Nike, Nietzschean Superman and the Sweat Life for
Superwomen
David M. Boje
January 1, 2001
This paper for will be presented to the International Relations Research
Association. January 5-7, 2000. IRRA sessions are in Fairmont Hotel in New Orleans. Session S19 "The
Anti-Sweatshop Movement and Corporate Codes of Conduct" session is Friday January 5th. 10:15 a.m. - 12:15p.m.
Abstract
In this essay I look behind the mask of "free"
global trade presented by Nike Corporate Leadership. Behind this mask, I see
the Nietzschean Superman, with a will to power that is not talked about in
contemporary leadership theory. Contemporary leader theory does not mention
"sweatshops," is too politely bureaucratic, preferring transactional and
routinized transformational leaderly study to that of the less moral Supermen and Machiavellian Princes.
The contribution of this essay is to present a look at leadership that is not
polite, humble, or quite so moral and pure. I develop a three
dimensional model of leadership across nine types of networks. The first
dimension I call "X" the transactional to transformational moral
ground of traditional leadership study. The second dimension I call
"Y" extending from the will to serve to the Nietzschean will to
Power. And the third dimension "Z" extends from the narrative
homogeneity to narrative heterogeneity. As a case example, I look at the
nine networks of involvement of the Nike Corporation in (1) supply chains, (2)
distribution webs, (3) postmodern cultural icons (Woods, Jordan, and stars
like Gibson & Hunt), (4) transgovernment relations (among 1st & 3rd
world governments), (5) education, (6) Nike is the leader of a pack of
competitors, (7) investors and consumers (who purchase stocks and products),
(8) workers (in Beaverton, Oregon, expatriates, and 3rd World mostly young
females, and (9) the postmodern network of resistors to the leadership of Nike
in the global stage of postmodern capitalism.
Introduction
I did my dissertation on the centrality of
organizations and leaders in various interorganizational networks, such as
communication, resource, and reputation (Boje, 1979a).Along with David Whetten,
we posited that leadership takes place in an interorganizational field of
strategies and environmental constraints (Boje, 1979b,1999a; Boje &
Whetten, 1989; Boje, White & Wolfe, 1994).
Since then, I have looked at how change and
transformation takes place in transorganizational networks (Boje & Wolfe,
1980). The field of transorganizational development theory and praxis was
first appraised in a seminal article by Culbert, Elden, McWhinney, Schmidt, &
Bob Tannenbaum (1972). For a more recent review, see the Transorganizational
Development Web Site).
The purpose of this paper is to extend the field
of leadership from its current focus on leaders and worker transactions and organizational
transformations to the interorganizational field of network study. The field
of leadership has not strayed from from the trait study of great leaders, the
dyadic behavioral relations between leaders and followers, and the recent
interest in differentiating between transactional and transformational (even
charismatic) leaders. The purpose of this essay is to explore the
kinds of leadership enacted in Nike-Beaverton, its subcontractors, and
distribution chain. I will suggest that Phil Knight is part Machiavellian
Prince, part Nietzschean superman and part Weberian charismatic hero as well
as Bureaucratic executive. In the second part of the essay, I will look at
ways Nike Corporation could transform its supply chain of feudalistic
sweatshops into what Dominique Besson (2000) calls, "French
Taylorism."
I would like to make several related
contributions to leadership. First, to focus on nine types of global networks
in which leadership takes place. Using the Nike Corporation as a case example,
these range from (1) supply chains of Third World factories, (2)
distribution webs of outlets (from NikeTown to Footlocker), (3) postmodern
cultural icons (Woods, Jordan, and stars like Gibson & Hunt), (4) transgovernment
relations (among 1st & 3rd world governments applying more or less legal
codes), (5) education (programs to change student perceptions of Nike), (6)
Nike is the leader of a pack of competitors, (7) investors and consumers (who
purchase stocks and products), (8) workers (in Beaverton, Oregon, expatriates,
and 3rd World mostly young females, and (9) the postmodern network of
resistors to the leadership of Nike in the global stage of postmodern
capitalism. Second, I wish to look here to elaborate an expanded and more
integrative theory of moral and amoral reasoning (e.g. Kohlberg). Kohlberg
(1964, 1966, 1969, 1976, 1981 & 1984) studied differences in children's reasoning about moral dilemmas. He hypothesized that moral difficulties
motivated their development through a fixed sequence of increasingly flexible kinds of moral reasoning.
See Boje (2000b) for a
review of the relation of what I term "narrative moral development"
to leadership theory. I propose to look at three dimensions of leadership in
the athletic apparel industry that includes networks of designers, marketers,
subcontractors, workers, celebrities, distributors, customers, investors,
intellectuals, journals, governments, and protestors. My basis thesis is one
can not properly understand the depth and scope of Nike leadership unless we
understand its relations to the nine types of networks listed above. In my
multi-dimensional view, there are three critical dimensions to Nike's
transorganizational leadership. For simplicity, I will label them X, Y, and Z.
 |
X - Transactional to transformational leadership,
as studied by Burns (1978) and Bass (1985). |
|
Y - From the Will to Server to the Nietzschean Will
to Power. The Will to Power is specifically excluded from
transaction and transformational leader theory by both Burns and Bass. I
therefore treat it as a second dimension of leadership (See Boje,
2000b) for an overview.. |
|
Z - From monophonic (single voice) narrative to
(polyphonic) narrative. I am interested in the Tamara (Boje,
1995) of storytelling behaviors of transorganizational leadership (Boje,
1999a). |
PART I - Towards a Network Theory of
Leadership
In Part I, I will review a three-dimensional model of network
leadership. In Part II, I follow this up with specific recommendations to Nike
Corporation.
X - Dimension - As
an overview, James MacGregor Burns (1978) based his classic study of
leadership on Kohlberg's levels of moral thinking to differentiate between
transactional and transformational leadership (Dimension X). Burns looked at modal
thinking (the means over ends reasoning) in the early stages of development
and held these leaders to be "transactional." Transactional leadership "requires a shrewd eye for opportunity, a
good hand at bargaining, persuading, reciprocating" (Burns, 1978:169). A
"transformational leader," on the other hand, "recognizes and
exploits an existing need or demand of a potential follower... (and)
looks for potential motives in followers, seeks to satisfy higher
needs, and engages the full person of the follower" (p. 4).
Y - Dimension - The
Y Dimension extends from Will to Serve (WTS) to Will to Power (WTP).
Nietzsche's notebooks (1967) on Will to Power (WTP) were written from1883 to
1888. The transaction/ transformational leadership theorists reject the WTP
bas being too immoral, merely a brutish self-indulgent or tyrannical power wielding
that is immoral. But, a more careful reading of Nietzsche reveals quite a
different approach to both leadership and the study of morals. The WTP
for Nietzsche has something to do with the will to initiate and implement a
goal as well as the more macro construct of Darwin's theory of natural
section, the power to transform the inherited advantages from generation to
generation (WTP #362). And WTP is also a Will to Truth (TSZ, pp. 28, 113). For
Nietzsche the world revolves around the inventor of new social and cultural
values (TSZ, p. 52). Nike is a Superman leader, extending its power from
cultural transformation through celebrity and star power to the factories and
sweatshops of the Third World nations. The WTP is a will to overcome the small
people, "they are the superman's greatest danger" (TSZ, p. 287). And
the superleader is not satisfied with the happiness of the greatest number of
workers or consumers (TSZ, p. 287). The Super leaders sees the abyss with the
eyes of an eagle and grasps the abyss of poverty and misery with the talons of
an eagle (TSZ, p. 288).
