Some of the negative things about nike?

Answer 1

What are the issues?Nike has around 700 contract factories, within which around 20% of the workers are creating Nike products. Conditions for these workers has been a source of heated debate, with allegations made by campaigns of poor conditions, with commonplace harassment and abuse. Nike has sought to respond to these allegations by putting into place a code of conduct for all of its suppliers, and working with the Global Alliance to review around 21 of these factories, and to pick up and respond to issues.

In Indonesia, the following was reported: 30.2% of the workers had personally experienced, and 56.8% had observed, verbal abuse. An average of 7.8% of workers reported receiving unwelcome sexual comments, and 3.3% reported being physically abused. In addition, sexual trade practices in recruitment and promotion were reported by at least two workers in each of two different factories, although a subsequent investigation was unable to confirm this. 73.4% of workers are satisfied with their relationship with direct line supervisors, 67.8% are satisfied with management.

Far and away, the main concerns expressed by workers relate to their physical working environment.

A further report has been produced relating to a site in Mexico, which has experienced serious problems leading to labour disputes.

In both cases, Nike responded to the audit reports with a detailed remediation plan.

What do the critics say?Naomi Klein, in her widely read book "No Logo" deals quite extensively with Nike, accusing them of abandoning countries as they developed better pay and employment rights in favour of countries like China, where these are less of a cost. She points to a photo published in 1996 showing children in Pakistan stitching Nike footballs as an example of the use of child labour. Other critics have suggested that Nike should publicise all of its factories, and allow independent inspection to verify conditions there. Any auditing carried out by Nike should be made public. A lot of focus is given to wage rates paid by the company's suppliers. By and large, audits have found that wage rates are above the national legal minimum, but critics contend that this does not actually constitute a fair living wage. Nike fights battle over bad imageWILLIAM MCCALL

BEAVERTON, Ore. (AP) - For years, the Nike name conjured up heroic images of Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. The swoosh made many people feel as if they were winners.

That Nike cachet has been clouded by a new image - of Asian workers in hot, noisy factories, stitching together shoes for as little as 80 cents a day.

Suddenly, Nike doesn't seem so cool anymore. The biggest swoosh now is the sound of falling profits.

"I don't want to be a billboard for a company that would do these things," said James Keady, a graduate assistant soccer coach at St. John's who quit this year rather than wear the swoosh as part of an endorsement deal between Nike and the largest Catholic university in the United States.

Keady is one of the most striking examples of a backlash against Nike, which felt it necessary to confront its image problem this summer by putting a few of the negative letters it has received on the cover of its annual report.

"Your actions so disgust me that I will never buy one of your products again," read one. "I hope my attitude proves to be universal."

Nike officials refused repeated requests to discuss the company's image and labour practices.

Yet the criticism continues as Nike deals with woes such as an Asian financial crisis and a glut of expensive merchandise that have led to slumping sales and record losses.

In many ways, Nike has become a victim of its own success. Many young people wonder what's left to like about a company that rakes in $9.6 billion US a year, grabs nearly half of the U.S. athletic shoe market and puts the swoosh on everything from polo shirts to basketballs.

"All you have to do is walk into the student store and the entire rack of clothing has a swoosh on it," said Christine Williams, a University of North Carolina junior who led a campus campaign last year opposing Nike labour policy after the school signed a $7.1 million endorsement deal. "It's gotten really scary to me how much corporate America has gotten into our university."

The Just Do It era has given way to a Just Cool It philosophy. Nike is toning down use of the swoosh, removing it from its corporate letterhead and most advertising nowadays, replacing it with an understated, lower case "nike."

And Nike chairman Phil Knight, who acknowledged he has been described as "the perfect corporate villain for these times," took direct aim at the criticism in May with plans for reforms.

Knight promised to raise the minimum age for workers at Nike's contract plants in Asia to 18, improve factory air quality, allow independent monitoring and provide free education for workers.

But critics said the reforms did nothing to address the main problem - that workers at those plants aren't paid a living wage.

They say U.S. companies in Asia pay workers in China and Vietnam $1.60 a day and workers in Indonesia less than $1 when these employees say they need $3 a day to maintain an adequate living standard.

Nike officials have said the company pays the minimum wage or the industry standard in whatever country they operate in.

"These factories are sweatshops," said Medea Benjamin, spokeswoman for the San Francisco-based human rights group Global Exchange. "They're clean, well-lighted sweatshops, but they're still sweatshops."

John Harrington, a California investment manager who oversees a $100 million fund of socially responsible companies, faced Knight at last month's shareholder's meeting in Memphis, Tenn., and suggested the company could solve its image problem by doubling the 80 cents-a-day wages of its Indonesia workers.

Harrington said Nike could afford the raise by cutting $20 million out of its $1.13 billion advertising budget, or less than two per cent.

"I think that the publicity they'd receive from that would be tenfold," said Harrington, whose proposal was overwhelmingly shot down.

"If they paid living wages, I'd be telling everyone to support them. But I just don't see it happening."

