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... on, arts, medical research and the environment. Hes given money to Gilchrist, Mapleton and Medford to pay for all-weather tracks and, when budget cuts threatened the Oregon baseball program, Bowerman dug into his own wallet to support the formation of a club baseball program. In 1990, he agreed to donate 2. 1 million dollars for the construction of a two-story building at the legendary Hayward Field on the UO campus that now bears his name.
He also created the Bill Bowerman Foundation, which supports grass roots track-and-field programs throughout the country. Steve Bowerman had given frequently to organizations like the Oregon Bach Festival, Eugene Arts Foundation, Eugene Symphony, Eugene Opera, and the UO Museum of Natural History, and always to little fanfare. Nike's mission for corporate responsibility is to lead in corporate citizenship through programs that reflect caring for the world family of Nike, our teammates, our customers, and those who provide services to Nike. Nike has more than 500 contract factories around the world in about 45 countries. In May of 1998, Nike set out 6 new corporate responsibility goals for these factories. Nike has raised its minimum age limits from the International Labor Organization standards (15 in most countries and 14 in developing countries) to 18 in all footwear manufacturing and 16 in all other types of manufacturing (apparel, accessories, and equipment. ) Footwear factory managers, including C.
T. Park, pledged not to hire anyone under the age of 18. In Vietnam, that is the minimum age anyways, so the factory did not have to alter hiring practices. (According to the labor law, Vietnamese under that age are allowed to work with parental permission. Not at Nike Factories though. ) Big retail and apparel companies are in a global race to increase profits by driving down costs. As they source merchandise from all over the world, they search for places where workers are paid the lowest wages, and human rights are trampled.
There are no international laws that require corporations to respect workers rights, to ensure decent working conditions, or even to pay a living wage. In fact, the current trade laws encourage companies to make their products in places with the worst conditions and the lowest wages -- and places where workers are not free to stand up for their rights and protect themselves. Companies are driving us all into a race to the bottom. Factories with good conditions are getting shut down. That means decent factories in the U.
S. and Canada - as well as decent factories overseas. And sweatshops are opening up - in New York, Toronto, and L. A. - as well as in Honduras, Indonesia, and China. In a factory in Guatemala, hundreds of young women worked around the clock earning pennies making Van Heusen mens dress shirts. To get better wages and working conditions they fought for ten years to win a union.
After they won, the Van Heusen shirt company closed their factory and moved the work to lower-wage sweatshops nearby. We organized a union because we wanted to work less than 60 hours a week and have time for our kids, said Claudia Rodriguez . Now were making the same shirts, but were back to working long hours in sweatshops because they closed our union factory. This is a sweatshop. In a Manhattan sewing shop, young immigrants work up to seven days a week, from early in the morning until late at night.
The owner punches their time cards after eight hours, but they keep working even though they are never paid overtime. This is a sweatshop. Some of the garments they make were sold at big name stores such as Lord & Taylor. In a factory in the Dominican Republic, workers earn eight cents for every $ 20 baseball cap they make.
Hundreds of workers have been fired for going to school at night. Hundreds more were fired for trying to organize a union. This is a sweatshop. They make caps for Nike and Champion with the logos of major universities in the U. S.
and Canada - such as Notre Dame and University of Michigan. In a Kentucky uniform factory, the pay is so low that many full-time workers qualify for food stamps and other public assistance. There are no health benefits, so many workers must choose between buying food and taking their kids to the doctor. Lisa Jones quit because of sexual harassment at the factory. In a quote by Lisa Jones I started thinking, how am I going to raise my little girl to have self-respect if I dont have it, she said. This is a sweatshop.
They make uniforms that many cities purchase with tax dollars. The major retail chains and big name apparel companies call the shots in the clothing industry. By constantly driving down the price they will pay for goods, they force sweatshop conditions on sewing factories. That means higher profits for the retail and apparel giants, not lower prices for consumers. Five department stores chains account for nearly two-thirds of all department store sales in the U.
S. Those retail chains have tremendous power over the companies that make the clothing the stores sell. Most of the garment factories, here and around the world, couldnt stay in business if they lost the business of the retail giants. Thats why the big retailers could stop sweatshops if they wanted to, or if they had to. When these retailers demand quality merchandise and on-time delivery, they get them. If they also demanded that every garment had to be made under decent conditions, there is no question that things would improve fast.
In the fall of 1999, an Indonesian human rights organization interviewed 3, 500 workers in Nike contractor factories in Indonesia about their pay and working conditions. The survey, conducted by Indonesia's Urban Community Mission in conjunction with U. S. -based Press for Change, was the most comprehensive investigation of working conditions in Nike's Indonesian plants in three years. Here are some of their findings: Cruel Treatment: 57 percent of Nike athletic shoe workers and 59 percent of Nike clothing workers reported that they had seen workers being shouted at or subjected to cruel treatment by their supervisors.
