Modern World History Name:
Mr. Branick Date:
Behind the Swoosh
In this lesson, we will be examining NIKE as an example of a Multi-National Corporation and good and the bad sides of globalization. I will be playing the role of Athletic Director and you will be playing the role of my advisors. The question we want to answer is “Is it moral for us to be sponsored by Nike or not?” As my advisors you will first be put into committees to debate both sides to the argument. After the committee debates, we will have an all class debate and make a decision on if we should make a deal with Nike or not.
Phase I: Committee Debates
Each student will be given a packet of information on NIKE. Working in pairs, you will be assigned the position of either being FOR NIKE or AGAINST NIKE. Your job is to use the documents to craft the best argument possible. After your arguments are created, you will face off with another pair of students and have a committee debate.
Rules:
1. Practice active listening 2. Challenge ideas, not people
3. Try your best to understand the other position
4. Share the floor; each person in a pair MUST have an opportunity to speak
5. Do your best at your role, even if it is not what you believe. You can state what you really think in the last step.
Preparation:
1. Mark your assigned position
a. YES: We should work out a deal with NIKE. b. NO: We should not work out a deal with NIKE.
2. Read through each document, searching for support for your side’s argument. Record relevant sources below (or on another sheet of paper.
1. Summarize your arguments for your position using the supporting documents you found.
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STOP---2. Position Presentation: Present your position to the opposing group members. Record their arguments here.
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http://www.dogeatdogfilms.com/mikenike.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COPTIZ_Sg2E
http://www.statista.com/statistics/241692/nikes-sales-by-region-since-2007/ http://www.nikeresponsibility.com/report/content/chapter/labor/evergreen http://manufacturingmap.nikeinc.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCtjY8DDaNg
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-nike-solved-its-sweatshop-problem-2013-5 http://www.geographypods.com/nike-debate.html
DOCUMENT A- FACTS REGARDING NIKE & SWEATSHOPS
FACT #1. Nike violates local minimum wage laws, pays subsistence wages and illegally forces massive overtime:
Vietnam: People are illegally forced to work 65 hrs/wk, for 15hr, or 20hr while 3 simple meals would cost $2.10.
Vietnam: Nike publicly denies violating the legal minimum wage of $45/month, but their own secret studies prove otherwise, as do pay stubs. Nike’s Dartmouth study naively trusts factory managers instead of examining pay stubs.
China: People are illegally forced to pay their first month’s salary as a "deposit", which they lose if they leave within a year .
Haiti: People are paid 30/hr, not enough to educate children or eat , but Nike is moving to China where pay is even less.
FAQ #1. Why do people keep taking the jobs?
Nearly 75% of Indonesia Nike workers quit per year, having been deceived about the boot-camp conditions, violations of minimum-wage and overtime laws, higher costs of living near the factories, etc. Wars (e.g., Vietnam), dictatorships (e.g., Indonesia), and coerced foreign corporate land-grabs (across the Third World) make some destitute enough to prostitute their children, become literal slaves, and endure sweatshops.
FACT #2. Nike subjects workers (90% young women and girls) to criminally dangerous, brutal sweatshops:
Vietnam/China: Chemicals causing liver, kidney and brain damage are at 177 times the legal limit, and 77% of workers suffer respiratory problems. Most exposed workers are given neither protective gear nor the truth. Indonesia/Vietnam: people commonly faint from exhaustion, heat, fumes, and poor nutrition, some die w/o medical attention after collapsing on the job, a typical 20-hr./day factory with 6000 workers has only one doctor, for 2 hrs./day, and people are fired immediately if they take sick leave.
Indonesia: 56 women are forced to run in the hot sun for wearing "non-regulation shoes", until 12 are
hospitalized. Nike-paid Andrew Young dreamily reasons "That’s the way they do things there; you run around to get your motor started".
Vietnam: 15 women are beat on head and neck (with a Nike shoe) by a supervisor, for "poor sewing." 2 are hospitalized. 970 workers go on strike in protest. Nike CEO Philip Knight lies to shareholders that only 1 worker was hit, on the arm.
