By Malik Miah
SAN FRANCISCO — "We found Nike to be in the forefront of a global economy", said Andrew Young, former civil rights leader, mayor of Atlanta and US United Nations ambassador, in his "independent" report on Nike's global sportswear operations. "Factories we visited [in Indonesia, Vietnam and China] that produce Nike goods were clean, organised, adequately ventilated and well lit."
But, he added: "Nike can and should do better." Young specifically urged Nike management to get foreign subcontractors to comply with Nike's code of conduct. Wages and working conditions were not mentioned by Young in his news conference.
Nike's billionaire founder and chief executive officer immediately endorsed the report: "We will take action to improve in areas where he suggests we need to improve. For although his overall assessment is that we are doing a good job, good is not the standard Nike seeks in anything we do."
Indeed! Full-page ads were run in the New York Times national edition and other papers on the day that Young's whitewash 75-page "independent" report was released. A hotline was set up for anyone having questions or seeking copies of the report and Nike's "plan of action" to implement Young's findings.
How "independent" was Young in his investigation? Nike officials accompanied him on his factory tours, and he presented his findings to Nike's board of directors and senior management a week before his news conference on June 24.
Young was hired by Nike last February after human rights groups here and abroad, unions and the workers themselves in the sweatshops struck and protested against their low wages.
Many of the sweatshop overseers treat the mostly women work force as less than human; child labour is used in many cases; and the minimal wage laws are often violated. A recent strike occurred in Indonesia after a Nike contractor sought to renege on traditional bonuses after a new minimum wage increase went into effect — leaving most workers worse off than they were before the increase.
Young is a willing front man for Nike. His civil rights credentials are what Nike sought and paid for.
Young's visits to Asia were for the record. He did meet with human rights groups and workers, but he spent most of his time meeting with Nike officials. In a trip to Indonesia in May, for example, I talked to NGOs involved in monitoring the shoe industry. They said Young talked to them but seemed not to listen.
Many Nike workers do report that their factories are "well lit and clean" as Young said. But why? It's not because of concern for them. The product, "Air Jordan" shoes, must be top quality, without a blemish , if they're going to sell for $100 and more in the US.
Indonesian Nike workers aren't allowed to wear or purchase the shoes at cost. How could they, when they earn only US$2.20 per day without overtime? All Nike shoes are made for export; none are sold in Indonesia.
Young, who needs to preserve his liberal veneer, suggested that third-party monitoring of worker conditions and an independent grievance system be created. The regimes in charge of these countries, however, are dictatorships which outlaw independent unions.
Young's whitewash report is just one indication of how the multinationals and their governments see Third World workers. Recently President Clinton endorsed an "apparel industry partnership" between the employers and several unions. The pact calls for a voluntary global standard for international labour practices.
Who decides and pays for the monitors? The employers do.
The partnership of labour and management is also getting a boost from liberal academia, which once opposed sweatshops.
An article in the June 22 New York Times reports, "Economists like Jeffrey D. Sachs [a leading proponent of shock therapy for Russia and Poland — MM] of Harvard and Paul Krugman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say that low-wage plants making clothing and shoes for foreign markets are an essential first step toward modern prosperity in developing countries".
"My concern is not that there are too many sweatshops but there are too few", Sachs said. (The reporter claims he was being facetious.) Sachs argues that plants paying mere subsistence wages are good for these workers and the developing countries.
Sweatshops were bad during Charles Dickens' time. They remain horrendous today. It was the strikes of Korean workers, for example, that raised their wages, not the good will of the contractors or multinationals. Nike and their ilk must be called to order.