Resituating the Transaction/Transformation Model of
Leadership - Figure One crosses the X and Y dimensions of transaction
to transformation with WTS to WTP. The horizontal X dimension of transactional to transformational made famous in
the work of James MacGregor Burns (1978) and Bernard M. Bass (1985); and the
vertical Y dimension I am adding, extends from the will to serve others to the
will to power of Friedrich Nietzsche (writing in the 1870s). Burns and Bass
restrict leadership to the bureaucratic transactional and heroic/ charismatic
approaches (cells 1 and 3) to a will to serve others. I would like to
resituate leadership by including the work of Machiavelli and Nietzsche (cells
2 and 4). Burns, more than Bass, disqualifies leaders who wield power,
including those with a strong "will to power" as well as tyrants and
dictators who use power in what Burns and Bass see as amoral. In short, the
contemporary transaction/ transformation duality restricts leadership moral
uses of power, to the will to serve others. Bass sees the transactional
leader as either opinion leader, group leader, party, legislative, or
executive leader. In each case, the transaction leader "requires a shrewd eye for opportunity, a
good hand at bargaining, persuading, reciprocating" (p. 169). The
transactional leader approaches followers
with an eye to exchanging one thing for another: jobs for votes, or
subsidies for campaign contributions.
Figure One: The X & Y Leader Dimensions
Burns' transformational leader can be an
intellectual, reform, revolutionary, or (charismatic) hero. The
transformational leader "recognizes and
exploits an existing need or demand of a potential follower... (and)
looks for potential motives in followers, seeks to satisfy higher
needs, and engages the full person of the follower" (Burns, 1978:
4). Few, if any, leadership theorists have
noted the transactional aspects of Weber's (1947) model of the three leaderly
authorities. Yet, what Weber theorized is quite consistent (though not
identical) with the transactional theory of Burns (1978) and Bass (1985).
All do recognize Weber's charismatic leaderly authority, but never seem to
read the part about the routinization of charisma, or see how bureaucratic transaction
and heroic charisma interact with the third category of authority, the
traditional feudalistic enactment of the Sultan and Chief. Burns and Bass seem
to accept a linear progress model of leaderly power and authority that
suggests that transaction and transformation are beyond the feudalistic
form. Yet, for Machiavelli's strategic advice to Prince, the types of
power Burns finds amoral, and therefore outside his definition of leadership,
is still, I think, very much in evidence today. And so is the Superman,
the will to power of Nietzsche. Figure One, therefore is an effort to resituate
the discussion of transactional and transformational leadership by adding a
second, vertical dimension. To me the Princely leader is concerned about the
means of power, and will sacrifice ends over means. However, the
Superman or Superwoman leader is more transformational than transactional
(For more on this topic please see Transformational
Leadership, Charismatic Leadership,
and the Theatrics of
Leadership study guides).
Phil Knight's Leader
Styles
As an illustration, we can look just at Phil Knight's
leadership style in terms of the dimensions and categories of Figure
One.
-
Bureaucrat - Phil Knight as executive director
manages the transaction game, the rate setting of production and wage
prices negotiated in contracts with some 700 subcontractors. In
these transactions, the subcontracting factory owners (who are mostly
Korean and Thai) are left little bargaining room to extend more than
poverty wages to their workers.
-
Prince - Phil Knight shrewdly manages the ad
machine to enact a spectacle public image of himself and Nike corporate
behavior.
-
Hero - Within Nike, Phil Knight is a charismatic
heroic figure, with the tattoo of the swoosh on his leg, something the
distributor sales force, knows as EKINs emulates. But it is not Phil's
charisma that sells shoes or the spectacle image of Nike to consumers
and investors. In the postmodern era, the public worships heroes of
consumption, not production. So Tiger Woods is the current spotlight
hero of Nike, have supplanted the retired Michael Jordan. Jennings (196)
observed the transition from production to consumption heroes.
-
Superman - I do not think we can capture and
define Phil Knight's leadership qualities and behaviors in the typical
duality of transaction and transformational categories (See Figure One).
Instead, I see Knight as exercising a will to power that is prerequisite
to what Nietzsche calls the Superman leader. Nietzsche's Will to
Power (hereafter WTP) notebooks were written between 1883 and 1888 (see
Nietzsche, 1967). WTP had a mechanistic (WTP 618) and Organic one
(WTP). The mechanistic WTP includes the idea of "every
specify body strives to becomes master over all space and to extend its
force (-its will to power:) and to thrust back all that resists its
extension" (WTP #636). In its organic form, Nietzsche
describes it a s a will to life. The more mechanistic form is an
expression of the calculability of the world in formulas of motion,
cause, and effect, attraction and repulsion, as well as the separation
of deed from doer (WTP #624-627, 631). Mechanistic WTP is more
transactional, where as the organic one is more about transformation. In
either case, WTP is "an insatiable desire to manifest power"
and "the exercise of power, as a creative drive" and one that
"can manifest itself only against resistances" (WTP, 619,
656). It is this sense of the will to power that I read in the
texts and behavior of Phillip Knight. Knight is forming, shaping and
reshaping his power domain in athletic apparel and in his narrating of
his power domain. One could argue that Knight's WTP is mechanistic,
about amassing quantities of money and market share by the mechanistic
chaining of more and more Asian subcontract factories to distribution
chains worldwide. Knight executes his strategies in an orchestrated
campaign where the "means" are subordinated to a
"will." "Willing" for Nietzsche (WTP #668) is
not "desiring," striving," "demanding": "it is
distinguished from these by the affect of commanding." It is a
primitive form of affect, "encroachment of one power upon another
power" (WTP #668, 689). The resistance that for Phil Knight and
Nike must be continually overcome is the herds of journalists,
intellectuals, and activists who trade web information and concoct
sensational exposé stories about Nike sovereignty. The danger of
investor and consumer boycott and rebellion is kept at bay the will to
power, the will to sustain the life of the Nike global empire. The
Superman (or Superwoman) is "lid by a faultless and severe instinct
into doing nothing that disagrees with him, just as he eats nothing he
does not enjoy:" (WTP # 906). And this will to power is for Nietzsche
an exceptional quality of the Superman leader that I see in Philip
Knight, superior in will, knowledge riches, and influence to the Korean
and Thai Princes and to the Sweaty workers, at least for now (WTP #804,
866, 960). Knight exercises his will, despite postmodern
coalitions of resistance (wet artists, intrusive journalists, campus
protest, WTO protest, and NikeTown protest, and shareholder meeting
protests).
Philip Knight is the Superman, who has ordered Nike to terminate promotion contracts with Brown, Michigan, and his own alma mater, the University of
Oregon, withdrawing a pledge of $30 million for a sports stadium.
|
Located at www.dogeatdogfilms.com
-Michael Moore's World Wide Web site transcripts from his interview with Knight. Moore made the video out-takes available after he saw a
misleading posting of selected clips on the Nike website earlier this week. The
new footage shows the CEO justifying the use of 14-year-old labor in his
overseas factories. |
But our purpose is not to assess Phil Knight, it is to
look at the nine types of network relationships in which Knight's
leadership is engaged. To do this requires we look to a third (Y)
dimension of network leadership, the narrative voice.
