s Advisory Committee on Trademarks and Licensing, for instance, has recommended Washington sever its contract if Nike doesn’t resolve the labor dispute. No decision on the contract has been made, however, a university spokesman said Thursday.

In addition to potentially pressuring other universities to follow its lead, Cornell is calling on the Collegiate Licensing Company – an agent that assists many universities with Nike contract negotiations – to urge Nike to resolve the labor dispute.

While Cornell’s licensing agreement with Nike would end Dec. 31 absent satisfactory progress from the company, the expiration would not impact an additional agreement the university has with the company for providing athletic apparel to sports teams, a university spokesman said Thursday.

Casey Sweeney, president of the Cornell Organization for Labor Action, said she believed the broad student support for pressuring Nike helped inform Skorton’s ultimate decision. More than 30 organizations endorsed the campaign, including the Student-Athlete Advisory Council, which has representatives from all of the university’s 36 team sports.

“I think it just is a testament to the wide range of support we were able to gather,” Sweeney said. “It was really nice to see in our community there are certain values we uphold across the community. For [the Student-Athlete Advisory Council] to feel as passionate about it as we were, was exciting.”

— Jack Stripling

LA TIMES: AS WORLD WATCHES SOCCER’S CUP, NIKE CRITIC SEES RED

Labor activist Jim Keady says Indonesians who make team jerseys for the company are living in poverty. Nike says it has sought to improve worker welfare.

Jim Keady with a U.S. soccer shirt. "Despite their low wages, they still
have immense pride in their work," he says of the workers. (John M.
Glionna / Los Angeles Times)

By John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times

June 28, 2010

Reporting from Jakarta, Indonesia -

Like any die-hard sports fan, Jim Keady eagerly anticipated soccer’s World Cup.

But he isn’t at home watching the matches. Instead, the 38-year-old New Jersey native has been in Indonesia, talking to the workers who make the Nike jerseys worn by nine of the teams in the tournament.

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For years, the former professional goalie has waged a one-man campaign to highlight Nike’s labor practices, complaining that the company pays Indonesian workers low wages to stitch together the uniforms that have made the company the world’s most successful sports garment manufacturer.

Sitting at an outdoor coffeehouse here, Keady produced several Nike jerseys in Cup team colors. “These jerseys are real wealth you can touch,” he said. “They’re making Nike and the players rich while the workers who make them continue to grind out lives of abject poverty.”

Keady’s campaign goes back to 1997 when, as a soccer coach for St. John’s University in New York, he questioned the school’s plans to sign a $3.5-million endorsement deal with Nike.

The devout Catholic insisted that the contract would be hypocritical for a Christian university. “I was told to drop the issue or get out,” he said. “So I resigned in protest.”

The showdown prompted Keady to launch Team Sweat, a nonprofit dedicated to persuading Nike to change its business practices.

Keady said that major sports events such as the World Cup offer an opportunity to reach a wider audience.

“Right now, the eyes of the world are on the World Cup,” he said. “Now is the time to get out my message.”

Nike and its contractors employ 800,000 workers in 1,000 factories across 52 countries. Indonesia is the firm’s third-largest manufacturing site after China and Vietnam, Keady said.

A company spokesman said issues such as salary for workers in its disparate production chain are best dealt with “by negotiations between workers, labor representatives, the employer and the government.”

Erin Dobson, Nike’s senior manager for global public affairs, said the company has participated in efforts to improve overall worker welfare. “We believe there is ample room for innovation in this area,” she said, “and that progress must occur throughout the industry, and at the governmental level, not only in Nike’s supply chain.”

She said Nike’s code of conduct mandates that the company pay the minimum legal wage in each country, which in Indonesia is $122 a month, one of Asia’s lowest.

Keady says that if Nike raised the price of its shoes by $2.50 a pair and gave that money to workers, it would help lift most out of poverty. Nike calls that a simplistic solution that does not take into account complicated country factors.

In 2000, the towering, redheaded Keady moved to Indonesia and lived on the same salary as a Nike worker, which at the time was about $1.25 a day, staying in a 9-by-9-foot home in a community where 10 families share bathroom and kitchen facilities.

He lost 25 pounds in one month and returned to the U.S. to tell of his experiences. “I thought it would be a 10-week tour, but I’ve been on the road ever since,” he said.

Often, his campaign resembles activist Michael Moore’s documentary “Roger & Me” and Keady has recorded his exploits, producing a short film called “Behind the Swoosh.” He also unsuccessfully tried to meet with Phil Knight, Nike chairman and former chief executive, and has sought the support of athletes promoting Nike, including Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and soccer star Mia Hamm.

But he spends most of his time interviewing workers who don’t make enough money in a week to buy a Nike jersey. Although he hasn’t had time to watch the World Cup games, many of the workers have.

“Despite their low wages, they still have immense pride in their work,” he said. “They’re overjoyed at the fact that many of these World cup players are wearing jerseys made in Indonesia.”

Keady told the story of one Nike factory worker.

“He said that one day, he’d like to be able to buy a pair of Nike sneakers that he helps make,” the activist recalled. “After 19 years of factory work, he wanted to be able to bring home the product so he could show his daughter what Daddy does. That just floored me.”

john.glionna@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, The Los Angeles Times

JUNE 10, 2010: “YES, WE WANT TO FIGHT, BUT WE DON’T KNOW HOW.”

Team Sweat:

One of the goals of my trip (as you will read about in future posts) was to find the workers that made the World Cup replica jerseys that I bought at Niketown in NYC before I left for Indonesia. My team had been searching for a couple of weeks prior to my arrival for the plants where these jerseys were produced, but to no avail. Luckily, following our meeting with the Nike shoe factory workers the other night, one of the union leaders said that he had a contact for us at a plant that may have produced this stuff. On Thursday night, he arranged for me to meet with half a dozen workers from this Nike apparel factory.

As I pulled the soccer jerseys from my bag, replicas from the U.S., Brazilian, Australian and English National Teams, and passed them around the room, I was struck by the care and attention that each worker gave to the shirts. When most people grab one of these jerseys, they hold it up to themselves, throw it on, and are off on their merry way. But these workers carefully inspected each piece, running their fingers along each seam and holding it the way that a sculptor might hold and admire a finished piece of art. These were not just soccer jerseys to them, this was their lifework, and the pride they took in what they do and create was evident.

As things turned out, these particular jerseys were not produced at their factory, although they did produce replicas for Nike the 2002 and 2006 World Cups and they are now producing similar Nike products. They shared that there may be a factory within their group that produced these and they would try and find out for me.