Vietnam: After newspaper descriptions of violent sexual molestation, Nike CEO Knight lies to shareholders that the supervisor was trying to wake up the women and "perhaps touched a part that he should not have". Nike allows him to flee prosecution.
FAQ #2. Do other shoe companies act the same way?
The clothing industry as a whole does mistreat its workers, nearly worldwide. All this dirty laundry needs a public airing, but we must start somewhere, and at UM that means Nike. Some Nike factories also produce shoes for rival companies, under similar conditions, but Asian factories wholly devoted to other companies (even Reebok) have much better pay and working conditions. Nike can afford good practices w/o higher prices.
FACT #3. Nike supports military dictatorships that crush labor unions and worker protest:
Indonesia: In April of 1997, 10,000 of the 13,000 workers at a Nike factory strike demanding that the factory owners not cheat them out of a paltry 20 cent per day raise in the minimum wage.
Indonesia: a worker is locked in a factory room for a week under military interrogation about labor organizing. Indonesia: A new Manpower Bill prohibits independent unions and strikes on public areas while allowing ejection from company areas, and requires advance submission of names of strike leaders to a military dictator who has murdered millions of civilians.
Indonesia: 30% of Nike’s total business costs goes to payoffs for Indonesian generals, government officials, and cronies.
1996 Nobel Peace Prize winner José Ramos-Horta: "Nike should be treated as enemies, in the same manner we view armies and governments that perpetrate human rights violations. What is the difference between the behavior of Nike in Indonesia and elsewhere, and the Japanese imperial army during WWII?"
FAQ #3. Do Nike jobs raise living standards in the long run?
Foreign investment sometimes does this, but only when coupled with support for labor organizing and
DOCUMENT C: Excerpt from nikeresponsibility.com Wages
We have undertaken research and continue our engagement with stakeholders including non-governmental organizations, academics and factories – to better understand the impact of wages on overall quality of life for workers and our role in wages.
While we neither own contract factories nor employ their workers, we can influence their business practices – including wages – through our own sourcing and assessment processes.
Wages are complex, affected by a market economy of global supply and demand, including trade and social stability. But complex issues sometimes call for complex responses. We continue to take positive steps and we recognize there’s more to be done.
Over the past 10 years, wages paid to workers in factories contracted by Nike have been increasing at a rate higher than inflation of the country of factory operation. These changes mostly align to growth in minimum-wage standards, changes in pay structures and increased demand for labor. And as a component of our total cost of finished footwear goods in China, Vietnam and Indonesia, the proportion for wages has increased.
We are also working with other brands and on multi-stakeholder initiatives to improve the industry as a whole and we are innovating our own supply chain in a number of ways related to wages and other issues important to factory workers.
One such area is with the Fair Labor Association, to develop a new “fair wage” standard that identified 12 dimensions to fair wages. (More information is available online at www.fairlabor.org). The dimensions span areas covering systems, comparability (e.g. to other industries, to inflation, to minimum standards, to cost of living), overtime, tying wages to skills, protecting the factory’s financial health and communication. The FLA sets out the dimensions and provides a gradual way of addressing each one, some based on information not readily available. We have begun addressing these dimensions through our Code and work with factories but other areas will take considerably more time and study.
As a leader in our industry, in FY11 we incorporated updates into our Code of Conduct and Code Leadership Standards to tackle some of the more pervasive wage problems, such as full funding and payment of statutory severance by factories and confirming that overtime is consensual and paid at a premium rate of at least 125%.
These changes are backed by updated Code Leadership Standards on factory closures and retrenchment (downsizing), which provide full detail of our expectations regarding pay, benefits and factory responsibilities. The Standards call for detailed actions in the case of factory closure or retrenchment in addition to what is required by country law or collective bargaining agreement, and factory management is encouraged to work directly or in coordination with governmental, nongovernmental or other third parties.
