Nike: How transnationals profit from human misery
BY LINDA WALDRON
MELBOURNE — On June 6, footwear and sports clothes giant Nike will appear in the Federal Court here, charged with breaches of Australian labour laws. This is a result of a campaign by the Fairwear coalition, an alliance of community, church and union groups, to ensure that retailers take responsibility for the exploitation of outworkers.
Outworkers are predominantly women — often recent migrants with little or no English — who work from home due to the lack of other job opportunities, child-care services and social security. It is estimated that there are more than 300,000 home-based workers in Australia, a ratio of 15 outworkers for every factory worker.
Many outworkers are unaware of their rights and do not have trade union protection. Wages are often as low as $1-2 an hour and payment can be arbitrarily withheld. It is not unusual for outworkers to work 14 hours a day, seven days a week, and entitlements to holiday pay and long-service leave are often not honoured. Safe working conditions are not enforced.
Workers who complain about wage rates or deadlines can lose pay or be denied further work, or worse. One family had to move house because they feared retaliation after asking for better wages. Another worker sewed for a company for 21 years but had never received holiday pay or long-service leave. She is now severely disabled due to occupational overuse syndrome and is unable to work.
This exploitation has helped fund the expansion of the multi-billion dollar Australian retail industry. While clothes prices in Australia have increased over the last five years, homeworkers' wages have halved. Retail chains thereby reap huge profits.
Protecting outworkers is difficult due to the complicated contracting chain between retailer and worker via warehouse suppliers, contractors and subcontractors.
Code of practice
To expose the exploitation of workers in the garment and footwear industries and oblige retailers to take responsibility for working conditions, the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union (TCFUA) has drawn up the Homeworker Code of Practice.
The code demands fair and legal wages and the provision of safe working conditions. It includes an accreditation process for manufacturers, an agreement by retailers to use accredited manufacturers and a labelling system so that consumers can choose clothing that conforms to the code.
The Fairwear campaign's creative agitation has convinced several clothing companies to sign the code. Sportsgirl signed after demonstrators rallied outside its outlets to denounce them as "Shops of shame". In Sydney, Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union members stripped down to their underwear outside a JeansWest store; later that day, JeansWest signed the code.
Companies that refuse to sign the code are investigated by the TCFUA and taken to court if they are suspected of breaching labour laws.
Since 1996, the TCFUA has brought charges against 71 clothing companies. Fearing bad publicity, many have settled immediately or agreed to mediation. Nike alone resists all pressure to sign the code.
According to Nike spokesperson Dusty Kidd, "We do not allow our contractors in Australia, or anywhere else, to use homework as a means of production. Therefore, we have seen no value in signing onto a standard for a system we do not use."
The Clean Clothes Campaign (an international coalition that includes Fairwear) argues that whereas other companies with a similar policy against contracting homework have freely agreed to sign the code, "Nike continues to stonewall". CCC suggests that Nike's key concern in signing the code is its loss of control over the monitoring process.
Under the US-based Fair Labor Association guidelines, Nike can choose which accredited monitor inspects its factories. If it signs the Homeworker Code of Practice, however, the TCFUA will monitor the working conditions of Australian garment workers.
Third World
Nike's fear of greater union presence at its factories is not surprising given its anti-worker practices in Third World countries. At the Hung Wah factory in China, workers live 12 to a room in dormitories, work 12.5 hours every day with just one day off a month. During peak production periods they work through the night.
Women in Nike's Indonesian factories have been punished for working too slowly by being forced to run around the factory yard or standing for hours in the yard. A 1997 study by Peter Hancock found that supervisors at one Indonesian factory that supplies Nike were systematically verbally abused.
Haryanto, an Indonesian worker, was dismissed from a Nike contract factory, PT Lintas, for encouraging other workers to form a union. Following vigorous agitation by human rights groups, he was recently reinstated.
'Slave ships'
Fairwear coordinator Pamela Curr likens Nike's passage through Asian countries to the "slave ships of old cruising the high seas looking for the most oppressed workers".
In the 1970s, when labour costs in Japan became too high, Nike transferred production to Taiwan and South Korea, where military regimes suppressed wages. When unions gained strength in these countries in the late-1980s, Nike shifted production to Indonesia. In 1992, Nike downgraded production in Thailand as the Thai democracy movement gained strength.
In 1998, Nike proudly declared its commitment to human rights by pointing to its production in the Philippines, a "vibrant democracy" with relatively high wages and an active union movement. The next year, Nike pulled out and sacked thousands of workers.
Nike does not merely take advantage of exploitative conditions in Third World countries, it lobbies to maintain them. It tried to stop the US government from tying trade with China to improvements in human rights and has attempted to discourage cooperation between Vietnam's trade unions and non-government organisations that monitor its workers' rights.
In June 1999, in a response to increasing world criticism of its labour practices, Nike helped establish the Global Alliance for Workers and Communities. This "alliance" consists of Nike, toy maker Mattel, the World Bank and the International Youth Alliance (a group with no record of labour rights advocacy).
According to Nike's publicity, the alliance has a factory monitoring system, but it has so far failed to outline any clear monitoring criteria. While the US Fair Labor Association's monitoring system may be flawed, it at least provides some independent monitoring and worker protection.
The Global Alliance is an attempt to usurp the role of unions and independent labour rights groups. The minimal measures the Global Alliance does take to address problems are individualistic rather than structural solutions to exploitation. It is based on employers representing employees' interests.
An action will be held to coincide with the Nike court case outside the Federal Court in Melbourne, corner of Bourke and William Streets, 9.45am, June 6 and 7. Resistance will be holding a "Nike Just Stop It" demonstration as part of its 29th national conference in Melbourne. Assemble at the State Library, June 29, 6pm. Phone (03) 9639 8622 or visit .
For further information visit Fairwear's web site at or Community Aid Abroad's "Just do it" at . Contact Fairwear coordinators Pamela Curr on (03) 9251 5270 and Annie Delaney 0419 587 058.