As our conversation continued, the workers shared that (to no surprise), the number one issue for them was their wages. Their basic salaries ranged from Rp1.130.000 to Rp1.191.000. The differences in pay were because of the range of jobs that were held (sewing operator, machine tech, sample creators).

They also shared a couple of other interesting things. one of the women told me that whenever Nike monitors are scheduled to visit the plant, workers are told by the managers to lie to the monitors and NOT to discuss anything that might be deemed negative about the plant. The also shared that their work days are very long, sometimes working from 7am-8:30pm. And, when they do have to work long shifts like this, the factory is supposed to provide them with dinner - a meal of at least 1400 calories. The reality is that they get small portions of rice, vegetables, tempeh, and salty fish - not nearly close to the agreed upon standard. They told me that in the past, they used to get a meal allowance of Rp2.250 if they had to work overtime. I know from my research that Rp2.250 would buy you about a third of a portion of a modest meal at the local food stall. So, it seems that whether they are getting the cash or the food, they are being cheated.

We came back to the discussion on wage levels and one of the men shared how tough it is to try and survive on the wages, especially given the fact that he has a daughter. I’m a relatively new parent myself (my daughter will be two in July) and so the issues that workers who are parents face have taken on new personal emotional meaning for me.

I asked him about his daughter and I learned that she is three-and-a-half years old. When she was just three months old, she had to be sent to live with his mother-in-law in a village in central Java between Solo and Yogakarta. Because he makes such a low salary producing for Nike, he is only able to see his daughter two or three times a year. He fought back his pain as he shared this with me and my heart went out to him. I have only been away from my daughter for a few days and I miss her dearly, I cannot imagine only seeing her two or three times a year.

I shared with him and his fellow workers that this situation is unfair. I showed them flyers I had prepared that documented how much Nike made last year from their sweat and hard work.

Nike’s 2009 Revenues: Rp19.200.000.000.000

I also showed them a flyer with the names, photos and salaries of the top five executives at Nike and what they made in 2009.

Phil Knight, Chairman of the Board
Basic salary = Rp28.254.340.000
Total salary = Rp34.564.540.000

Charlie Denson, President of the Nike Brand
Basic salary = Rp11.923.100.000
Total salary = Rp73.333.700.000

After showing them these flyers I shared with them that I am quite sure that none of these men or anyone that is working for Nike in the USA had to “export” their babies back to home villages. I shared with them that these Nike executives are getting rich, the Nike investors are getting rich, the athletes that endorse Nike are getting rich, but the workers who produced the real wealth for Nike continue to live in abject poverty. I asked them if they wanted to fight to change this.

One of the women responded, “Yes, we want to fight, but we don’t know how.”

Here our work begins.

JUST(ice) DO IT.

Peace, Jim Keady

JUNE 10, 2010: DEMO FOR WORKER JUSTICE IN JAKARTA

Team Sweat:

This morning I attended a demonstration at the famous Bunderan HI statue in central Jakarta.

My colleagues here in the NGO community have been working for months on engaging a number of the major brands to improve conditions for workers. It seems that their negotiations have fallen apart and this demonstration was an attempt to raise public awareness about the current state of affairs.

It does not surprise me that these talks did not lead to the desired end. Without the threat that there will be labor strikes and/or a consumer boycott if demands are not met, these top brands (Nike, Adidas, Reebok, etc.) will go along with these discussions and in the end, do nothing. That is why it is imperative that the focus of our work be grounded in building worker power and encouraging and supporting workers to use their power to bring Nike to the bargaining table.

Peace, Jim Keady

JUNE 9, 2010: WHAT CAN YOU BUY FOR RP1.100.000?

Team Sweat:

I spent the afternoon doing a round of pricing research to update my understanding of the purchasing power (or lack thereof) for Nike’s Indonesian workers.

The current basic monthly salary for a Nike worker here is Rp1.100.000 ($114USD). Here are some average major monthly expenses that all workers have.

Rent Rp300.000
Drinking water Rp100.000
Transportation Rp100.000

If you add up these three major expenses, that equals Rp500.000. If you subtract this Rp500.000 from the basic monthly salary of Rp1.100.000, you are left with Rp600.000. Divide this Rp600.000 by the average amount of days in a month (30) and your remaining daily spending power is Rp20.000. What does that mean?

You will need to eat. You get one (not so great) meal at the factory. You will need two additional meals. A modest meal at the warteg (local restaurant or food stall) will cost you Rp8.000 - two meals, Rp16.000.

If you want to have a bottle of iced tea with one of these meals, that will cost you Rp2.500.

If you want to have a healthy snack during the day (two bananas) that will cost you Rp4.000. You cannot afford the snack.

Isn’t that crazy? You are producing the real wealth for a company that posted $1,500,000,000.00USD in profits last year and you cannot afford two meals, a bottle of iced tea AND a snack.

It is important to note, that we have only discussed SOME expenses. What about clothing, shoes, stuff for your house, recreation, soap, toothpaste, etc.? And, we are only talking about the needs for one adult here. What if you had children?

When the workers here talk about their financial struggles, they say that they are digging a hole today to fill in the hole that they dug yesterday, but the hole in front of them just keeps getting bigger. Ironically, so do Nike’s profits.

Peace, Jim Keady

JUNE 9, 2010: THE DUMPING AND BURNING OF NIKE SCRAP SHOE RUBBER

Team Sweat:

My team and I left my hotel this morning at 6:30am and drove 90 minutes to a Nike shoe factory in one of the industrial areas outside Jakarta. There we sat and waited (again). We were back on the beat looking to document the dumping and burning of Nike scrap shoe rubber.

This is an important issue because Nike has made major public statements about their supposed commitment to protecting the environment. In fact, if you read their most recent corporate responsibility report, it is loaded with claims and planned initiatives on how they say they will limit their global environmental footprint. I am unsure how successful they are going to be since it seems that they cannot even manage their trash in a way that is responsible.

“Therefore the disposal of footwear soles by burning that Mr. Keady discusses in his presentation is either counterfeit or unauthorized.”
- Carolyn Wu, Issues Manager, Nike, Inc. ~ May 10, 2002

As I wrote in an earlier post, I have been pushing Nike on this issue since I first discovered that shoe rubber from their plants was being dumped in burned in villages around the factories. For years, Nike denied any wrongdoing (note the quote above from Nike’s Carolyn Wu).

In 2009 Nike did admit, to me at least, that there was some validity to my claims. Just before my visit to Indonesia in 2009, Nike sent one of their top environmental people from Asia to investigate this issue. During his visit, this Nike exec sat outside a factory and waited for the dump truck to leave the plant. He followed it and found that the end of the line was a public dump where eventually Nike had to clean up 180 dump truck loads of scrap shoe rubber and spend thousands of dollars on an environmental remediation of the site. The resulting policy change was Nike’s new waste management system.