In addition, we have begun to define the actions we expect for contract factories to make progress toward better wage systems – that is, wages that meet the FLA definition of “fair wage.” Examples of these actions include: consistent payment of wages and benefits; standardized pay systems, policies and procedures; communication and dialogue around wages, training and development; monitoring and remediation; and wage self-assessments. The systems call for methods to track legally required minimum wages as well as different levels of worker education, skill, training and experience; monitoring against inflation and consumer prices; and equal-pay policies.
We are addressing wages on several fronts. We know that standards are important: they communicate intent, they
reinforce our position, they serve to heighten attention at factories for management and workers, and they form a rigorous and necessary baseline for performance. But standards themselves do not drive change; they set only a minimum bar that can help to identify and remove the worst performers.
with nongovernmental organizations, academics, factories and other businesses to find out how this can work and are committed to sharing the results to drive broader industry change. - See more at:
http://www.nikeresponsibility.com/report/content/chapter/labor/evergreen#sthash.U9NoKSqk.dpuf DOCUMENT D: Excerpt from nikeresponsibility.com
Contract Factory Performance
For years, we have been sourcing from factories that seek to meet our minimum standards for good labor performance. In FY11, we converted our contract factory evaluation and scoring system from a letter-based system to a new medal-based one in line with our Sourcing & Manufacturing Sustainability Index (SMSI). At the end of FY11, 49% of contract factories scored bronze on the SMSI. By the end of FY13, 68% had reached that score.
Our transition to the SMSI is part of a strategic shift away from a compliance-based “auditing and checking” relationship with our contract manufacturers and toward cooperation around lean manufacturing as a means to achieve greater efficiency, built on a stable, agile, engaged and motivated workforce. Because an engaged workforce is an empowered workforce. We’re spending more time with, and have processes in place to direct more business to high-performing factories (i.e., bronze or better). At the same time, we are requiring lower-performing factories to pay for their own audits and to remediate any issues found. Factories that fail to achieve bronze level performance within a defined timeframe are reviewed by senior leadership and are assessed
Document E: Nike accused of tolerating sweatshops
New report says workers still on low wages despite pledge, reports Burhan Wazir Burhan Wazir
The Observer, Saturday 19 May 2001 19.29 EDT
Nike employees continue to face poverty, harassment, dismissal and violent
intimidation despite its pledge three years ago to improve conditions for the
500,000-strong global workforce.
A new report, Still Waiting For Nike To Do It, published by the San Francisco-based
Global Exchange, says Nike workers still toil for excessive hours in high-pressure work
environments while not earning enough to meet the basic needs of their children.
The report's findings will further embarrass a company already discredited by
consumer groups for exploitation of labour.
In 1996 Nike was severely embarrassed when a US magazine featured a photograph
of a young Pakistani boy sewing together a Nike football. The following year it was
revealed that workers in one of its contracted factories in Vietnam were being exposed
to toxic fumes at up to 177 times the Vietnamese legal limit.
Still Waiting For Nike To Do It follows up the various promises made three years ago
by Phil Knight, the company's chairman, to overhaul appalling conditions faced by the
Nike workforce.
Standing before the American National Press Club in Washington DC, Knight told
journalists and trade union activists that he personally would ensure an improvement in
conditions at Nike factories around the world. He promised six main improvements:
• All Nike shoe factories would meet US air quality standards.
• Nike would include non-governmental organisations in factory monitoring, and the
company would make inspection results public.
• Nike would expand its worker education programme, with free secondary-school
equivalent courses.
• A loan programme would be expanded to benefit 4,000 families in Vietnam,
Indonesia, Pakistan and Thailand.
• Research on responsible business practices would be funded at four universities.
The Global Exchange report concludes, however, that the projects Knight announced
have been of 'little benefit to Nike workers' or 'have helped only a tiny minority, or else
have no relevance to Nike factories at all'. And while the report's authors find that 'the
education programme has ex-panded, wages paid in Nike factories are so low that the
great majority of workers cannot afford to give up overtime income in order to take one
of the courses'.
'During the last three years, Nike has continued to treat the sweatshop issue as a
public relations inconvenience rather than as a serious human rights matter,' said Leila
Salazar, corporate accountability director for Global Exchange.
