Guilty by association Colorado University's dilemma?:

Nike contract loaded with apparel, questions

By Adam Thompson

Tuesday, June 26, 2001 - BOULDER - At a campus as politicized as the University of Colorado's, questions about the financial pros and cons of a deal with Nike are impossible to separate from the adjoining moral questions.

Does the Big 12 Conference school have as great a responsibility to the worker in Asia who helps make the shoes as it does to the CU athlete who wears them? Does a university's support of factories that produce its licensed gear in some of the world's most impoverished countries help poor people to better lives or exploit them to help a business run smoothly? And how can an administrator or student protester know what's taking place in those subcontracted factories when they are an ocean away?
In the mind of Jeffrey Ballinger, a protester who has dogged Nike for more than a decade, the answer to the biggest question is simple.

Asked whether CU is culpable in the exploitation of workers, Ballinger, director of the Massachusetts-based Press for Change, replied: "I think they've failed that basic test of morality."

Ballinger lived in Indonesia from 1988-92, and has returned almost every year since. He points to a February report by Global Alliance, an organization Nike and Gap helped found, which details cases of sexual abuse and harassment, other forms of verbal and physical abuse, forced overtime, poor health care and even two deaths caused by the denial of sick leave or medical attention at nine Nike factories in Indonesia. Ballinger asserted that the only reason similar reports from Vietnam and Thailand were rosier is because less attention has been focused on them from outside critics.

Nike director of global issues management Vada Manager responded to Ballinger, by now a regular foe of his company, by saying: "The thing we often say at Indonesia is he's very quick to point out things he thinks we're not doing right, but is incomplete in things we're doing well. ... We won't go to a country if we don't believe it's a country we can hold to certain standards."

'Very disturbing data' Manager allowed that the findings in Indonesia contained "some very disturbing data." Nike has released a 42-page report detailing proposed remedies to the problems found in the report.
Often undereducated workers who, according to the report, sometimes don't even know the difference between pregnancy and ulcers could not appear more different than college coaches with six-figure salaries. But both receive money from the same source. The criticism of Nike and its partner universities is common, though CU track coach Mark Wetmore calls the arguments he has heard "unfair."

"I went to a track meet in Eugene (Ore.) a few years ago, and the entry gates were swamped with protesters with signs," Wetmore said. "Protesters were wearing Land's End, Patagonia, Tommy Hilfiger. There aren't many apparel and shoemakers in the world that don't take advantage of Third World labor costs. >From what I've been able to learn, Nike does more to improve working conditions and even living conditions of Third World employees.

"They're certainly not Mother Teresa, but people who single them out are wearing apparel and shoes made in sweatshops. The whole industry should be held accountable, but ("Doonesbury" satirist) Garry Trudeau has chosen to focus on Nike, while his cartoons are printed on destroyed rain forest."
Though Ballinger has seen first-hand how the Indonesian factories operate, the average American student protester has not. Not all of those who have inspected the overseas manufacturers have returned with entirely negative reviews.

CU regent Peter Steinhauer has made repeated trips to Vietnam, and visited a Nike factory. He applauds Nike for its support of Friendship Bridge, a nongovernmental organization based in Evergreen that has sponsored his trips and aims to bring medical supplies and aid to Vietnam. He has seen health clinics established by Nike in its factories that tend to rheumatic heart disease, provide prenatal care and treat those stricken with parasites.

"They've done a lot of good," Steinhauer said. "I know they catch a lot of static from people here, but the working conditions from what I saw, and I've been there a lot ... were a heck of a lot better than in most places by a long shot. Not even close."

CU athletic director Dick Tharp contends Nike has been up front about its policies in foreign plants and calls this "an issue that may be subject to more rhetoric than fact."

"If you do business at a bank," Tharp said, "should it be your responsibility to know every client that bank deals with and the business of every client that bank deals with?"

Ballinger disagreed, saying Nike has not been forthcoming about all its problems. He concedes Nike has addressed some issues, such as an aimed reduction of petroleum-based adhesives that are more dangerous to factory workers than those with a water base.