The question I wanted answered, was “Is the waste management system really effective or it is simply another Nike public relations ploy?”

So… there we sat and waited.

The giant yellow dump truck rolled out of the factory gates around 10:15am. We whipped our van around and followed it down the bumpy dirt road. I must share that I felt somewhat uneasy as we were doing this. In 2002 while doing similar research at a dump, I ended up being chased in my van by machete wielding preman (thugs) on motorcycles who worked for the mafioso that ran the dump. They eventually caught us, beat my driver and brought my team back to the dump where I ended up on my knees with the boss telling me, “If you come back here, I will kill you,” as he stood over me with a sword drawn over my head.

The dump truck pulled into a makeshift recycling center that is run by the local community and started to unload. To not raise suspicions with the men who ran this operation, I posed as an American buyer of shoe scraps. We told them that I worked for a company that made artificial soccer fields and that we used this kind of material as a base. They bought the story. From our conversation I learned that they only received the scrap foam from the factory (about 1 ton a day) and it is sold to buyers that use it to make cushions for sofas, chairs, etc. There was no scrap shoe rubber dumped with them, but they told me where it was discarded, a dump site just up the road.

We made our way down the road and came upon the dump site that we were told about. It turned out that while we were at the community recycling center, that another dump truck must have left the plant and come to this site. As it unloaded it’s trash, we watched and waited. It took about 20 minutes for the truck to be emptied of its contents. It was morbidly fascinating to watch the people at the dump sort through the trash as it was pushed off the truck. They scavenged for plastic bottles and anything else that might have value if salvaged.

When the team of men from the factory finished their work, loaded back onto the truck and rolled out back onto the road, we kicked into action.

Alif told the man that ran the dump that I was a Canadian reporter doing a documentary on recycling efforts in Indonesia. Rather than TELL you what I found here, I offer the photos below and will allow you to judge if Nike’s claims about their new waste management system are legit.

Just an FYI, the kind of dumping I described above and that you can see in these photos, happens 3-4 times a day, every day, and the burning happens for hours every afternoon.

JUST(ice) DO IT.

Peace, Jim Keady

JUNE 8, 2010: WAGES - NOTHING HAS CHANGED

Team Sweat:

I spent the early evening of June 8th traveling the broken, dusty roads of an industrial suburb outside of Jakarta en route to a meeting with Nike factory workers. At around 6:30pm, we arrived at the home of a worker and I was invited in. I had met with many of these workers before, so it was a reunion of sorts and I was very happy to see them. I settled into the corner on the floor of the 6×10 room, sparsely decorated with a rug, outdated wall-hangings, and fading blue paint. Following a brief introduction and the gathering of some data, I listened to the all too familiar stories from these eleven Nike factory workers. Despite the fact that they produce the real wealth (the stuff you can actually hold in your hands, or put on your feet) for the $19,200,000,000.00 sportswear giant, they still live in grinding poverty.

As our discussion continued, one of the women, her young face framed by her traditional Muslim headdress, shared how painfully difficult it is to live on her basic monthly salary of Rp1.110.000 ($114USD). Her rent is Rp300.000 and there is pressure to send Rp350.000 back to her family in the village. If there is no overtime for her to work and earn extra pay, this leaves her with Rp405.000 for the month to meet the rest of her basic needs.

Let’s do some math here. If she has Rp.405.000 after rent and sending money home to her family and you divide that Rp405.000 by the average amount of days in a month (30), she is left with Rp15.500 per day to meet the rest of her basic needs. And when a simple meal of rice, vegetables, tempeh, and a small piece of fish costs Rp8.000 and a bottle of iced tea costs Rp2.500, it should be no surprise why she was near tears as she shared that she has to borrow money every month from friends and neighbors to make ends meet.

The remainder of our discussion focused on what we could do together to help get workers the raises they deserve. I shared with them that the consumers and investors from around the world (4,000 of whom live in Jakarta) who are part of TEAM SWEAT are ready to support them in their fight. The workers then shared their fears with me, that if they fight for the wage they want and deserve (Rp3.000.000 per month) and go on strike to make it happen, that they could be fired and that Nike could pull orders from their factory.

I responded to this by saying that their fears may be justified and then I raised the following, “What else would you like to do? Nike’s making money, the factory is making money, the athletes are making money… and you continue to live in poverty. When are you going to stand up and fight for yourselves?” It was a difficult thing for me to say and I prefaced it by letting them know that I shared it with love and solidarity. But I remained firm that Nike’s Indonesian workers could not continue to look for people like me to act like a Santa Claus and bring them the gift of better working conditions and fair wages. It was time for them to take action. Still fearful, they agreed.

We will meet again on Thursday night to continue our discussion and lay the groundwork for a specific action.

Peace, Jim Keady

JUNE 8, 2010: THE SEARCH FOR SCRAP SHOE RUBBER

Team Sweat:

I started today by meeting with Alif and Benny, my friends and colleagues that have been working to organize things prior to my arrival in Indonesia. They reported that contacts have been made with workers at a number of Nike factories and that meetings with workers are in the process of being confirmed. They shared that the key issues remain the same: workers’ wages are too low to meet basic needs; and the workers continue to be afraid of the power that Nike has over them (i.e. they fear doing real organizing and exercising their right to strike for better wages because they could be fired and/or Nike will pull orders).

As our discussion continued, Alif shared something very interesting with me. As I noted above, I did my best to keep my travel plans (specific dates, etc.) a secret on this trip. Despite this, at 7:31pm on Monday night, about 20 minutes before my plane was about to land, Alif got a text message from one of the staff members at Nike’s Jakarta office - “When Jim arrives in Indonesia, tell him I said, ‘hi.’” How Nike knew I was en route is somewhat unsettling, but it is the nature of my work.

After our meeting in Jakarta, Alif and I headed out to a Nike factory. Our plan was to sit outside the plant and wait for the dump truck that carries the scrap shoe rubber to leave the factory and follow it.

A Nike scrap shoe rubber dump site in 2001.

A little background on this… In the summer of 2000, I first unearthed the fact that scrap shoe from Nike plants was being dumped and burned in villages. The slow burning of Nike shoe rubber at a relatively low heat emits dangerous toxins into the air, soil and water. Despite the fact that I put Nike on notice with regard to this issue in 2000, 2001, and 2002, when I returned to Indonesia in 2008, I once again documented the same problem. In the summer of 2008, I shared my updated findings with the top executives at Nike and was promised that it would be addressed. In July of 2009, during my visit to Nike factories with Caitlin Morris, Nike’s Director of Innovation and Sustainable Business, I was shown the new waste management system that would rectify this issue. While it looked impressive, I was not convinced that it would address the problem. Why? Because implementing that kind of system and changing the culture that drives that system would take REAL investment from Nike. What happens now is that Nike tells their subcontractors, “we want this done.” But Nike does not provide the factory with any capital to make it happen, nor are they willing to increase the price they pay to the factories for Nike sneakers to offset the costs. So what you end up with is a nice show for the monitors and Nike telling the world that they have addressed these issues and they have a new system in place, etc. But the reality remains unchanged on the ground.