Z Narrative Dimension - From
Monophonic (single voiced) to polyphonic (many voices).
Figure Two adds a third dimension to what was
displayed in Figure One. This is the Y dimension of monophonic to polyphonic
narrative. The (blue) boxes in the lower potion of the figure on the
monophonic narrative types, whereas, the upper (orange) ones represents the
polyphonic ones.
Figure Two: Leader in Three Dimensions
In bureaucratic leadership, for example, there is mostly monologue;
other voices are there on the stage but forbidden to speak, or they can only be
whispered, their words unhearable, drowned out by the one official narrator who
is authorized to take center-stage and speak and speak some more. As Kirkeby
(2000: 232) argues it is the right of power to narrate events, to declare them romantic, tragic, comedic, or
ironic, and then of course make them all into a
romantic narratives that fits the bureaucratic pension for monophonic (single
voiced) influence. For any other
voice to speak would be an act of bureaucratic espionage; certainly for the
secretary to speak would be unthinkable rebellion. Barry and Elmes (1997) look
at monophonic and polyphonic aspects of leadership strategy. See Boje (2000c)
for more on the multiple voices of leadership.
The combination of the three dimensions (X, Y, & Z)
provides eight types of leadership. The first four are more monophonic than
the last four (on Z narrative dimension).
-
Bureaucratic (X = Transactional; Y = Will to Serve; Z =
Monophonic)
-
Heroic (X = Transformational; Y = Will to Serve; Z =
Monophonic)
-
Prince (X = Transactional; Y = Will to Power; Z =
Monophonic)
-
Super (X = Transformational; Y = Will to Power; Z =
Monophonic)
-
Government (X = Transactional; Y = Will to Serve; Z =
Polyphonic)
-
Intellectual/ Reform (X = Transformational; Y = Will to
Serve; Z = Polyphonic)
-
Opinion (X = Transactional; Y = Will to Power; Z =
Polyphonic)
-
Revolutionary (X = Transformational; Y = Will to Power; Z
= Polyphonic)
Nike's cover story is getting fiddled with
more and more holes, with each revelatory story. This, in my opinion, is
forcing Nike leadership to move from denial that sweatshops exist, to
camouflage tactics where factories raided by activists and journalists are
cleaned up, moved, or shut down (as in #2). However, here the risk
takes on new intrigue. Nike is flirting with the idea of implementing OSHA
safety and health standards, ISO 9000, and even ISO 14000 standards. Yet,
Nike has its heels dug in and will not be paying living wages, even though
it pays Tiger Woods $100 million in endorsement contracts.
| In 1998, even Nike chief executive Phil Knight conceded that "the Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages, forced
overtime, and arbitrary abuse." (Standing up to the swoosh
The Village Voice; New York; Oct 10, 2000; Andrew Hsiao; Vol. 45
Issue: 40, Page: 41-43). |
| "There may appear to be little common ground linking concerns about China trade policy, student activism,
university athletics, and sweatshop labor. But the Nike sportswear contracts have provided the glue that
has cemented them, like sneakers, firmly together"
|
| What does it mean when Time Magazine gives Nike its worst innovation
award> In "The best & worst of 2000" list of
Time Magazine, Dec 18, 2000, Volume: 156, Issue: 25, p.78, Voted
Nike among the worst innovators of 2000, "THE NIKE ID
Here's a nifty thing to Just Do: Nike allows Web surfers to customize this sneaker online,
selecting style, colors and lace types, even stamping the shoes with a personal ID code. Any bets on how
long until you can pick your own sweatshop worker online? " |
| Protesters are everywhere, "marching down Fifth Avenue to the Rockefeller
Christmas tree to protest Nike, Gap, Kohl's and Disney; or, up in Cambridge, walking through
the Harvard administration building singing carols like "Away in a Sweatshop."
- Santa and Sweatshops Wall Street Journal; New York, N.Y.; Dec 22, 2000,
A14. |
| "The well-known campaign against Nike, for example, has forced the company to promise significant changes in its employment practices, though few
have yet been realized. When a recent cross-country "Nike Truth Tour" organized by students protested
the firing of a worker at a Nike subcontractor in Honduras, the employer was forced to rehire
her" (Globalization from below The Nation; New York; Dec 4, 2000; Jeremy Brecher; Tim Costello; Brendan Smith;
Volume: 271Issue: 18: 19-22). |
| "Take Nikomas Gemilang, a sprawling, 50-building minicity near Jakarta that employs 22,500 workers making shoes for Nike and
Adidas. It is owned by Taiwan's Pou Chen Corp., the world's largest shoe manufacturer. At Nike's
urging, Nikomas set a higher wage scale for senior workers and ousted managers who had yelled abuses
at workers. The factory also improved safety and food in company dorms, which house 13,000
workers... And workers' pay, even if it's better than average for that country, is still pitiful considering the nearly 40% gross profit margins Nike and
Reebok earn" (A World of Sweatshops - Business Week; New York; November 6, 2000;
Sub Title: Progress is slow in the drive for better conditions Edition:
Industrial/technology edition Issue: 3706 Page: 52). |
| Furthermore, the anti-sweatshop movement is far more widespread than the scholars seem to realize.
Religious congregations throughout the United States are involved.. Labor unions are organizing
exploited apparel workers of other countries, and of the United States. All across the country, a process
of educating and mobilizing consumers in response to abuses by employers in the
apparel industry is going on. .The scholars should stop pretending to be neutral and objective in a situation where people-especially
women and young girls-are being exploited and are suffering so that excessive profits may continue to be
generated by Nike and the corporations that indulge in similar practices.
THE REV. PAUL SURLIS Associate Professor Emeritus of Moral Theology and Social Ethics
(Letters to the editor - The Chronicle of Higher Education; Washington; Oct 27, 2000;
Volume: 47 Issue: 9, Page: B4)
|
PART II - Extending the 3 Leader
Dimensions to Nike's Nine Types of Network Relationships
The next part of the essay looks at the nine types of network
leadership that Nike participates in.
(1) Supply chains of Third
World factories - Nike Corporation, its 700 subcontractors
and a 1,000 outlets form a global production and distribution supply chain. Nike is a $9 billion
supply and distribution chain subcontracting and marketing 200 million pairs of sports shoes a year. "Reebok, Nike, Liz Claiborne, and Mattel--have finally begun enforcing their
codes in the past year or two" (Bernstein, 2000: 86).
In terms of the dimensions of Figure Two, Nike's leadership in
the 700 subcontractor supply chain of factories is (X = Transactional; Y =
Will to Power; & Z = Monophonic). In terms of Will to Power, Nike has disclosed the locations of forty-one of its factories in eleven countries around the
world, the rest are secret. In 1997 alone, Nike spent $978 million on marketing and
advertising its corporate image and logo. The leaders of this supply chain act as if they really believe that
feudal sweatshops are more productive, efficient, and profitable than modern
management systems. The 700 subcontractors in the supply chain are not all
created equal. That is Thai and Korean conglomerates own many of the 700
factories, and to minimize the power of Nike on their actions, they also
subcontract to Reebok, Adidas, Fila, Puma, and numerous other apparel
marketers.
There are many feudal lords and princes in the Nike
empire. These roles are played by the Korean and Thai factory owners
who subcontract to Nike Corporation, in endless rounds of bargaining. The
Machiavellian Princes have their own strategies and tactics fore resisting
Nike's corporate power (Carty, 1999).