Examples of abuse that workers cited included wage deductions, having their ears pulled, being pinched or slapped, being forced to run around the factory or having to stand for hours in factory yards (known as "being dried in the sun"). As punishment on the job, workers were made to clean the toilets. Reported verbal abuse included the Indonesian equivalent of phrases like You Dog, and other vulgar words like this one that should not be repeated. Forced Overtime: Workers' most common complaint was being forced to work excessive overtime more than 72 hours per week during peak periods.
Nike's code of conduct calls for working hours to be limited to 60 hours. Poverty Wages for Shoe Workers: The second most serious complaint cited by footwear workers was low wages. The vast majority of Nike shoe workers interviewed told surveyors their basic wages at the time of the survey were between $ 33 U. S. (Rp 251, 000) and $ 39 U. S. (Rp 300, 000) per month which comes to about 16 - 19 cents an hour. This wage does not even come close to covering the costs of a family's basic human needs.
Since these interviews, the cost of living has continued to deteriorate, and Nike contractors' increases in the nominal wage have not been adequate to account for inflation and currency devaluation. Even Lower Wages for Apparel Workers. Nike apparel workers in Indonesia earn even less than Nike footwear workers. The survey found that 31 percent of the 1, 200 Nike apparel workers interviewed earned less than the equivalent of $ 33 U. S. dollars per month (Rp 250, 000).
That is 25 % percent less than what even Nike says that it takes to meet one person's minimum physical needs, without taking into consideration providing for family members or savings. According to surveyors: "Workers struggling to survive on wages this low are in a desperate position. " Shoe giant Nike has suspended a manager in its Ho Chi Minh City factory in response to a labor group's charge of worker abuse in Vietnamese manufacturing plants. A U. S. -based company spokesman told USA Today that a manager had been suspended for abusing workers. The paper reported that labor activist Then Nguyen of U. S. -based Vietnam Labor Watch inspected Nike facilities in Vietnam last month in escorted and surprise visits.
Nguyen said he found violations of minimum wage and overtime laws as well as physical mistreatment of workers. His 12 -page report on working conditions in Vietnam is the latest in a series of troubles Nike has faced with its subcontractors in Vietnam. Last year, a South Korean factory floor manager working for Nike subcontractor Sam Yang Co. was convicted of beating Vietnamese employees with a shoe. At least 250 Vietnamese employees walked off the job at the Sam Yang factory last week to protest poor working conditions and low wages, state-run media reported. ''Workers at the factory work in overheated and a noisy environment, '' the official Laborer newspaper reported. ''The requirements from the health care department for labor conditions have not been met. '' A second Nike subcontractor, Taiwanese firm Pou Chen Vietnam Enterprise, has been cited for physically abusing workers at its plant. Among other things, a floor manager at the Pou Chen plant forced 56 women employees to run laps as punishment for wearing non-regulation shoes.
Vietnamese press at the time of the incident said 12 of them fainted and were taken to a hospital. That incident occurred on March 8, International Women's Day. The manager accused of making women run laps has been suspended, Nike spokesman McLain Ramsey told USA Today. Nike has repeatedly come under criticism for not clamping down on poor labor conditions in factories it hires to produce its line of footwear and apparel. ''While Nike claims it is trying to monitor and enforce its code of conduct, its current approach to monitoring and enforcement is simply not working, '' the paper quoted Nguyen as saying.
Ramsey confirmed Nguyen's visit to the Ho Chi Minh City plant and also told the paper that Nike officials are ''as distressed as he is'' about the report. ''Nike has a full investigation going and encouraged local police to do the same, '' he told the paper. In the Vietnamese capital, Hanoi, a senior labor official reiterated complaints that workers in Nike-contracted factories faced inhumane treatment. ''Violations of labor rights generally are occurring in their smaller contractor joint venture or wholly-owned ventures in which the Vietnamese side has minimal control, ''s aid Tu Le, a senior official from the Vietnam Labor Union. Nguyen's report was to be released today in New York. Just weeks ahead of the report, Nike announced it had hired former U. N. Ambassador Andrew Young and his Good works International group to review a new code of conduct for the company's overseas factories.
The measure was aimed at quelling mounting criticism that working conditions at factories in Indonesia and Vietnam were substandard. Nike uses five manufacturing plants in Vietnam, where it takes advantage of low-cost labor and relatively high production standards. About 3 percent of Nike's output is produced in Vietnam, a Nike spokesman said in an earlier interview. Michael Jordan became the first athletic mega businessman. His role as a spokesman for Nike turned that athletic-shoe and- apparel company into the world leader, earning both him and Nike millions of dollars.
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