So, we sat there for hours, clandestinely waiting, but to no avail. We would have to try again.

Peace, Jim Keady

JUNE 7, 2010: MY RESEARCH IN INDONESIA BEGINS

Team Sweat:

After more than a day of travel, I reached Jakarta safely and am ready to begin 10 days of research on the current state of conditions for Nike factory workers here.

I am hopeful that this trip will be productive and rewarding. I also am hopeful that you will enjoy and learn from the accounts of my daily activities.

JUST(ice) DO IT.

Peace, Jim Keady

CLASH OF THE TITANS - WILL UW STAY WITH NIKE?

June 11, 2010
PUBLISHED IN “INSIDE HIGHER ED”
By Jack Stripling

Before he leaves to head the nation’s premier sports governing body, Mark Emmert may have a showdown with the world’s leading athletics apparel provider.

Emmert, who now serves president of the University of Washington and will soon become chief of the National Collegiate Athletic Association, has been urged not to renew the university’s licensing agreement with Nike. In a Tuesday letter to the president, the university’s Advisory Committee on Trademarks and Licensing relayed its unanimous decision that the agreement be severed, barring a satisfactory resolution to an ongoing labor dispute between Nike and Honduran workers.

“[The Committee] feels strongly that we have waited long enough for Nike to meet its responsibility [regarding] workers in its supply chain,” wrote Margaret Levi, co-chair of the committee and a professor of international studies. “We urge you to accept our advice.”

The committee, which previously pressed Emmert to find Nike in violation of the university’s code of conduct, includes student, faculty and staff representatives. While its recommendations are advisory, Emmert has followed the committee’s suggestions in the past.

When the University of Wisconsin at Madison became the first university to end its Nike agreement over the Honduran worker dispute, Chancellor Biddy Martin did so at the behest of the university’s labor licensing committee — the equivalent of the group now encouraging Emmert to do the same.

Washington’s contract with Nike ends December 2010, a month after Emmert is slated to begin his new duties as president of the NCAA. Whether Emmert will make the decision or leave it to his successor at Washington is unclear, a university spokesman said Thursday.

“He’s not come to any decisions,” said Norman Arkans, associate vice president for communications. “I have no idea how long he’s going to take to think about it, but that’s up to him.”

Many of the NCAA’s members, and the NCAA itself, have licensing agreements with Nike. Additionally, Nike is a founding sponsor of iHoops, a youth basketball program run by the NCAA and the National Basketball Association (NBA).

Asked whether his future position as head of the NCAA added any gravity to Emmert’s decision over Washington’s contract, Arkans said “that’s for somebody else to speculate.”

“He’s still president of the University of Washington, and he is acting right up until his last day as the president of the University of Washington,” he said. “He has responsibilities here.”

Emmert’s future with the NCAA is just one of the interesting twists at Washington. The university’s provost, Phyllis Wise, recently became a member of Nike’s corporate board, drawing some criticism from students and faculty who decry the company’s labor practices. Orin Smith, who has served on Nike’s board since 2004, is also a member of the university’s board of regents.

The regents have yet to say whether Wise will step in as interim president when Emmert departs, but as the second-in-command it would be unsurprising for her to take on the role. Even if she does become interim chief, Wise would continue to recuse herself from decisions about Nike, just as she does now as provost, Arkans said.

“It will be another university official with the authority to make that decision,” he said.

It would be unfortunate, however, if circumstances necessitated such a weighty decision about Nike being made at a lower administrative level, said Angelina Snodgrass Godoy, director of the university’s Center for Human Rights.

“I think it’s imperative that this be a presidential-level decision,” she said.

“I don’t question [Wise’s] sincerity in recusing herself,” Godoy added. “But if she’s in a position supervising others who are tasked with [deciding on the Nike agreement] and she sits on Nike’s board, it creates a situation that looks an awful lot to me like a conflict of interest.”

Asked about the committee’s recommendation, a Nike spokeswoman said Thursday that the company “greatly values its relationship with the University of Washington.” Erin Patterson, the spokeswoman, went on to say in an e-mail that the company had not violated the university’s conduct code because “no university branded product” was produced at either of the two Honduras-based companies that have generated controversy over labor practices. There was a “one time order” of Nike products without Washington logos, however, provided to the university through one of the suppliers, Patterson said.

Washington’s ties to Nike have prompted protests from United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), and the organization was quick to say Thursday that the committee’s letter represented a test for the university to prove its administrators’ ties to the company truly aren’t a conflict.

“If President Emmert doesn’t drop the UW’s Nike contract, I think the most lasting impact will be national attention to the UW as a case study of corporate control of a public university, since anti-sweatshop issues aren’t going away anytime soon,” Rod Palmquist, a spokesman for USAS, wrote in an e-mail to Inside Higher Ed.

Nike has been under fire from labor groups for years, but the catalytic event that’s caused such a backlash at Washington involves two of Nike’s supplier factories, Hugger de Honduras and Vision Tex, in Honduras. The Worker Rights Consortium, which counts Washington among its member universities, found that the factories closed without paying workers who were legally mandated severance totalling more than $2 million.

Nike has responded by offering training and vocational programs, but the company maintains it bears no financial liability.

“Nike is absolutely concerned for the workers in Honduras and we are deeply disappointed that the two failed sub-contract factories did not pay the workers their full severance pay,” the company said in April. “However, it remains Nike’s position that factories which directly employ workers are responsible for ensuring that their employees receive their correct entitlements and as such Nike will not be paying severance to workers that were employed by Hugger and Vision Tex.”

For Washington’s advisory committee, the response from Nike thus far has been insufficient. In its letter to Emmert, the committee said the contract should only be renewed if the workers “receive the terminal compensation owed them under Honduran law” or reach a legitimate settlement agreement.

The university’s stand on the Nike issue is “hugely important” to sending a message to the company, Godoy said.

“I would say Nike’s conduct in this case has been abysmal, and I’m not only referring to the [university conduct code] violation itself,” she said. “What I think is particularly abysmal has been their response to that situation. They’ve essentially done nothing of significance to change the situation of workers on the ground.”