The Subcontractor Sweatshop Shell Game
I remember seeing my first Shell Game on the streets of Manhattan. Several (usually two to four)
actors collaborate with the shell game to take the tourist's money. Once you know this, it is actually rather easy
to spot the accomplices.
Take three shells and label them "Global Alliance," "Fair
Labor Association" and "Price Waterhouse Coopers." Shells are a neat concept as they hide the
"sweatshop" -- like the pea, something desired by labor organizers,
student activists, and academic rebels..
In the Nike Supply Chain Shell Game, subcontractors will move a sweatshop
from location to location. Nike will bring in its accomplices, the FLA, GA or
PWC to verify that there is no sweatshop. If a journalist or activist
finds child labor, force overtime, unsafe conditions, Nike will demand that
the subcontractor clean it up. Meanwhile Nike and its subcontractors
open up new factory locations. Meanwhile Nike has a number of empty
shells. That is, factory locations that rival the best factory conditions
anywhere. But, the Shell Game is for the monitors to figure out if all 700
factory locations are up to such high standards.
The global supply chain is ridiculed in exposé
stories of spotting the sweatshop under the shell. The subcontractor
invisibly moves the "ball" here, here, or there. "Catch me if
you can?" This is facilitated by threatening workers who talk to
monitors in suits or anyone who looks like a journalist or activist. The
contracts are worth big bucks.
Networks of activists
and academic intellectuals are traveling to Asia to spot the Shell Game.
They interview and observe
Nike subcontract factories, and returning to the 1st world with stories of
sweaty practices. Nike's strategy has been to (1) deny that sweatshops
exist, (2) except when one is found to be unequivocally real, where upon
Nike (a) cancels its contract if it is a weakling, (b) moves the factory
production to an undisclosed new location, or (c) reengineers its
practices if it is of moderate power, or (c) ignores it, while stating
publicly that reform takes time, and Nike will hang in there until libratory
change for the workforce happens. Meanwhile Nike Corporate in speeches and
websites claims that its strategic game is transparent (Transparency 101),
for all the world to see. Yet, Nike only will disclose the where about
of about 40 of its 700 factory locations, claiming the strategic secrecy
is necessary to sustain its competitive advantage. Meanwhile, activists
and journalists and a few academics hunt the Asian world for factory
locations like treasure hunters search for sunken ships. The credibility
of the shell game is augmented by flashy consulting studies and a few well
rehearsed factory tours by celebrities such as Andrew Young, MBA students
(Tuck Business School), and a few sympathetic academics.
| May 12, 1998 Phil
Knight announced revolutionarily labor initiatives after release
of the Ernst
and Young Report. |
| Nike axes 'sweatshop' after BBC investigation Marketing; London; Oct 19,
2000; Tania Mason; Page: 5 "Nike has pledged to pull out of the factory it uses in Cambodia and the Gap has suspended
orders there, following Sunday's BBC Panorama program, which uncovered the use of child
labor by both companies... June Textiles Co in Phnom Penh, which produces clothes for both
brands. Hidden cameras smuggled inside showed children who appeared to be younger than 15 years old
working on the shop floor, while other employees admitted working seven-day weeks.
"
 | 2nd Source - ASIAWEEK: SIGNS OF THE TIMES Asiaweek; Hong Kong; Oct 9, 2000;
"Nike pulled out of the June Textiles sweatshop factory in Cambodia after discovering it used child
labor. Undercover investigators filmed children sewing shirts for just a few
cents a day." |
|
| Anita Roddick argues that instead of pulling out Nike should stay
and face its responsibilities - "Somehow, we have to persuade these retailers and the
media on the rare occasions when they publicise the issue - that the right response is to take responsibility.
That means sticking with the factory to sort out the abuses, sending the child-workers to school and
paying them while they're there. If everybody washes their hands of the whole problem, we won't get
anywhere" (Diary, New Statesman; London; Oct 16, 2000; Anita Roddick;
Volume: 13 Issue: 627, Page: 8) |
(2) Distribution webs of
outlets (from NikeTown to Footlocker) - There have been very few studies
of the distribution contracting of Nike (Carty, 1999). Most of the attention
is on the supply chain of Asian factories. The Nike storytelling machine (Boje 1991, 1995) is a narrative web spanning
the 1st World thirst for heroic sports worship and the 3rd world supply chain
of sweat labor, as well as the global distribution transaction economy of distributors
(NikeTown, Footlocker, and university campus apparel stores).
Nike produces
and distributes its official Nike story of sports endorsements, postindustrial supply
chain management, and global distribution using postmodern culture
manipulation. This link between postmodern culture and postindustrial supply chain
has been brilliantly treated by Victoria Carty (1999).
(3) Postmodern cultural icons
(Woods, Jordan, and stars like Gibson & Hunt) - Whereas we once
worshiped the heroes of production, we now celebrate heroes of consumption.
This is part of the postmodern condition, the marketing of products using
endorsement sports and movie stars.
Over-branding - The over-branding of sports celebrities and
Swooshes onto every conceivable body and life space surface has reached saturation
level. The Swoosh is everywhere.
What Nike wants is power, not the empowerment of women, as
suggested in the recent Paramount film.
Paramount Pictures presents "What Women Want," a film by Nancy Myers, starring
Mel Gibson, Helen Hunt, Marisa Tomei, Lauren Holly, Delta Burke, and Alan
Alda, in
which a Chicago advertising executive gets a whole new outlook on life when a fluke
accident gives him the ability to read women's minds. Stop by a NikeTown in the
cities listed below between now and December 14th, to receive a pair of
complimentary advance screening tickets, while supplies last. You can also enter to
win a "What Women Want" prize pack which includes a "What Women
Want" t-shirt, pair of Nike Air Kukinis and a Nike watch.
Cities: Boston, New York City, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Portland, Seattle (Source
Nike). |
WOMEN'S GROUPS URGE NIKE TO PUT ITS MONEY WHERE ITS MOUTH IS:
LOW WAGES FOR WOMEN WORKERS IN SOUTHEAST ASIAN SWEATSHOPS DEPLORED
October 28, 1997
Washington DC -- The Feminist Majority joined the National Organization for Women and other women's organizations in
deploring Nike's use of overseas sweatshops which exploit women workers, paying them as little as 20 cents per hour or $1.60
a day in Vietnam - hardly enough to eat on, let alone pay rent, clothing, health care and more. Nike women's empowerment ads
aimed at the US market are in sharp contrast to the treatment of women workers in these sweatshops. Eighty to ninety percent
of the workers in these sweatshops of Vietnam, Indonesia, and China are women...
"The message in Nike's women's empowerment ads are strong," said Feminist Majority President, Eleanor
Smeal, "but there's a disconnect between that message and the way Nike pays and treats its workers, especially its women workers.
Sweatshops, which all of us thought were a thing of the past, are back again. And just like the feminists at the turn of the century fought
sweatshops, it's incumbent on us to do the same." (Ann
Kaplan, Feminist Criticism and TV)
Just 10% of Nike's annual $978 million a
year advertising budget would lift Nike's subcontracted workers' wages to a livable
level. |
| "Women want
employment, but employment with dignity." By Lynda Yanz, Maquila Solidarity
Network, July 1999. |
(4) Transgovernment relations
(among 1st & 3rd world governments applying more or less legal codes) -
Will World Governments Regulate Nike's Global Sweatshop Supply Chain?
One of the central issues is what is the role of government in sweatshop monitoring?
