Corporate Responsibility Mondays.

It’s time for Corporate Responsibility Mondays. Not that it needs to be said again . . . but this is not my attempt at playing the morality police. Trying to shame you into your buying habits. I’m a hypocrite at best. And a pompous ass at the worst. I’ve also received some feedback about this series each week suggesting that I should highlight a good company. Simply because the post is long enough as it is . . . and the research is hard enough to unearth as it is . . . I have decided to partner with the excellent blogger Ariah Fine. We blog in cooperation with each other each week on a specific industry. Ariah has compared it to good cop, bad cop. I’m the bad cop that makes you aware of companies with shady ethics. Ariah is the good cop that makes you aware of companies that should be applauded for their ethics. I’m not writing to complain. I’m writing to inform. As well in partnership with Ariah, we are not just complaining, but offering alternative products. It’s your choice. You’re the consumer after-all.

As well, if you think this post is negative each week, then I would politely and respectfully ask you to simply not read it. Instead, spend your time reading Ariah’s excellent recommendations on environmental and labor friendly products.

This week we’re talking about shoes. I’m discussing Nike’s business practices and Ariah is discussing some alternative to shoes.

Nike is the #1 shoe company in the world and controls one-fifth of the entire athletic shoe market in the U.S. The company brought in 15 billion in 2006 alone. Nike is a weird company because according to them and their “policies” they are huge advocates on behalf of the third world. Their words say one thing. Their actions another.

Sweatshop Labor: A previously suppressed report on a 2000-2001 investigation conducted by the government of El Salvador and USAid revealed sweatshop conditions in Nike’s Hermosa Factory. Paid just 29 cents for each $140 Nike NBA shirt they sew, workers, mostly women, are also subjected to mandatory pregnancy tests, obligatory overtime, seriously contaminated drinking water (bacteria levels 429 times greater than internationally permitted norms), and excessively high production quotas.

Nike, Adidas, Fila and Reebok were involved with a Thai supplier called Bed & Bath which closed down its factory in 2002 owing staff $ 400,000 in back pay. Workers claimed they were forced to work through the night and even drugged to keep them awake.

Nike was the recipient of one of the National Labor Committee’s First Annual Golden Grinch Awards, given to companies for outstanding sweatshop abuses and starvation wages. In a factory producing Nike apparel in the Dominican Republic, workers were given 6.6 minutes to sew one children’s sweatshirt. Workers earned just $0.08 for each $22.99 Nike sweatshirt they had sewn, which amounts to 3/10ths of 1% of the garments’ retail price.

Sexual Harassment: According to “Play Fair at the Olympics” a 2004 report by the Clean Clothes Campaign, a number of workers at an Indonesian factory producing for Nike stated, “Pretty girls in the factory are always harassed by the male managers. The come onto the girls, call them into their offices, whisper in their ears, touch them at the waist, arms, neck, buttocks and breasts, bribe the girls with money and threats of losing their jobs to have sex with them.”

Wall Street Ethics: Three class-action lawsuits were filed against Nike by its shareholders, alleging that company executives sold stock just before poor earnings were announced and the stock price plunged.

You can see the entire list of complaints here.

In addition to the questionable ethics above, there are also some transcripts from an interview with Phil Knight, CEO and founder of Nike. I hate to even use Michael Moore as a source (since he has a strong tendency to fabricate stories and evidence to further his agenda) but he produced a documentary (back in his NBC days) entitled The Big One. In which he essentially went around exposing some of the sketchy things that were going on (including Clinton). Click on the “See What Happened” link from this site. Here you can read the transcripts.

Below is a portion of the interview:

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.)

Michael Moore: But is that right?

Phil Knight: I think so, I think 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-

Sources: Responsible Shopper, The Big One Transcripts, National Labor Committee, Clean Clothes

[tags] Corporate Responsibility, Labor Practices, Ethics+Business, Ariah Fine, The Big One, Michael Moore, Phil Knight, National Labor Committee[/tags]