BUSINESSWEEK: WORLD CUP PROFITS BYPASS ASIAN SOCCER-BALL STICHERS

June 09, 2010, 4:39 AM EDT
By James Rupert

June 9 (Bloomberg) — Asian workers who stitch nearly all the world’s soccer balls have seen little improvement in lives dominated by poverty, a report said days before the start of the World Cup, which promises sports gear companies a sales bonanza.

Thirteen years after companies such as Germany’s Adidas AG and Nike Inc. joined labor and development organizations to end the use of an estimated 7,000 children to stitch soccer balls, “child labor continues to exist” in the three main ball-making countries of Pakistan, China and India, according a June 7 report by the Washington-based International Labor Rights Forum.

In those countries and Thailand, the fourth major ball- producer, adult workers often are paid too little to support their families. Some children still stitch balls at home, while others have migrated to new work, the report said.

“The international campaign of the 1990s removed bonded child labor from our soccer-ball industry, but these children moved to auto workshops, brick kilns and the like,” said Arshed Makhdoom Sabir, president of Ours Pakistan, a non-profit, development organization in Sialkot, Pakistan.

Sialkot is the hub of an industry that made about 75 percent of the world’s hand-sewn soccer balls in the 1990s, and still makes most high-quality balls, the ILRF report said. Adidas is marketing Sialkot-made replicas of its high-tech Jabulani, a machine-molded ball made in China for use in World Cup matches.

Sub-Minimum Wages
The labor forum’s researchers surveyed 218 workers for Sialkot companies that export balls and other products to sports retailers including Nike and Adidas, the two largest in the world. While suppliers for the two big companies provided better conditions for their workers, more than half of Sialkot’s soccer-ball stitchers reported 2009 pay that was below Pakistan’s monthly minimum wage of 6,000 rupees ($70), the report said.

For sewing together the 32 polyurethane outer panels of a soccer ball that sells for $50 in the United States, a Sialkot worker is paid as little as 50 rupees (59 cents) “so obviously international companies can make bigger profits in Pakistan,” Sabir said.

Adidas, Nike
Adidas, based in the Bavarian town of Herzogenaurach, is sponsoring the FIFA World Cup and 12 of the 32 competing national teams, in an effort to beat its 2008 record soccer- related sales of 1.3 billion euros ($1.92 billion), which was fueled by that year’s European Championship tournament. Beaverton, Oregon-based Nike is sponsoring 10 teams in the tournament, which kicks off in South Africa on June 11, as it challenges Adidas’s dominance in soccer retailing.

“Adidas believes that factory wages should always meet basic needs and also provide for reasonable savings and expenditure” by workers, said company spokeswoman Katja Schreiber in an e-mail. Adidas suppliers pay permanent workers “an average of 7,500 rupees per month, plus social benefits,” she said.

Nike “has been working to change how factories in Pakistan pay for soccer balls to shift the industry from a piece-goods system to a wage-based system,” spokesman Derek Kent said by e- mail. The company “hopes to leverage this new model and our experience to establish best practices in the industry.”

Informal Economy
While Pakistan’s economy grew an average annual 7.2 percent from 2004 to 2007, the availability of formal jobs for Pakistanis declined, said Haris Gazdar, an economist at the Collective for Social Science Research in Karachi, Pakistan. By 2008, nearly 83 percent of male workers, and 93 percent of employed women worked in the informal economy, some as soccer- ball stitchers, beyond the effective reach of minimum wage laws and most other workers’ protection rules, Gazdar said.

Seventy percent of Pakistanis stitching balls are casual workers, often in violation of a law requiring employment contracts and the status of “permanent” worker after nine months of employment, the ILRF report said.

Pakistan on June 5 increased the minimum wage to 7,000 rupees ($82) per month, although “it might need to be twice that level” to let most workers meet basic needs for the average family of seven people, said Gazdar. The World Bank estimates that a quarter of Pakistan’s 180 million people live on less than $1 a day.

China, India
Sialkot-based Awan Sport Industries Ltd., which makes balls for Adidas, and Silver Star Group, which manufactures for Nike, provided significantly better working conditions than most local ball-makers because they used more permanent employees “in formal factory settings,” the report said.

Most Chinese soccer balls are machine-made, although companies in Jiangsu province hire women and children to hand- stitch balls, according to the report. Children still sew balls by hand in the Indian cities of Meerut and Jalandhar, it said.

–With assistance from Matt Townsend in New York and Holger Elfes in Dusseldorf. Editors: Mark Williams, John Brinsley

To contact the reporter on this story: James Rupert in New Delhi at jrupert3@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bill Austin at billaustin@bloomberg.net

ALTA GRACIA BRAND TO PAY WORKERS A LIVING WAGE = THREE TIMES THE LOCAL MINIMUM WAGE

Team Sweat:

Please check out the letter below from Scott Nova, Director of the Workers’ Rights Consortium to contacts at Colleges and Universities across the United States. As you will see in the letter, KNIGHTS APPAREL is going to launch a new brand: Alta Gracia. What is most exciting about this is that the workers producing for this brand will be paid a living wage that is THREE TIMES THE LOCAL MINIMUM WAGE.

If Knights Apparel can do this, there is no reason that Nike cannot. Let’s enjoy this victory with Knights Apparel and keep the pressure on Nike. Victory will come soon my friends.

Peace, Jim Keady

To: Primary Contacts at WRC Affiliate Colleges and Universities
From: Scott Nova
Date: April 5, 2010
Re: Knights Now Ready to Launch High Standards Apparel Brand for Campus Stores

I am very pleased to report that the project to provide apparel to university bookstores that is made at a living wage and with full respect for workers’ associational rights has now come to fruition. As you know, the WRC has been working for two years with Knights Apparel, one of the largest sellers of university logo apparel, to help make this ground breaking concept a reality. As this update from Knights Apparel outlines, the company is now ready to launch its new brand: Alta Gracia.

Knights Apparel has informed us that they are now in the process of contacting campus stores that have communicated their intention to carry the product and that orders are being accepted beginning with back-to-school delivery. We also understand that limited product will be available earlier for stores that have conveyed an interest in stocking the product as soon as possible. Due to the complex nature of this initiative, it has taken longer to get to this point than we originally hoped, but we believe this innovative program was well worth the wait.

The launching of this new brand represents a vital step forward for university labor standards.

As we have previously reported, Knights Apparel and the management of the factory in the Dominican Republic have committed to pay workers a living wage, as defined by a study conducted by the WRC, and to pay a price to the factory that makes this possible. This wage is more than three times the minimum wage in the Dominican Republic and any collective bargaining will use this wage as a floor.