In another response to critics, Nike appointed a vice-president for corporate responsibility, Maria Eitel, who told shareholders at the annual meeting that the company plans to have an independent monitoring program at its factories by the end of the year.

"We don't believe that corporate responsibility is a separate function that can be put into a box," she told shareholders. "It has to be integrated into everything we do at the company. It's a company of honest, caring people who want to learn from the past, and make the company the best it can be."

Critics say that no matter how much Nike policy may change, the company still must deal with the rich-man, poor-man image of Knight's wealth - estimated at $3.5 billion - set against a factory worker's monthly earnings of $20.

"Last May, I said, 'Mr. Knight, we want to work with you, we want to have a dialogue,' and he screamed in front of people, 'We will never have a dialogue with you!' " Benjamin said.

However, she is the first to admit that critics have attacked Nike, rather than competitors such as Reebok and Adidas, solely because Nike is the world's biggest athletic shoe and apparel company.

"We've always had the strategy that if you can change Nike, you change the industry," Benjamin said.

Despite all the criticism, analysts say Nike can change its image and the brand name is more than strong enough to survive the 1,900 layoffs announced this year, when the company earned half as much as it did in 1997.

"I have to believe that Knight and the other people at Nike were in awe of the power of this creature they built," said Clay Timon, chairman and CEO of Landor Research, a brand-consulting company in San Francisco.

"Whatever the swoosh touched turned to gold. Now the hardships they're going through are going to make them work for it."

Published on Saturday, October 20, 2001 in the Independent/UK

'We Blew It'

Nike Admits to Mistakes Over Child Labor

by Steve Boggan

The multi-billion dollar sportswear company Nike admitted yesterday that it "blew it" by employing children in Third World countries but added that ending the practice might be difficult.

Nike attempted to present itself to its shareholders in its first "corporate responsibility report" as a touchy-feely entity established by "skinny runners" and employing young executives who worried about the environment and the level of wages it paid.

The mere fact that Nike has produced such a report was welcomed in some quarters, but its main detractors, including labor groups such as Oxfam's NikeWatch and the Clean Clothes Campaign, said they were not convinced.

Philip Knight, the company chairman, clearly stung by reports of children as young as 10 making shoes, clothing and footballs in Pakistan and Cambodia, attempted to convince Nike's critics that it had only ever employed children accidentally. "Of all the issues facing Nike in workplace standards, child labor is the most vexing," he said in the report. "Our age standards are the highest in the world: 18 for footwear manufacturing, 16 for apparel and equipment, or local standards whenever they are higher. But in some countries (Bangladesh and Pakistan, for example) those standards are next to impossible to verify, when records of birth do not exist or can be easily forged.

"Even when records keeping is more advanced, and hiring is carefully done, one mistake can brand a company like Nike as a purveyor of child labor"

The report said Nike imposed strict conditions on the age of employees taken on by contract factories abroad, but admitted there had been instances when those conditions were ignored or bypassed.

"By far our worst experience and biggest mistake was in Pakistan, where we blew it," the report said. In 1995 Nike said it thought it had tied up with responsible factories in Sialkot, in Pakistan, that would manufacture well-made footballs and provide good conditions for workers. Instead, the work was sub-contracted round local villages, and children were drawn into the production process. Now, it insisted, any factory found to be employing a child must take that worker out of the factory, pay him or her a wage, provide education and re-hire them only when they were old enough.

Mistakes, however, continue to happen. In recent years, Nike has been criticized for its employment of child labor in Cambodia, but the company defended itself by saying fake evidence of age could be bought in Cambodia for as little as $5.

When it was exposed by the BBC as having employed children there, the company claimed it then re-examined the records of all 3,800 employees.

The company's critics remain concerned at the level of wages it pays. Nike claims it pays decent wages, but its detractors claim that only a tiny fraction of the £70 cost of a pair of its shoes goes to the workers who make them. They want to see wages increased - which they say would have only a negligible effect on retail prices.

Tim Connor of NikeWatch said: "On finishing work in a Nike contract factory, the great majority of Nike workers will go back to rural areas marked by extreme poverty. Their future economic security is very much tied up with what they earn now, in that if they are able to save enough they will be able to start small informal businesses back home.

"If they are unable to save, the work in the Nike factory will make no long-term contribution to their economic well being, and they will simply return to rural poverty.

"If Nike wants to be taken seriously as a company interested in corporate responsibility then it needs to engage honestly with its critics in the human rights community. Unfortunately the company's new corporate responsibility report fails to do this."

Answer 2

One of the weaknesses of the Nike shoe company is the cost of their products. There are many who cannot afford their products. Another weakness is the criticism that the company receives for paying low wages to workers in poor countries to produce their products.

Answer 3

they make it for lets say $10 they sell it for $20-$30 dollars

Expensive

Sweat Shops (some only get paid $2 or less for a whole day of labor)

Child labor

Employees are treated unfairly

They choose poor countries to place their factories, so that they can have cheap labor.

Answer 4

they f'ed yo mum-ma ohhhh

Answer 5

stuff

Answer 6

The shoe?