The study also indicates that in many Nike factories the employees are still being
coerced into working up to 70 hours per week and are being humiliated in front of other
workers or threatened with dismissal if they refuse to do the extra work.
Knight last week discounted the report and said Nike had done more than any similar
company to make sure that its workers were treated fairly.
'I think we've made significant strides, and I'm proud of what the company has done
over the last three years,' he said. 'It may take a while longer, but I do think that it will
be understood that Nike is a good citizen in all the countries that it operates in.'
Anti-Nike chants and boycotts of stores have become the backbone of the movement
against the company, which employs 500,000 people in 55 countries. The negative
publicity - at odds with the company's sleek designs and 'Just Do It' slogan - has seen
the sales of its trainers plummet.
While its $9 billion turnover in 2000 was an increase of 2.5 per cent on the year before,
sales of Nike products fell by nearly 8 per cent in 1999. And as rival shoemaker
Reebok has seen its share price rise from $8 to $30 in the past year, Nike's stock has
fallen by 15 per cent.
In February, Nike issued a report confessing the company's role in facilitating worker
exploitation. It uncovered the exchange of sexual favours for jobs at factories in
Jason Mark, of Global Exchange, said: 'The key to solving many of Nike's problems
would be to pay a living wage that allowed workers to save money, raise a family and
move up to their society's middle class. Nike says they can't find a formula because it's
different for every country. It's an assumption that's convenient for them, because it
allows them to pay lower wages.'
Document F: Two Cheers for Sweatshops
By Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn Published: September 24, 2000
It was breakfast time, and the food stand in the village in northeastern Thailand was crowded…One of the half-dozen men and women sitting on a bench eating breakfast was a bare-chested laborer in his late 30's named Mongkol Latlakorn. It was a hot, lazy day, and so we started chatting idly about the food and, eventually, our families. Mongkol mentioned that his daughter, Darin, was 15, and his voice softened as he spoke of her. She was beautiful and smart, and her father's hopes rested on her.
''Is she in school?'' we asked.
''Oh, no,'' Mongkol said, his eyes sparkling with amusement. ''She's working in a factory in Bangkok. She's making clothing for export to America.'' He explained that she was paid $2 a day for a nine-hour shift, six days a week.
''It's dangerous work,'' Mongkol added. ''Twice the needles went right through her hands. But the managers bandaged up her hands, and both times she got better again and went back to work.''
''How terrible,'' we murmured sympathetically.
Mongkol looked up, puzzled. ''It's good pay,'' he said. ''I hope she can keep that job. There's all this talk about factories closing now, and she said there are rumors that her factory might close. I hope that doesn't happen. I don't know what she would do then.''
He was not, of course, indifferent to his daughter's suffering; he simply had a different perspective from ours -- not only when it came to food but also when it came to what constituted desirable work.
Nothing captures the difference in mind-set between East and West more than attitudes toward sweatshops. Nike and other American companies have been hammered in the Western press over the last decade for producing shoes, toys and other products in grim little factories with dismal conditions. Protests against sweatshops and the dark forces of globalization that they seem to represent have become common at meetings of the World Bank and the World Trade Organization and, this month, at a World Economic Forum in
Fourteen years ago, we moved to Asia and began reporting there. Like most Westerners, we arrived in the region outraged at sweatshops. In time, though, we came to accept the view supported by most Asians: that the campaign against sweatshops risks harming the very people it is intended to help. For beneath their grime, sweatshops are a clear sign of the industrial revolution that is beginning to reshape Asia.
This is not to praise sweatshops. Some managers are brutal in the way they house workers in firetraps, expose children to dangerous chemicals, deny bathroom breaks, demand sexual favors, force people to work double shifts or dismiss anyone who tries to organize a union. Agitation for improved safety conditions can be helpful, just as it was in 19th-century Europe. But Asian workers would be aghast at the idea of American consumers boycotting certain toys or clothing in protest. The simplest way to help the poorest Asians would be to buy more from sweatshops, not less.