"If you say you're going to stop poisoning workers, I'm not going to say it's a bad thing," said Ballinger, who added that the company may discuss some wrongdoing in its factories, but makes little or no mention of workers who were fired for their attempts to unionize.

Faculty skeptical
CU's athletic department is dependent upon the money and equipment Nike sends as part of their agreement. Many faculty members on campus offer an openly skeptical view of that relationship.
Last spring, CU's faculty assembly presented chancellor Richard Bynny with suggestions on the standards the school should hold to its business partners. Last May, Bynny released the school's licensing policy, which listed minimum standards in such areas as wages and benefits, overtime, child labor, health and freedom of association that often did not go as far as the measures suggested by the professors.
Ira Chernus, a religious studies professor and chair of the Student Affairs Committee of the Boulder Faculty Assembly, was asked if he is happy with the final policy.

He replied in an e-mail, "No. I think it allows the university to continuing profit from sweatshop labor. I and many of my faculty colleagues find that morally objectionable. I also object to the process by which the policy was determined. ... The chancellor appointed a committee to study the issue and propose a new policy. The committee did that. But the chancellor watered down the recommendations so much that the final policy will surely do little, if anything, to alleviate the sweatshop conditions."

Bynny's spokesperson, Bobbi Barrow, responded in an e-mail, "Dr. Chernus is a highly respected member of our faculty and a fervent spokesman for this cause, and, like all members of the university community, has the right to his opinions. However, I can assure you the campus is committed to ensuring that our licensees comply with the policy, and that we believe our efforts will be beneficial."
Other schools have taken more confrontational stances with the companies that produce their apparel. Iowa recently canceled 176 licenses for companies that would not disclose the location of their factories or sign a university code of conduct that tackles many of the same issues debated at CU.
Nike, along with Russell Athletics and four other companies, expressed reservations about that code and could have lost its license, too. One of the other five did after failing to respond to a follow-up letter from Iowa. In the end, the remaining five were allowed some leeway on issues such as ground rules for independent inspections of Third World factories. Still, they must sign Iowa's code in a matter of days or face losing the school's business.

Despite changes in the policy of Nike and others, the debate continues. Ballinger grants that wages have risen in Indonesia, but adds: "I happen to think we could have raised wages 500 percent and Indonesia still would be a very good deal (for Nike)."

According to the Global Alliance report, 96.2 percent of the nearly 54,000 Indonesian workers reported their monthly salaries to be at or above the regional monthly minimum wage of 286,000 rupiahs, or $32.90 (in September 2000 dollars).
And in the middle sit CU's decision-makers, Tharp and Bynny, who could not have helped but notice when Nike president Phil Knight threatened to pull a $30 million donation to Oregon, his alma mater, when that university joined the Workers Rights Consortium. That group assesses Third World factories and counts 80 member colleges, including Iowa, Notre Dame and Syracuse, though none in the Big 12 or Mountain West conferences.

Oregon reversed field and Knight decided not to withhold the money after all. The WRC has been more critical of Nike's plants than another watchdog group, the Fair Labor Association, of which Nike and CU are members.

"I think it's a difficult position for an administrator to answer those sorts of questions, when they're doing business with a company but they're not the CEO of that company," CU women's basketball coach Ceal Barry said. "I wouldn't want to be in their shoes."

Coaches try to balance issues

The coaches have heard those minimum wage numbers, and they are not entirely unsympathetic. But with the pressures they face, it's not easy for them to give the situation the same attention as they are demanded to give to personal best times, rebound totals, rushing averages and winning percentages.
"The ones that complain about Asian markets and labor don't totally understand the situation college athletic programs are in and the difficulties they have," CU football coach Gary Barnett said. "At the same time, I'm sure athletes and athletic departments don't fully understand the other side of it. I know that for a fact, that neither one of us really knows.

"I have to operate in this world, and I have a full understanding of what we need and what has to happen in this world, so my opinion gets formed based on the world that I'm in."