For now, governments in the 1st and 3rd World let Nike hire its own monitors.
However with increased numbers of reports of factory abuses, it is likely that
there will be more government intervention into this area. In a proposal to
Nike Corporation, Boje et al (2000) have outlined the risks of escalation of
governments mandating Nike and subcontractor reforms.
|
TABLE ONE: SIX LEVELS OF GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT ON GLOBAL ENTERPRISE
MONITORING
Level 1 - The government takes no formal role in apparel monitoring
forums, legislation or research. Monitoring is left to the voluntary action of
the global enterprise, its subcontractors, labor unions, workers, and
non-governmental organizations.
Level 2 - The government encourages corporations to establish codes
of conduct as it did in the case of the Apparel Partnership following public
outcry over the apparel industry practices in Indonesia in 1991, Kathy Lee and
sweatshops in 1996, and the rise in campus protests over apparel monitoring in
the last five years.
Level 3 - The government facilitates forums and research into the
myriad of codes between such entities as Apparel Partnership, universities,
Fair Labor Association, Workers Rights Consortium, Collegiate Apparel, SA8000,
and other organizations with codes. These codes vary according to corporate or
non-corporate control and the inclusion or exclusion of areas such as living
wage, right of workers to associate, enforcement of local national laws. This
would mean establishing research grants for university research into such
issues as the viability and effectiveness of codes of conduct, what is a
sweatshop, how to measure living wages, and the relationship between the
university and organizations such as Fair Labor Association, Workers Rights
Consortium, and Collegiate Apparel who offer alternative and different
monitoring standards and programs.
Level 4 - The government monitors everything from barbershops,
beauticians, and chiropractors. The government could begin to monitor the
claims and practices of consulting firms and non-governmental organizations
such as Global Alliance, Price Waterhouse Coopers, Fair Labor Association,
Workers Rights Consortium, etc. who either offer apparel factory monitoring or
certify and recommend those who do or procedures for monitoring the apparel
industry. This is done through the establishment of an agency for apparel
monitoring of worker rights and environmental accountability.
Level 5 -The government enacts laws that oversee the certification
and re-certification of monitoring programs to meet minimum standards for
workers rights and environmental accountability.
Level 6 - Transgovernment trade agreements that include ecological,
wage, health and safety standards for global enterprises and subcontract
factories.
|
Public protest around the world, on college campuses, in factories, and in
the streets of various nations has been a main reason that government has
become involved in how global enterprises have begun to behave with more
conscience and ethics. A corporate sense of ethics and social accountability
that is independent of government action has been a second
rationale.
(5) Education (programs to change
student perceptions of Nike) - One of the overlooked authors of management communication discourse are
multinational corporations (MNCs) such as Monsanto, Disney, McDonalds,
Wal-Mart and others whose annual reports, press releases, advertising, and
sponsored research and consultant reports becomes the stuff on which others'
discourses rests. Corporate writing is embedded in a web of media, accounting,
consultant, and ad writing that seeps into academic writing (student,
doctoral, and professorial) that influences how groups, such as unions, state,
women, minorities, and populist movements get characterized.
St John's University
students' first-hand inspections conditions of some subcontract factories (Nike,
2000b). Nike's $750 million dollar advertising budget for writing and the
sponsored apologist writing has spawned reactionary and resistance writing
(Bissell et al, 2000), but that is not what makes its way into the Business
College classroom. Consider what Nike (2000a) posts in its corporate web site:
Knight succeeded of his own accord, of course. But luckily for Lehigh,
some of his seminal business insight for the company that became Nike has
gone into a class that Professor Karen Collins had designed for incoming
freshman in Lehigh's College of Business and Economics at the Bethlehem,
Penn. school.
For the third year, Collins will use Nike as the model for a class of
some 260 freshmen taking her Introduction to Business course. With full
cooperation and support from Nike, students get a firsthand look at how the
global athletic company does business, including marketing, finance and
global responsibility issues. Students then ultimately design business plans
for fictitious companies based on what they learn…
In the first year of her program, Collins used a large American automaker
as the model, but student interest was low. She polled the class about which
company they'd rather learn about, and the nearly unanimous vote was for
Nike. "They buy the product, they know the ads," she says.
"It was a natural fit."…
At the end of the semester, when the business plans are done, an
independent judging group from Anderson Consulting reviews the plans and
selects a winner. Members of the top three teams are each awarded a share of
Nike stock and are honored at a daylong event in New York City. Nike awards
a $2,000 prize for the best plan.
Nike provides course materials, access to Nike executives, and financial
incentives that make student or faculty-critique of Nike at St. John's
problematic. For example, such a course could include examples of how Nike is a
writer of ghettoized race, questionable labor practices (Bissell et. al, 2000),
and gender portrayals (Cole, 1996, 1997; Cole & Hribar, 1995), and for its economic development and
ecology rhetoric (Boje, 1998d, 1998g, 1999b) and global postmodern consumerism culture
(Carty, 1999).
Students of organization as well as journalists, investors, consumers, and
activists read and write about Nike's and critics' writing. But, the writing
opportunities are corporately financed, staged, and otherwise controlled. For
example, Nike (2000b, c, d) sponsored 16 students from St. John's University to
study code of conduct compliance auditing practices of Price Waterhouse Coopers
and visit "some" Nike factories. The reports are posted to Nike's
(2000b) corporate web site along with a transcript of a conference call (Nike,
2000c) and Nike's (e.g. 1998, 2000d) response to issues raised. Critics are
skeptical of Nike-arranged factory tours to only 32 of over 600 locations. The
question is, do off-the-tour factories operate in ways that violate Nike's code
of conduct and are just not being reported in the FLA, Global Alliance, and
Price Waterhouse Coopers studies (Bissell et al, 2000).
(6) Nike is the Leader of a
pack of competitors - Nike and Reebok once traded market shares, but not
anymore. Nike generated about $9 billion in sales in 2000, making it the
market leader. What is interesting about these competitors, is the way the
follow the market leader. Where Nike goes, so do its competitors, even
co-locating in the same factory.
(7) Investors and
consumers (who purchase stocks and products) - Protests at annual
shareholder meetings have become so newsworthy and regular that Nike has moved
its annual meetings away from Beaverton Oregon. Yet, the protests
continue. However, shareholder vote down initiatives voiced by
protesters. And consumers continue to purchase products even when they
are made aware of sweatshop conditions. Yet, the consumer boycott is growing. " What Nike is learning,
presumably, is that a growing percentage of shoppers take account of a company's
conduct and reputation when deciding whether to buy its products. While this is good news for a few
businesses, many others are finding themselves targets for and often embarrassing public
criticism" - Marketing; London; Oct 26, 2000 by Tania Mason, Page: 27).
(8) Workers (in Beaverton, Oregon,
expatriates, and 3rd World mostly young females - Nike has several types
of workers. First, the workers in Beaverton, Oregon who work on a campus like
facility, receive top benefits, and time off for recreation and sports.
Then there are roughly a thousand expatriates who travel the globe to insure
that subcontractors adhere to product quality and labor standards. These
are the Nike employees celebrated in Annual Reports (Landrum, 2000).
But, then there are the 600,000 factory subcontract workers (mostly women
between 16 and 22) who do the cutting, gluing and sewing. What do Nike
factory workers look like?
