Walking into Foot Locker, the first thing in sight is a pair of Adidas NMDs and a pair of Nike Lebron shoes. The price tags are both one hundred and fifty dollars. You can’t decide which shoe to get. Both look amazing with great detail so you research the material of the shoe to check which one will last longer, but then you come across a few websites with some interesting information; Nike and Adidas employees live in poverty because of companies wages. Do you even want to help a company where they mistreat their employees? Nike and Adidas are two of the biggest retail stores around the world. From sports equipment to trendy clothes. Both have made a mark on the world. But do you ever wonder how the clothes are being manufactured? Or where …show more content…
They sell numerous amount of clothes, shoes and sports equipment. The customers are happy but what about the workers? Nike workers around the world are being mistreated. In countries like China, workers are forced to work an extra hour without higher pay. They are harassed, dismissal and face poverty, according to The Guardian. “In Indonesia have witnessed verbal and physical abuse by supervisors against co-workers, and female employees being coerced into sex(Thr New York Times).” Would you be able to bear the suffering? How can people live when they can’t even feed themselves? How can women work in an environment where they practically get …show more content…
“Stores like H&M, Victoria’s Secret, GAP, and Forever 21”(Career Addict), have child labor. Maybe you should be rethinking about shopping at these stores ever again. But why a do companies target developing countries to place their warehouses or factories? Companies can expose their workers to dangerous working environments “such as the screen-cleaning solution n-hexane, a neurotoxin. It can cause nervous system failure, muscular weakness and vision impairment”(Emerson Malone). People are so desperate they will take any job that people can get their hands on. In Time magazine by Chandran Nair stated “The need for cheap labor, combined with the desperation of the world’s very poor in a crowded planet, and with rising mobility, creates a whole class of people desperate for any income”. With people willing to take any risk to get a job, with families to feed, how are they supposed to protest against the companies that are paying
Throughout time children have worked myriad hours in hazardous workplaces in order to make a few cents to a few dollars. This is known as child labor, where children are risking their lives daily for money. Today child labor continues to exist all over the world and even in the United States where children pick fruits and vegetables in difficult conditions. According to the article, “What is Child Labor”; it states that roughly 215 million children around the world are working between the ages of 5 and 17 in harmful workplaces. Child labor continues to exist because many families live in poverty and with more working hands there is an increase in income. Other families take their children to work in the fields because they have no access to childcare and extra money is beneficial to buy basic needs. Although there are laws and regulations that protect children from child labor, stronger enforcement is required because child labor not only exploits children but also has detrimental effects on a child’s health, education, and the people of the nation.
Nike, as many other companies do, facilitates production in other countries to help grow sales in those particular regions. The main difference between Nike and some of the other companies is that other companies do not support the exploitation of labourers or human rights. Not to suggest that Nike promotes labour exploitation, but they are less strict about these rules than other companies in foreign markets. Impacts on health and safety are a major factor for employees in sweatshops. However, physical and sexual abuse is another serious concern of many of the sweatshop workers. Most of the sweatshops run by Nike contractors are factories located in relatively small spaces to save on real estate costs. They are often soiled with dirt and kept unheated to save on expenses. Broken glass and dangerous equipment is left on the floors causing potential dangers to any people scattered within the factory. Employees are subject to harassment and violent punishments if work is not being completed as thoroughly and efficiently as the contractors would like. Workers slave under unfavourable conditions for up to 14-hour days often with no breaks. These employees are paid less than $100 US and work on average over 250 hours per month. "Substandard wages keep factory workers in poverty and force them to work excessi...
Nike’s sweatshop manufacturing practices which can be seen through media have shown people that this company goes under the good guys images, these images which are displayed in their commercials show people that their employees are treated well and their happy in their working environment.
...rible situations for people who do not have the laws like U.S. workers have. Even though NIKE has implemented different methods to improve the companies’ image, there have still been many reports that show there has not been much change at all. At a net worth of 67 billion dollars and expected to grow, loyal customers is what allows this multi billion dollar company to grow in profit, the only way there will be an impact on those working in NIKE sweatshops is if today’s society takes action.
... ethics? Well, the honest answer would be to eliminate the sweatshops completely. This is unlikely because it would be very difficult for a company with such a broad reach in the corporate world to shut down its factories overseas. Companies will always continue to exploit lower wages as long as the opportunity is present. A possible way would be to improve their employee surroundings. Since Nike is benefiting from low wages, they should at least provide a safer working environment for its employees. No employee should ever be put at risk due to a lack of environmental awareness. Nike should also pay attention to wage laws that govern the area that they manufacture in. With all the profits Nike earns, it couldn’t possibly hurt them to pay their employees no less than minimum wage. Otherwise, any company that possesses such blatant greed will not last in the long run.