On our first extended trip to China, in 1987, we chatted with several women as their fingers flew over their work and asked about their hours.
''I start at about 6:30, after breakfast, and go until about 7 p.m.,'' explained one shy teenage girl. ''We break for lunch, and I take half an hour off then.''
''You do this six days a week?'' ''Oh, no. Every day.''
''Seven days a week?''
''Yes.'' She laughed at our surprise. ''But then I take a week or two off at Chinese New Year to go back to my village.''
The others we talked to all seemed to regard it as a plus that the factory allowed them to work long hours. Indeed, some had sought out this factory precisely because it offered them the chance to earn more. ''It's actually pretty annoying how hard they want to work,'' said the factory manager, a Hong Kong man. ''It means we have to worry about security and have a supervisor around almost constantly.''
It sounded pretty dreadful, and it was. We and other journalists wrote about the problems of child labor and oppressive conditions in both China and South Korea. But, looking back, our worries were excessive. Those sweatshops tended to generate the wealth to solve the problems they created. If Americans had reacted to the horror stories in the 1980's by curbing imports of those sweatshop products, then neither southern China nor South Korea would have registered as much progress as they have today.
The truth is, those grim factories in Dongguan and the rest of southern China contributed to a remarkable explosion of wealth. In the years since our first conversations there, we've returned many times to Dongguan and the surrounding towns and seen the transformation. Wages have risen from about $50 a month to $250 a month or more today. Factory conditions have improved as businesses have scrambled to attract and keep the best laborers. A private housing market has emerged, and video arcades and computer schools have opened to cater to workers with rising incomes. A hint of a middle class has appeared -- as has China's closest thing to a Western-style independent newspaper, Southern Weekend.
Partly because of these tens of thousands of sweatshops, China's economy has become one of the hottest in the world…When Britain launched the Industrial Revolution in the late 18th century, it took 58 years for per capita output to double. In China, per capita output has been doubling every 10 years.
…For all the misery they can engender, sweatshops at least offer a precarious escape from the poverty that is the developing world's greatest problem. Over the past 50 years, countries like India resisted foreign
…Sweatshop monitors do have a useful role. They can compel factories to improve safety. They can also call attention to the impact of sweatshops on the environment. The greatest downside of industrialization is not exploitation of workers but toxic air and water. In Asia each year, three million people die from the effects of pollution. The factories springing up throughout the region are far more likely to kill people through the chemicals they expel than through terrible working conditions.
By focusing on these issues, by working closely with organizations and news media in foreign countries, sweatshops can be improved. But refusing to buy sweatshop products risks making Americans feel good while harming those we are trying to help. As a Chinese proverb goes, ''First comes the bitterness, then there is sweetness and wealth and honor for 10,000 years.''
DOC G- Conversation between film maker and activist Michael Moore and NIKE CEO Phil Knight regarding building a factory in America & raising age requirements in factories over seas.
Michael Moore: When I left you the two things I asked for, two very simple things I asked for is that you build a factory in Flint and provide some jobs for the people there, the people that you said would not want to make shoes. And the second thing was to raise the minimum age. That I said that the watchdog groups said there are 12 year olds who work in your factories and you said, 'no, they're 14,' and you said, 'well, I've never really thought about that issue.' Have you thought about it?
Phil Knight: I have thought about it.
Michael Moore: And what do you want to do about it?
Phil Knight: I think that it's ...I think it's, I don't wanna say stupid, but I'll say stupid because essentially what it is it's that
somebody-Michael Moore: What's stupid?
Phil Knight: The idea of raising the minimum age from 14 to 18. It's somebody sitting in New York City saying this is what's good for the Indonesians or the Vietnamese. Basically, there is a United Nations standard and there is a standard in each of these countries and it says the age for somebody to work is 14 and that basically is trying to balance the needs of a family in those countries, which they know better than we know, sitting over here, 10,000 miles away. If you want to take that argument to the extreme, why don't you raise the minimum age to 25 and then you'll have a whole nation of PhDs. It isn't just necessarily a situation where you say, 'OK, a guy has to be 18 before he goes to work in a shoe factory, that therefore he's gonna go to school.' It just isn't that simple.