Source BBC. - Nike & Gap - Cambodia
Vietnam Nike - Dara O'Rourke Photo
Nike Vietnam - Oregonian Photo
Despite the militaristic and subservient photos, there is
worker resistance. There is no
power without resistance , and female (and some male) workers are providing
the resistance to Nike corporate power and subcontractor practices. "The workers
shall live one day as the bourgeois do now - but above them,
distinguished by their freedom from wants, the higher caste: that is
to say poorer and simpler, but in possession of power" (WTP, 764).
Cheap women's labor is
the attractor to the tranational corporate investment that is integral to globalization.
The purpose, in my view, of the Nike storytelling organization is to keep
the supply web as secretive as possible, while parading a few flagship
locations as indicative of all 700 factory locations. There are facts about
subcontractor factory life, that do not make it into the press releases about
Tiger Woods. "According to one of the local papers, there are at least 50,000 fingers cut off in industrial accidents every
year in China" (Source). The storytelling machine has an easier task
since supply chains are already complex and hard to decipher:
For example, if factory A cannot complete an order of 10,000, they might give 4,000 to factory B, where the conditions are worse. We
find that it is very hard to track the locations of the factories because the subcontracting system is so
complicated. That's why we try to press multinational corporations to disclose information about all of their
suppliers.
Out of
the birth of tragic sweatshop conditions of exploitation and terror, is born
the will to resist corporate power by the women tending the cutting, gluing,
and sewing machines. The women of Nike are becoming steeled as a
higher form of being, with a will to achieve their own aristocracy and
empire. Nietzsche, like Marx, say them as the future of great social
movements and revolutions. Including the voice of the workers, while essential, must also be done with great care. In the past there have been workers
who have been fired and otherwise disciplined for participating in studies and media reporting
on Nike factories
For example, Ms. Nguyen Thi
Lap, a worker for the Nike subcontractor, Sam Yang in Cu Chi, HCMC Vietnam started working for
Nike in October 1995. In March 1996, she was promoted to section leader of
Sewing Line No: 15. She
was interviewed by ESPN in February 1998.
Two
months later she was demoted and punished by the company.
After having gone through a series of punishments, she realized that she cannot
take it any more and she eventually quit working for Sam Yang in May 1998. (See
the case of Miss Lap Nguyen). Here are excerpts from the interview:
|
When I became sick, I went to the
clinic. The doctor said that I have fever of
37 degree C.. On the Sunday the 29th while working overtime, I was
working very hard and being sick at the same time, so I got a really bad headache. So I put my hands on my head. The manager then hit me in the arm. After the manager hits me, I could not work so I
went to the nurse to take the rest of day off. I
took another day off the Monday. When I came
back on Tuesday, the personnel manager Tran
said that section leader cannot take sick day, and demoted me to become a sewer. But the plant manager did not let me sew. Some day they made me cut threads, some day they
made me do pressing (?) and continued to move me around from one job to another. |
| So I filed a complaint with the union
and asked the union resolve the conflict. During
the time while waiting for the union’s action, they make me do very menial work. Let me tell you, I was a section leader overseeing
50 workers. Why do they have to punish me
this way? Why don’t they recognize my
past contribution to the company? There were
times they make me mop the floor on the second floor.
Because I was a section leader, I am too ashamed to carry a bucket of water and so
I asked a friend to take the bucket up for me. |
While I was mopping the floor, I was
crying. |
Lap starts to cry. |
Do you think the treatment was related
to the interview (translator note: with ESPN)? |
When the union asked me to do the
interview,… right before I did the interview, the manager told me that since I’m
an employee of this company I should said nice thing about the company, that the company
is currently facing problems. After the
interview, the manager (Bak) called me up and asked me what I told the reporter. I told her that I only talked about wages. She asked me if I told the reporter whether
the company still beats workers. As soon as she questioned me, she asked me to leave. |
After the interview, I was asked to
lead another sewing line in a different plant. But
the people the company staffed the line were not experienced sewers and they were
trainees. I told the manager that without
experienced sewers, it’s going to be hard to get the quota done. The manager told me that it would take time for
people to gain experience. I told the manager
that it would be hard for me to complete my quota with only trainees. The manager assured me that she understood the
situation. |
Do you still wants to work at that
place? Did they force you to quit? |
I just want my job as a sewer. I don’t want them to punish me by making do
menial works, switching me to different jobs. My
hand were getting swollen from repairing the shoes and their punishment. So I asked the union to resolve the problem. |
Lap is crying |
For complete interview, See
the case of Miss Lap Nguyen)/
Nike no longer employs child labor, after the Life Magazine exposé
of children making Nike and Reebok soccer balls (See
Pakistan). Yet, from time to time, Nike subcontractors do employ child
labor. The recurrent use of child labor, while the exception, is a public
relations nightmare for Nike. A recent BBC Panorama exposé report filmed Nike
and GAP child labor in a Cambodian sweatshop (See BBC, Panorama
web site - "Gap and Nike: No Sweat?" October 15, 2000
By Paul Kenyon Full
Text version. Video
Version; BBC Panorama - Global
Exchange Excerpts Another video
transcript excerpts and please see Nike's Response
to the BBC Program).
(9) Postmodern network of
resistors to the leadership of Nike in the global stage of postmodern
capitalism - Knowingly or not, many of us wear garments made in
sweatshops. Nike is resisted by a growing movement
to make consumers aware of sweatshop practices of global corporations such as
GAP, Wal-Mart, Reebok, Adidas, Nike and others. Nike is the lightning rod for
a postmodern network of resistors to its leadership. For example, Nike was a
key protest target in the WTO protest of Seattle last year. And "Nike's sales plummeted after it was singled out as a
sweatshop culprit" (Source http://www.wslc.org/reports/latest.htm
).
Campus Protest - On college campuses Nike and other apparel
manufacturers are attacked regularly in speeches, street theater and
sit-ins reminiscent of the 1970s Vietnam war rallies. Nike's
corporate strategy is to enroll universities in their Fair Labor
Association (FLA), while campus radicals hold non-violent protests until
the administration and faculty vote in the Workers Rights Consortium
(WRC). The race is on and enrollments are in the two associations are
running neck and neck. You probably heard the news story that Phil Knight
canceled his endowment to the University of Oregon.
| "Nike's founder and chairman, Philip H. Knight, said in April that he would give no more money to Oregon,
his alma mater, because it was joining the Worker Rights Consortium, an anti-sweatshop group backed
mainly by students and labor groups. He criticized, among other things, the group's approach to monitoring
apparel factories (The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 5, 2000)."
("Oregon withholds dues to worker-rights group" The Chronicle of Higher Education; Washington; Nov 10, 2000;
Volume: 47 Issue: 11:A40). |
| the USDA has "locked campuses nationwide with protests against sweatshop conditions in the
collegiate apparel industry, occupying buildings on more than a dozen campuses. The protests forced
more than fifty universities and colleges to capitulate to students' demands and join the Worker Rights
Consortium (WRC) |
Workers Rights Consortium (WRC) and James
Keady, a student turned activist, spend their free time promoting a new Nike image,
with young girls spending 12 to 14 hours a day in 100-degree heat, six days a week, on an
Nike assembly line in Asia gluing sports shoes while they breathe toxic toluene fumes and earn
about a dollar a day. And Nike's CEO Phil Knight has been playing Nietzschean
Superman, and as the Chronicle of Higher Education put it "unleashed a full-court press against the Worker Rights Consortium late last month, and
athletics departments across the country may find themselves wilting under the
pressure" (Suggs, 2000). For more on spectacle, see Guy
Debord's work. Beneath the coliseum, the spectacle gladiator sports heroes,
is the dirty "sweat" work of feudalistic capitalism, invisible to
the postmodern spectacle late capitalism.