A survey done every four years says that there has been less child labor in countries such as India and Morocco than in the United States (Barta and others). Some companies overseas have strict policies against child labor; for example, a toy factory in China will not accept children for work because they feel children should not be forced to do hard labor for any amount of money. On the opposing side, in some places child labor is a huge problem such as Africa and parts of Asia. For example, in Bangladesh several under 18 workers were found working in Rana Plaza and a 15 year old worker died in a factory accident in May, according to Kate O’Keeffe of the Wall Street Journal. O’ Keeffe also writes, “There is concern that child labor will go for the worse rather than for better, especially if Western economies rebound stronger.”
In June of 1996, Life magazine published a article about Nike’s child labor that was occurring in Pakistan. The article showed a little boy who was surrounded by pieces of Nike sports gear. The articles were shoes and soccer balls. Nike then knew then that they had to make some major changes in the way they were producing their items.
Many global companies like Nike, Inc. are seen as role models both in the market place as well as in society in large. That is why they are expected to act responsibly in their dealings with humanity and the natural world. Nike benefits from the global sourcing opportunities, therefore areas such as production and logistics have been outsourced to partner companies in low-wage countries like China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Thailand. As a result the company is limited nowadays to its core competencies of Design and Marketing.
Phil Knight started his shoe company by selling shoes from the back of his car. As he became more successful in 1972 he branded the name Nike. In the 1980’s Nike Corporation quickly grew and established itself as a world leader in manufacturing and distributing athletic footwear and sports' attire. The Nike manufacturing model has followed is to outsource its manufacturing to developing nations in the Asia Pacific, Africa, South and Latin Americas; where labor is inexpensive. It quickly became known for its iconic “swoosh” and “Just do it” advertisements and products. Its highly successful advertising campaigns and brand developed its strong market share and consumer base. But, the road has not always been easy for Nike; in the late 1990’s they went through some challenging times when their brand become synonymous with slave wages and child labor abuses. During this period, Nike learned that it paramount that the company understands its stakeholders’ opinions and ensures their values are congruent with their stakeholders. Nike learned that their stakeholders were concerned with more than buying low cost products; their customers were also concerned with ethical and fair treatment of their workers. Because Nike was unwilling to face the ethical treatment of its employees, the company lost its loyal customers and damaged its reputation. Nike has bounced back since the late 1990’s and revived its reputation by focusing on its internal shortfalls and attacking its issues head on. Nike nearly collapsed from its missteps in the late 1990’s. They have learned from their mistakes and taken steps to quickly identify ethical issues before they become a crisis through ethics audits. This paper is based on the case study of Nike: From Sweatsh...
...orking environments for their factory employees. Even with international groups and organizations keeping a constant watch on companies who outsource work to impoverished countries, there is often little that can be done to control these companies. Lack of local enforcement and overlooked international law makes it easy for money-hungry companies to get away with morally wrong behavior. By bringing attention to these types of situations and not supporting companies who do not treat their workers fairly, executives will be hit where it hurts them the most, their pockets. When their profits decrease, they will be forced to look for alternatives to manufacture their products.
With the increasing awareness and publicity of poor working conditions in subcontracted factories in East Asia, Nike has stimulated an uprising of activist and watchdog groups working toward seeing these conditions changed. With Nike in the negative spotlight, various organizations have revolved around generating a negative outlook on Nike’s practices of social irresponsibility. Certain campaigns such as the “National Days of Consciousness” and “International Day of Protest” were organized to educate people on the deplorable working conditions in Nike’s Asian manufacturing plants, and were designed to get more people involved in global employment issues.
Child Labor is not an isolated problem. The phenomenon of child labor is an effect of economic discrimination. In different parts of the world, at different stages of histories, laboring of child has been a part of economic life. More than 200 million children worldwide, some are as young as 4 and 5 years old, are slaves to the production line. These unfortunate children manufacture shoes, matches, clothing, rugs and countless other products that are flooding the American market and driving hard-working Americans out of jobs. These children worked long hours, were frequently beaten, and were paid a pittance. In 1979, a study shows more than 50 million children below the age of 16 were considered child labor (United Nation labors agency data). In 1998, according to the Campaign for Labor rights that is a NGO and United Nation Labor Agency, 250 million children around the world are working in farms, factories, and household. Some human rights experts indicate that there are as many as 400 million children under the age of 15 are performing forced labor either part or full-time under unsafe work environment. Based upon the needs of the situation, there are specific areas of the world where the practice of child labor is taking place. According to the journal written by Basu, Ashagrie gat...
For those marketing efforts, Nike does successful to promote itself with its not-quite-nice images and also generate some criticism that I think they are irresponsible as we can see from their ad that they does not create any positive effects to the society. For its use of overseas factories, it is great opportunity to expand the production base to the lower cost of labor, but it is totally irresponsible and unethical when labor practice does not meet the standard.
This project concentrates on the Nike Sports shoe; Nike is one of most significant shoe manufacturing company worldwide. Sportswear manufactured by Nike is known for quality and is most liked brand of athletes. (Daniel, 2011)
Also I think the writer is trying to get the consumer to write to the companies and tell them, to remind them, what their subcontractors is not right or fair. " The workers are lucky - One senior Nike employee told researchers: I don't think the workers in our factories are treated badly… Working conditions are