The payment of a living wage will have a transformative impact on the lives of workers and their families. Concrete progress on this vital issue has been a long-sought and elusive goal and we are tremendously heartened by the commitment Knights Apparel has made to this initiative.

The company and factory management have also demonstrated a strong commitment to full respect for associational rights including an open attitude toward workers exercise of these rights, an agreement to provide access to the factory for union representatives, and readiness to bargain with any duly constituted union, with Knights Apparel as well as factory management sitting at the negotiating table.

Ongoing compliance with these and all applicable labor standards will be verified by the WRC and this verification will be reflected in a tag that we have agreed to allow Knights to place on the product. Click here to see what the hang tag will look like (please note that the website referenced on the hangtag, which will provide additional information to consumers, is currently under construction).

We will be providing further information to you in the weeks ahead, including the following:

An update on the work that has been done to get the factory up and running. Knights Apparel and local management have worked from the outset with the WRC and Fedotrazonas, the Dominican union federation, on all of the aspects of the start-up process that impact workers and worker rights. As far as we know, this collaborative approach to launching a new factory is unprecedented.

A report on the hiring process. Hiring is being carried out in accordance with a fair-hiring protocol developed by the WRC and worker representatives. The WRC has monitored the hiring process closely in order to ensure compliance with the protocol and the factory has fully honored its obligations.

An outline of the exemplary approach the factory is taking to occupational health and safety. Knights Apparel is working, at the WRCs recommendation, with the Maquila Health and Safety Support Network, a US-based network of occupation health and safety professionals with unparalleled expertise and an innovative worker-centered approach to the issues.

We are very pleased that this groundbreaking product is now available to the university community. The fact that Knights Apparel, one of the leading university apparel licensees, is bringing a product to market made at a living wage, in a union-friendly factory, is a real mark of progress for university labor rights efforts. It is a pilot project, not a comprehensive solution to the challenges we face, but it is an exciting step forward and we are proud to be a part of it.

Ongoing demand is what will make this initiative sustainable. Therefore university support will continue to be vital.

As always, please let me know if you have any thoughts or questions.

Scott Nova
Worker Rights Consortium
5 Thomas Circle NW
Washington DC 20005
ph 202 387 4884
fax 202 387 3292
nova@workersrights.org
www.workersrights.org

NIKE SEES GLOBAL SWOOSH WITH SALES UP 40% BY 2015

Team Sweat:

As you can see from the article below, Nike is projecting that their global sales will rise 40% by 2015 and revenues will hit $27,000,000,000.00.  Will the workers who produce the real wealth for Nike make similar gains or will they continue to live in abject poverty while the executives, investors and athletes reap the benefits of Nike’s success?

Peace, Jim Keady

PUBLISHED BY REUTERS

* Nike sees $27 billion in revenue by 2015

* Sales from China, Converse, store unit to double by ‘15

* China is second biggest market

* Shares down 2.8 percent (Adds comments from CEO, analyst, details on expansion)

By Martinne Geller and Alexandria Sage

NEW YORK/SAN FRANCISCO, May 5 (Reuters) - Nike Inc (NKE.N) expects its revenue to rise more than 40 percent to $27 billion by 2015, helped by new stores and demand for its namesake brand and smaller brands like Converse, the athletic giant said on Wednesday.

“We’re going to continue to build, fuel and accelerate the Nike portfolio,” said Chief Executive Mark Parker, addressing a crowd during an investor day held in New York.

“Tremendous opportunity” still exists to grow the Nike brand organically, and the company will continue to launch “game-changing innovations,” Parker said.

Some $23 billion of that overall $27 billion revenue target will come from the Nike brand itself, executives said.

The world’s largest athletic shoe and clothing maker is stressing growth in emerging markets and through its younger non-Nike brands as it faces largely mature markets in the United States, Europe and Japan.

Company executives listed different businesses that would double in size within five years, from Nike’s China business to its owned stores and online unit to popular brands like Converse and Hurley, which currently have wholesale businesses worth $2.4 billion and $200 million, respectively.

The company, whose signature “swoosh” logo is recognized around the world, derives most of its profit from Nike-branded gear, but its smaller brands are among the fastest-growing, in part because they extend the reach of the athletic company.

“Think of Converse as an inspired-by-basketball brand. It drifts into other areas — into music, into rock and roll … where Nike wouldn’t go,” said Eunan McLaughlin, president of Nike’s affiliates unit.

Converse is only owned and managed by Nike in the United States and Canada, leaving room for Nike to expand earnings and revenue as it takes control in China and the U.K., he said.

Shares of Nike are up 41 percent since January 2009, but fell 2.8 percent on Wednesday.

Susquehanna Financial analyst Christopher Svezia said there was “a lot of hype” before the meeting, as many investors hoped for news regarding Nike’s retail strategy.

“People like what they’re saying but I don’t know if anybody’s getting their socks knocked off,” Svezia said. “It’s not a revolution, it’s an evolution.” He said investors may also have concerns about the costs of Nike’s planned growth.

SMALLER, FOCUSED STORES

Beaverton, Oregon-based Nike posted overall revenue of $19.2 billion in its full fiscal year ended May 31, 2009.

Parker reiterated the company’s long-term growth targets, which call for high-single-digit revenue growth and earnings per share growth in the mid-teens on a percentage basis.

Nike Brand President Charlie Denson said the growth of the middle class around the world would guide the brand to new audiences. Over 70 percent of the company’s future growth would come from outside North America, executives said, from 60 percent today.

Nike sells mainly through wholesale channels, but also operates its own fleet of stores, including 472 factory stores in 33 countries.

In an interview on the meeting’s sidelines, CEO Parker said Nike’s store expansion would focus on smaller stores instead of the very large “Niketown” stores it opened in the past.

“I don’t think you’ll see more of the … mega footprints that we have today as much as smaller footprints that we can showcase the best of the category product,” Parker said.

In addition to stores that focus on a particular brand like Nike or Converse, Jeanne Jackson, head of Nike’s direct-to-consumer business, said there would be more smaller stores focusing on a single category, like soccer or running. These include a brand-new running store in Stanford, California and an upcoming soccer store in Manchester, England.

The company expects to add between 250 and 300 Nike owned stores across the globe within five years. It is planning a related $500 million to $600 million in capital spending over that same period.

It expects the direct-to-consumer businesses — which includes its owned stores and online business — to double by 2015. It was about $2.4 billion in fiscal 2009.

Parker said the company’s cumulative free cash flow from operations should hit $12 billion by 2015. Nike will continue to grow its dividend and will spend $5 billion in share buybacks over the next five years, he said.

Nike shares closed at $75.21 on the New York Stock Exchange, down $2.14.