The irony is that feudalistic
sweatshop factory work so prevalent at the dawn of the industrial revolution
is once again the motor of the postmodern knowledge and service
revolution. The global economy has evolved from production to
consumption capitalism, but feudalistic sweatshops is apparently here to
stay. The kinds of leadership in the Nike supply chain, running from
Beaverton to the subcontractor factories in Asia, to the showrooms of
Footlocker, NikeTown, and the campus apparel store must somehow convince that
savvy postmodern consumer, that the age of feudalistic sweatshops is not
reality. This is no small feat of leadership given the hundreds of web
activists, university intellectuals, and skeptical journalists who find Nike's
claims that sweatshops do not exist hard to swallow.
What follows is an interview with Alice Kwan, a researcher with the Hong Kong Christian Industrial
Committee (HKCIC), where she monitors labor conditions in South China, with a particular focus on the
garment and footwear industries. The Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee has been working for the
rights of workers since 1967.
Kwan: In Nike's Code of Conduct, they say they respect the right to organize. In the past few years,
Nike has told us that they would like to keep their promise and respect the right to organize in China. But
they also say, "It is very sensitive. It is not allowed and we don't want to do anything to violate the law, we
can't do anything. We are sorry." So they wash their hands and shift responsibility to the Chinese
government.
Nike is very clever. We heard that they also told their Taiwanese partner, Yue Yuen, "No matter, help
them to organize." But this is manipulated by the factory management. Mostly, the trade union is
composed of the management only and workers have no say in it.
Besides, all of the unions have to affiliate with the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU).
ACFTU is the only union allowed in China. It is controlled by the Communist Party and the government,
so the workers have no right to independent organizing.
Most of the Nike workers who we have asked whether or not they have a trade union in their factory
don't know. When we ask those that say there is a union what the union does, they say they organize
picnics, karaoke singing contests, a monthly birthday party, but they never try to help solve labor disputes
or stand with the workers.
Source - Chinese rights, U.S. wrongs: Interviews with Wei Jingsheng and Alice Kwan
Multinational Monitor; Washington; May 2000; Anonymous; Volume:
21 Issue: 5 Page: 19-23 |
What happens when activists become the heroes?
"NIKE IS PAYING A STARVATION WAGE IN INDONESIA;" SAYS JIM KEADY. "I KNOW-I
STARVED ON IT." http://WWW.NIKEWAGES.ORG/
| This is what a term paper can do -"Keady's professor suggested that the young jock explore the
connection between moral theology and sports, and Keady settled on the issue of Nike's labor practices.
"I didn't know that this. would lead to any sort of activism," he says.
"I was just looking for a good paper topic."
| Keady learned about Nike's now notorious history of child labor lin 1996,
eight-year-olds were found making Nike soccer balls in Pakistan |
| wretched working conditions (in 1997, overworked Vietnamese women were found to have been
exposed to toxic chemicals at 177 times legal levels) (See 1997 Leak
of Ernst and Young Nike audit Report - Greenhouse). |
| miserable pay (for years, Nike contractors even fought for exemptions from Indonesia's paltry
minimum wages) appalled him. |
| After the term paper, it so happened "St. John's was then negotiating with Nike over a
multimillion dollar sponsorship deal, and for Keady, what had been an intellectual issue suddenly
became all too practical. "As a coach, I would've had to wear the equipment shoes, socks, T-- shirts, sweats, everything."
Keady decided he couldn't " |
| He was given the choice resign or wear the Swoosh. ""I was told f would have to
wear Nike clothes and drop the issue or resign." Keady decided
to go to Indonesia and see if he could live on the Nike wages? |
|
| "His head was throbbing from a headache, and he felt so faint from hunger that the 6-4 former soccer pro was having trouble
"lifting a water bottle to my mouth without it shaking violently." The absurdity of
it is that Keady's sufferings were self imposed: the result of his having volunteered to live for a month on the typical wages-about $1.20 a day-of an Indonesian
factory worker sewing shoes for Nike. " - SOURCE - "Standing up to the swoosh"
- The Village Voice; New York; Oct 10, 2000; Andrew Hsiao; Volume: 45 Issue:
40 Page: 41-43 |
In sum, the Nike supply and distribution network is a
spectacle museum of sports heroes doing celebratory work that shields
consumers and the press from the feudalistic sweatshop world of 700 Korean and
Thai subcontractors, lords and tyrants over some 600,000 Asians (mostly young
women between 16 and 22 years of age).
PART III - ONE POSSIBLE ANSWER
How Might Nike Transform its Supply Chain of
Feudalistic Sweatshops into French Taylorism?
One answer to Nike's moral leadership dilemmas would be
to conduct action research experiments that would convince executives and
factory owners and managers that feudalistic sweatshop practices are less profitable
and less efficient than more modern and even postmodern ones. 45 academic
scholars have organized into four study groups and made a proposal to put the
question of sweatshops versus modern factory methods to an empirical test (Boje
et al, 2000).
The purpose of the action research is to develop interdisciplinary work and dialogue
that will address a set of action research questions that is of growing concern to
academics, the general public, and the Nike Corporation. Basic research while
important is not sufficient. Specifically we propose to work with a
sample of factories (the size and location will be determined with Nike and
stakeholder input). The result we anticipate is to be able to contrast
different forms of pay-systems and work design and working conditions. The
implementation will be according to action research methods. That is, an effort
that involves workers, managers, and other stakeholders, including the study
groups we list below in the design of the experiments we are proposing. We propose to embark upon action research
initiative that brings various stakeholders (researchers, workers, corporate
executives, managers, subcontractor mangers, governmental and non-governmental
organizations) together to implement change. There has been a good deal of
consulting (i.e. Global Alliance, Fair Labor Association, and Price Waterhouse
Coopers) and non-governmental organization (NGO) report and media writing, but
limited academic empirical study (See Appendix B). The issue is to rethink labor
and environmental monitoring practices, within a larger context that compels a
reframing of the institutions and ethics of development and globalization. Our
purpose can be summarized to promote dialogue that leads to basic, applied,
participatory, as well as action research efforts that lead to change. We have
four research subgroups organized as follows
1. How has Nike enacted its espoused Code of Conduct over time? This study
group will focus on monitoring studies by PWC, FLA, and Global Alliance, as well
as studies that support and question their methods and findings.
| MIT professor, Dara O'Rourke, said in a report to be issued today that inspectors from
the firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, had a pro- management bias, did not uncover the use
of carcinogenic chemicals and failed to recognize that some employees were forced to
work 80-hour weeks (Greenhouse,
NY Times, September 28, 2000). |
| To download entire Dara O'Rourke report using ADOBE see http://web.mit.edu/dorourke/www/PDF/pwc.pdf |
| "Based on recent visits to Asia, companies such as Reebok, Nike, Liz Claiborne, and Mattel
have finally begun enforcing their codes... Widespread gains in the workplace are unlikely until workers can organize unions, or a system emerges to
punish violators of international codes. Even under the programs set up by Nike and Mattel, they are free
to sell their goods in the U.S. if it turns out they were made under abusive conditions. But their
experiments do suggest that not every factory has to be a sweatshop to make the
global economy work" (A World of Sweatshops Business Week; New York; November 6, 2000; Aaron Bernstein, with Michael Shari in Jakarta, and
Elisabeth Malkin in Guatemala City;
Edition: Industrial/technology edition Issue: 3706,Page:
84-86). |
2. Does Nike pay a living wage? This study group will sample subcontract
factory workers, review factory payroll records, and collect data that will
measure and validate various living wage formula. In addition we are proposing
action research experiments that would implement and test various wage-payment
schemes in a sample of factories across nations.