Michael Moore: But a kid is a kid is a kid. A 14 year old here is a 14 year old there in terms of their body development, their growing up. They shouldn't be working full-time in a manufacturing facility.
Phil Knight: Well, I mean, tell it to the United Nations.
Michael Moore: No, I'm telling it to you. See you, you're actually bigger than the United Nations in this case, because you own the factories and you could actually make this decision. As we sit here.
Phil Knight: But basically they have certain economic needs as well. I mean, one of the arguments, I mean basically when we said 'OK, that we're going to enforce the United Nations standard in Pakistan', * they said 'well these families will be economically deprived.' So obviously there's a balance that has to be worked out between that and the balance that really is consistent all through the underdeveloped world and with the United Nations standard is that a person can go to work when they're 14.
* (Nike decided to enforce the United Nations standards in Pakistan after Nike's employment of 8 year olds to make soccer balls in that country was exposed in the press.)
you-Michael Moore: Do you have kids? Phil Knight: Yes.
Michael Moore: Would you want your kid working full time at 14 years old? Phil Knight: Well,
but-Michael Moore: In a manufacturing facility?
Phil Knight: But you're trying to impose, and this is where the problem always comes. You're trying to impose US standards in a different part of the world, which is terribly different than what it is in the US. …(continued)
Phil Knight: That's right. But you have, you have a situation in the underdeveloped world where they-basically in the United States it wasn't always you had to be 18 to get a job. But they-basically you know in the early years of this country, that 14 year olds were working. So basically it's position in terms of economic development and what the standard should be and I think the United Nations and that the governments all those governments in those countries, they're not all bad and they basically have set the standard at 14.
Michael Moore: And you're gonna stick with that? Phil Knight: Yes we are.
Doc H- Conversation between film maker and activist Michael Moore and NIKE CEO Phil Knight regarding negative effects of improving workers rights
Michael Moore: When you first started out, which would be how many years about twenty-eight, twenty-nine?
Phil Knight: Twenty-four years ago.
Michael Moore: Twenty-four years ago. Did you make shoes in this country at any time? Phil Knight: We started out as a hundred percent importer.
Michael Moore: So you've never made shoes here?
Phil Knight: Yeah, no, we did. In 1974, we were making shoes in Japan, which got too expensive. And Taiwan and Korea which were kinda the new shoe sources weren't really developed enough. So we brought about 15 percent of our production to the United States between 1975 and 1982.
Michael Moore: And then what happened?
Phil Knight: Well, what happened was the reason it didn't work well is because we were getting ready to go into a recession. So we had a lot of people who wanted jobs that came to work for us. And--the jobs were in Maine and New Hampshire. And in 1982, Maine basically passed a law that industrial accidents claim that a worker was entitled to be represented by an attorney and the company had to pay the attorney fees whether the claim was accepted or not. And so we had a lot of needle trade, there was like several hundred cases of tunnel carpal syndrome that happened overnight with basically claims. One husband came in on a Friday and claimed tunnel carpal syndrome and got a two hundred thousand dollar judgement against us and on Monday his wife came in and got a hundred and seventy-five thousand dollar judgement against us. So basically the retail cost of industrial accidents per pair of shoes went, went from twenty-five cents to five dollars in the course of a year and we basically left. And it cost about ten million dollars to close those factories.
Michael Moore: But you would agree that people do get Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. That is a-Phil Knight: Sure, but I think that it is hard to prove. I think its hard to say if you've got it or not. Michael Moore: Uh huh. But it is a problem.
Phil Knight: Yeah, sure, tunnel carpal syndrome can be a problem, no question. Michael Moore: But you think a lot of people were just faking it to get a claim? Phil Knight: Yeah, I'm quite sure, I mean basically it's like whiplash of the wrist.
Michael Moore: In our society, there are always going to be a couple of bad apples that are gonna to do this sort of thing. But was it that many people to really