(Reporting by Martinne Geller and Alexandria Sage, writing by Alexandria Sage, editing by Dave Zimmerman, Gunna Dickson and Bernard Orr)

SETTING HIGH STANDARDS: SHOULD CORNELL CONTINUE WITH NIKE?

PUBLISHED IN THE CORNELL DAILY SUN

WILL UW STAND UP TO NIKE?

PUBLISHED IN THE SEATTLE PI

APRIL 28, 2010

HONDURAN WORKERS DEMAND $2.2 MILLION FROM NIKE AT PORTLAND AREA WORKERS’ RIGHTS BOARD

JOBS WITH JUSTICE BLOG

By Margaret Butler, on April 28th, 2010

FORMER NIKE WORKERS PROTEST UNFAIR CONDITIONS

The Daily Targum

Two former Nike factory workers spoke to students Sunday night in an effort to push the University to cut ties with the corporation.
Gina Cano and Lowlee Uriquia, who both worked in the Honduras New Holland factories producing Nike apparel, spoke to about 100 people on the College Avenue campus about the exploitation they experienced after creating a workers’ union. They also touched upon how Nike denied responsibility and refused to pay workers severance.
Two Honduran clothing factories closed for unclear reasons on Jan. 19, 2009, leaving about 1,700 workers without a job, health insurance and severance pay, said Zachary Lerner, president of the Rutgers Chapter of the United Students Against Sweatshops, the sponsor of the event.
“Our whole point is that everyone wants to wear Nike clothes, you just want it so that they’re not made on the backs of people,” said Lerner, a Schools of Arts and Sciences junior. “[Nike] owes the workers between $2.2 million and $2.6 million, and in revenue Nike makes $2.2 million in one hour.”
The USAS is pushing the University to cut its ties with Nike, who produces the University’s apparel. Lerner said the situation violates both the University and Nike codes of business conduct.
The women spoke of exploitative practices, like being docked fees for the health insurance and never receiving the benefits of those services.
As the situation worsened, the workers created a union. In a day, management fired many top positions in the union, including the president and vice president, Uriquia said.
The workers said they were given no reason as to why the factory closed. But with the help of the Confederation of Honduran Unions and the Workers Rights Consortium, they pressured management to speak up, she said.
Uriquia said the workers were told the factories closed because they were no longer getting orders due to the economic crisis in the United States.
Cano, a union organizer, was hired at New Holland after Hugger de Honduras closed. She was fired two weeks into the job once management looked into her organizing background, she said.
“The probationary period at any factory is two months, and they gave me no kind of explanation as to why they were firing me,” Cano said. “Because we are part of this fight, because we’re in this struggle, both of us have been discriminated against. We’ve both been blacklisted.”
She said factories tend to prioritize individuals for hiring, mostly women between the ages of 18 and 25 who have never worked in these kinds of factories and do not know their rights.
According to an April 8 article in the Cornell Daily Sun published, Nike said they already did things they were not required to do regarding sub-contract workers, like providing training programs.
“It is not [our] responsibility to take care of sub-contract workers,” a Nike official said in the article.
The fundamental reason USAS says sweatshops exist is because companies like Nike, Adidas and Reebok abuse the power that they have in a global economy, said International Campaign Coordinator for USAS Rod Palmquist.
Sixteen supporters of the movement to end University ties with Nike approached University President Richard L. McCormick earlier in the semester, demanding he cut the contract due to labor rights violations. McCormick sent a letter to Nike and said he would look into it again at the end of the semester.
Lerner noted the University of Wisconsin cut their contract with Nike last Friday and said the University should follow in their steps.
“We need to do something right now. It can’t just be something we wait on,” he said.
The two women have been speaking as part of a national tour. They have previously spoken at universities such as Duke, Cornell, Brown and the Universities of Florida and Maryland.
The night ended with an outdoor candlelight ceremony with tea candles spelling out the words “Just Pay It,” though they were never lit due to weather and police enforcement restrictions.
School of Arts and Sciences first-year student Brett Kozinn said he would still wear Nike even after attending the event.
“[By] me not wearing Nike, [it] isn’t going to have a huge effect on this kind of thing,” he said. “I’m more inclined to get involved in something like this now, but not wearing Nike isn’t going to give those people their severance.”

FINANCIAL TIMES: WHY ANTI-SWEATSHOP CAMPAIGNS MIGHT JUST DO IT AFTER ALL

Team Sweat:

Please read the article below from The Financial Times. This is an excellent rebuttal to the market fundamentalists out there who believe that our anti-sweatshop work is going to hurt the workers for whom we are advocating. It is clear from this piece that the facts do not support that position. In fact, the reality is that our campaigning is working and improving workers’ lives.

Let’s keep the momentum going!

Peace, Jim Keady

By Tim Harford
Published: May 8 2010 01:25
Financial Times Weekend Magazine (UK)

When my book The Undercover Economist was published five years ago, I would occasionally be asked whether I was in favour of sweatshops in developing countries. Not at all, I would reply. But I could see where the question was coming from, because I was certainly worried as to whether campaigning against them would do any good.

My argument had a logic that will be familiar to economists. Unless sweatshop workers are literally slaves, they are presumably working long hours in horrible conditions for low pay only because the alternative ways of making a living are worse.

When a well-meaning group of activists launches a campaign against sweatshop labour among, say, Nike suppliers in Indonesia, the obvious risk is that the sweatshops are closed, workers are tossed out on to the street, and the work is shifted to computerised sewing machines in Osaka. This is surely not the aim. The only alternative is economic growth: while it may be frustratingly slow, it finishes off sweatshops by producing far more attractive jobs.

But while the logic is straightforward enough, it is not watertight. A successful multinational may be profitable enough to be able to afford wage increases, and may prefer to take wage increases on the chin rather than move its business around. Economic growth itself can increase the demand for child labour as well as reducing the supply.

So I was intrigued to discover two new pieces of research addressing these questions. One is an article in March’s American Economic Review, written by Ann Harrison of the University of California, Berkeley, and Jason Scorse of the Monterey Institute. Harrison and Scorse study data from Indonesia. In the 1990s, Indonesia was the focus of anti-sweatshop campaigns that persuaded the US government to put pressure on its Indonesian counterpart, and encouraged US consumers to boycott companies such as Nike. (An influential study in 1989 had found that Nike’s suppliers paid lower wages than other companies in the export sector.) Harrison and Scorse look at the footwear, textile and clothing sectors and compare regions with lots of brand-name suppliers to regions with lower-profile businesses.

If my argument is correct, Harrison and Scorse would have found a slump in employment in export factories in the brand-name regions. There is little sign of this. Profits do fall, and so does investment. Some small plants closed. But few, if any, jobs seem to have been lost.