|
WSJ says "multinationals such as Nike will tell you the living wage is unworkable"
(WSJ October 6, 2000, A22). |
|
See Cruel Treatment Working for Nike in Indonesia
Urban Community Mission Survey Report, December 1999 Source: Press For Change |
|
Nike which pays 58 cents per day to its laborers in Indonesia
(The Ecologist; Nov 2000; Volume: 30 Issue: 8,
Page: 12). |
|
Ballinger, Jeff 16 September, 2000 Nike:
American dream on RI sweat from Jakarta news.
|
|
The Olympic Living
Wage Project - The Olympic Living Wage Project, sponsored by Press for
Change, and done in collaboration with the Nicaraguan Solidarity Committee,
NikeWatch, and Call to Action
USA, is an international human rights project focusing on the lives of
sweatshop workers in Nike’s Indonesian shoe factories. The Project
sets out what it takes to live on Indonesian wages at a Nike factory See
http://www.nikewages.org/addressing.html
|
3. Does Nike subcontract with "sweatshops"? What are the reassurances that
Nike and other U.S. companies such as GAP, Toys `R' Us, Wal-Mart, and Payless
can give to American consumers that their goods aren't produced under sweatshop
conditions? nike says a "sweatshop" can not be defined. Yet, “The name, sweatshop, goes back to the late
1800s, and refers to the technique of "sweating" as much
profit as possible out of each worker. Once a thriving tradition at the
turn of the century, sweatshops saw their numbers dwindle in the face of
relentless encroachment by labor organization and social legislation. By
the post-war years they were pushed to the brink of extinction. But with
the new arrangements made possible by the global economy -- highly
mobile transnational capital, computer-coordinated production schedules,
and free trade policies” (Sweat
Gear web site). Apparel manufacture too often equates
to sweatshop work that is based on modes of production and piece-wages that
appears feudal in contrast to the kinds of factories that are recently attaining
ISO9000, ISO14000, and SA8000 certification. This study group will
look at definitions of sweatshops and measure said variables in a sample of
subcontract factories. In addition, they will propose and conduct action
research experiments that test what we described in our review as forms of
French Taylorism. This way a sample of existing subcontract firms can be
compared with the experimental options.
Nike claims "cultural relativism," - China and other developing countries
are at a stage the U.S. was at 100 years ago and therefore, Nike is not to
blame.
LINKS ON THIS ISSUE:
|
There is a September, 2000 critique of the Global Alliance methodology
and findings available http://www.cleanclothes.org/companies/nike00-09-15.htm
The new study was conducted by Junya Yimprasert of the Thai Labour Campaign
and looks into
the situation at Luen Thai and w GA fails to report is how workplace conditions have been defined. For the purposes of the Global Alliance
study, "workplace conditions" does not include several major topics of concern to
Thai garment and footwear workers, such as issues relating to wages, hours of work, freedom of
association and collective bargaining. Though Nike describes the Global Alliance as
part of Nike's overall monitoring program this initiative is clearly not investigating
issues of basic workers rights." According to the main report at http://www.cleanclothes.org/companies/nike00-09-15-1.htm
"In the Global Alliance study selected workers were asked to answer multiple choice
questions. In this way, their priorities were suggested for them."
Finally, after interviewing Luen Thai workers, the Thai Labour Campaign found that "...they felt that the
questionnaires were guiding them and tried to encourage them to conduct activities at
the community level. The workers questioned why they, the workers, have to do
community development while their working conditions were not improved."
Please consult the report for additional issues related to methodology.
|
|
There is a new survey of wages in Indonesia conducted between
10 September and 18 October 1999. The Urban
Community Mission in Jakarta worked with Workers to survey 3,500 workers
from 11 different Nike contract factories. The survey results allege that
sweatshop and abusive management practices are widespread Review the
survey in preparation for your response. (Press
here for survey results).
|
| Sweatshops exist in the U.S. too - A "Garment Enforcement Report" (AprilJune 1999) from the
U.S. Labor Department reported that 205 sweatshop investigations resulted in the discovery of 109
violations." The Department of Labor estimates that there are over 700
sweatshops in the U.S. |
| "Free-market advocates correctly point out that low wages are appropriate to untrained, unskilled workers and that many of the sweatshop conditions are no more
than what naturally occur in the lowest-paid strata of employment"
(Sweatshops: Look for the INS label Ideas on Liberty; Irvington-on-Hudson; Jul 2000; Wendy
McElroy; Volume: 50 Issue: 7 Page: 29-32) |
| Others look at the appropriateness of child labor. "Nike spokesman Todd
McKean says in BBC
interview, "unfortunately we've found on occasion in
different places isolated instances (of child labor) which I would say this is
isolated." |
| "We know of no case where a nation developed a modern manufacturing sector without first going
through a `sweatshop' phase," according to David L. Lindauer in Nichols, Martha, "Third World Families at Work: Child Labor or Child Care?" Harvard Business Review,
January-February, 1993, p. 1223. |
| "If child labor is a necessary evil of industrialization, then a nation should be judged
on how quickly it passes through this phase." The political economy of child labor and its impacts on international business
Business Economics; Washington; Jul 2000; S L Bachman; Volume:
35 Issue: 3 Page: 30-41. |
4. What is the relationship between Fair Labor Association (FLA) and Workers
Rights Consortium (WRC)? The schools have made agreements, over the past two years or so, with either the White House-backed
Fair Labor Association (FLA) or the student-backed
Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), the two organizations
competing for anti-sweatshop commitments from colleges and universities. This study group will focus on the monitoring efforts
of FLA and WRC by sampling colleges and universities with and without FLA and/or
WRC agreements.
| The USAS student movement comes of age
- The Nation; New York; Oct 16, 2000; Liza Featherstone; Volume: 271
Issue: 11, Page: 23-26. |
| Roberts, Dexter & Bernstein, Aaron
"A Life of Fines and
beatings," Business Week, October
2, 2000 pp. 123-128 article that looks at a 3-month Business Week
investigation of the auditing practices of PWC for Wal-Mart (Kathie Lee Gifford handbags), Timberland, New Balance, and Nike. The implication is that
"auditing systems can miss serious problems -- and that
self-policing allows companies to avoid painful public relations about
them." And therefore a study of self-monitoring, PWC, FLA and other
monitoring systems is needed. "While no company
suggests that its auditing systems are perfect, most say they catch
major abuses and either force suppliers to fix them or yank
production." (Summary
of the Business Week Article). This is a Dickensian tale. Wal-Mart Director of Corporate Compliance Denise Fenton says its auditors,
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PWC) and Cal Safety Compliance Corp., had inspected Chun Si five times in 1999 and found that the factory didn't
pay the legal overtime rate and had required excessive work hours.
The Business Week study found PWC audits missed most of the more serious abuses:
| Chun Si management confiscated all ID papers of its workers, an illegal
practice that left a worker a "virtual captive" of the factory. | |