The minimum wage in Indonesia more than doubled between 1989 and 1996, after inflation, and this did depress employment. But there seemed to be no additional effect in the districts with lots of brand-name suppliers, despite the fact that wages in those regions outpaced wage increases elsewhere by almost a third.

The second paper was presented in draft form at the Royal Economic Society meeting in Guildford at the end of March. This research, by Nigar Hashimzade and Uma Kambhampati of the University of Reading, shows that economic growth – at least in the short-term – is not enough to reduce child labour. Complementary policies to strengthen schools and the incentive to attend them seem to be necessary.

Neither piece of research is the last word, and neither discounts the long-term effectiveness of economic growth in improving working conditions. But I am having to think again about anti-sweatshop campaigns. At least I am in good company. John Maynard Keynes is reported to have quipped, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

Tim Harford’s latest book is ‘Dear Undercover Economist’ (Little, Brown)

KEADY TALKS SWEATSHOPS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF SAN DIEGO

By Ellie Faulkner
Staff Writer
Published: Thursday, May 6, 2010
The Vista, University of San Diego

In a search for the truth about Nike’s labor practices, Jim Keady spent time in Indonesia to see what working as one of Nike’s factory workers was really like. He lived on $1.25 a day and resided in what he described as a “9 feet by 9 feet cement block” worker’s slum. Huge rats were frequent houseguests and the open sewage system flowed right next to the sidewalk outside. Over the course of a month there, he lost 25 pounds. His reasoning for embarking on the crusade in Nike’s sweatshops stems from his studies as well as his interests.

Back in 1997, Keady was a soccer coach at St. John’s University while simultaneously working towards his masters in theology. A class assignment led him to research how Nike’s labor practices violate human rights. Concurrently, St. John’s was negotiating a $3.5 million endorsement deal with Nike, meaning that he, as a coach, would be required to wear and endorse Nike. Keady realized that it would be hypocritical for a Catholic school, supposedly an institution of Catholic social thought, to partner itself with a transnational sports empire that was violating human rights. This realization turned to activism and he lost his coaching job because he refused to drop the issue and wear Nike. Soon after, he embarked on his life-changing trip to Indonesia and formed Team Sweat, an organization committed to changing Nike’s labor practices.

Nike currently employs a million workers in 1,000 factories across 52 different countries. When Keady tried to ask Nike about their labor policies, he was met with subterfuge and lies. He pursued answers through many different divisions of the company, and even tried to set up a meeting with Phil Knight, the former CEO of Nike. Often he was turned away, and when he did receive an answer, the information was often conflicting. Nike would like to have the public believe that they have cleaned up their act, but Keady said he went to Indonesia, saw the reality of Nike sweatshops with his own eyes, and made a short film about his time there. It can be viewed at vimeo.com/6109896.

It should also be noted that Nike is not the only company that uses sweatshops; sweatshops are the reality of most modern apparel production. Nike was simply the company that first caught Keady’s attention and he chose to make an example of it for four reasons, as listed on his website, teamsweat.org.

First, Nike is the leader in the sportswear industry. They control roughly 45 percent of the global market. Second, Nike led the push into low wage countries with poor human rights records. They exploited, and continue to exploit, these countries for their cheap labor. Third, labor abuses in Nike factories have been extensively and reliably documented over a 15-year period. There is no other company for which there is this much objective research. Finally, as the company with the largest profit margins in the industry ($1.5 billion in profits in 2008) Nike can more easily afford to ensure living wages and fair working conditions in their factories.

However, the mission is not to boycott Nike. Although Keady feels it would be effective, the factory workers themselves have not asked for a boycott. The mission is to put continued pressure on Nike to change their labor policies by educating people about the sweatshop situation.

If Keady’s organization, Team Sweat, is able to put enough pressure on Nike to clean up their act, then the same model of change can be replicated to change other companies and eventually the entire industry.

“The thing that I took away from the talk was that Nike is simply a case study and the largest corporation that owns sweatshops,” junior JaRae Birkeland said. “Plenty of other companies do the exact same thing. Adidas, Puma, Abercrombie, etcetera, all have sweatshops in Southeast Asia and other third world countries. Advocating against the Nike company is important but so is putting up a front against other companies as well and leaning towards purchasing fair trade products.”

When Keady presented this breakdown to a manager at an Indonesian factory, the manager said, “Hang on, they [Nike] only pay us $10 to $11 for a pair of shoes?” Even worse, upon further examination and number crunching, Keady found that to double the workers wages, in essence paying them about $5 per day instead of $2.43 per day, it would only cost Nike about seven percent of their advertising budget. There was silence in the room after Keady shared this.

Nike is a $18.6 billion dollar corporation, and if Nike would spare 7 percent of their advertising budget, they could double the wages that their workers receive and hence pay them a fair livable wage.

“One example that really shocked me and stuck with me was about how much Tiger Woods makes in one game of golf just by wearing Nike,” Birkeland said. “Tiger Woods is worth more than 700,000 workers and makes enough in one second of time to buy an Indonesian worker a house.”

It would take a Nike factory worker in Indonesia 9.5 years to make as much as Tiger makes for playing one round of golf clothed in Nike. Students wondered what this says about how North America measures the worth of a person.

Another poignant moment during the presentation was when Keady displayed a picture of Nike’s logo emblazoned alongside our school’s logo on merchandise from the bookstore.

“It was not the most comfortable part of the presentation because it shocked me,” junior Ryann Berens said. “The entire room as well kind of gasped and shifted in their seats. This is when the reality of the situation hit home and made it personal.”

Keady said that Nike is aiming to partner itself with Catholic schools because they want to associate themselves with places of Catholic teaching; it is a strategic public relations move.

So what can USD students do? Keady emphasized that the wrong question to ask is, “Okay where can I buy garments that are sweat free?” or “What brand can our athletics department wear instead?” He said that Team Sweat’s campaign is “not about assuaging your Catholic guilt.”

The campaign is not about helping you feel better about what you buy. What he would instead like people to ask themselves is, “How can I build solidarity with the workers and put pressure on Nike that will eventually eliminate sweatshops?” He encouraged the audience to write the current Nike CEO, Mike Parker, an email telling him about their concern for Nike’s factory workers (at Mike.Parker@nike.com). Tell people you know, hold demonstrations, and donate to Team Sweat so they can get the message out to more people.

Join the facebook group at facebook.com/teamsweat. In this campaign, education is power and the more people that know about Nike’s human rights violations, the more pressure it will put on Nike to change.

Slowly but surely, Keady said he has seen this approach create progress over the last 13 years.