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Nike Labor Law ViolationsNike Claims:
1. In the Nike Production Primer, Nike stated that workers in its factories in Vietnam "can earn triple the wage offered in state-run factories" (p. 2.8)
2. The first rule of Nike's code of conduct is that "(Subcontractor/supplier) certifies compliance with all applicable local government regulations regarding minimum wage; overtime; child labor laws!"
Reality:
1.Vietnam Labor Watch has obtained actual pay stubs from 1996 and 1997 that confirm CBS News’ report that Nike violates Vietnamese laws in regards to minimum wage and forced overtime. In addition, we found that Nike has violated the training wage provision of Vietnamese labor law.
2. CBS news program 48 Hours reported that workers at Nike shoe manufacturing plants in Vietnam made an average of 20 cents per hour. Team leaders were making $42 per month, which is less than the Vietnamese minimum wage of $45 per month. Regular workers made even less. CBS documented this through interviews with team leaders and even showed a copy of a labor contract in its broadcast.
3. We also have obtained pay stubs (exhibit 1 & 2) in which a full-time worker received less than $27 for March and April 1996; the minimum wage in Vietnam at that time was $35. While Nike claims that this practice has ended, we found pay stubs of other workers who received less than $38 a month between November 1996 and February 97 (exhibit 3, 4, 5); the minimum wage in Vietnam since July 1996 is $45. All 35 workers from Nike factories in Vietnam that we interviewed confirmed that they received a wage lower than the minimum wage for a period of 90 days when they first started working at the factory. All 35 are not aware that this was a violation of the minimum wage law.
Nike might claim that new workers are paid a lower wage because Vietnamese law allows for a training or probationary wage that is less than the minimum wage. Vietnam's legal code, however, specifies that the training wage can be paid only for a "probationary period" of 30 days for jobs requiring high school education and 6 days for jobs requiring less than high school education (under Article 32 of the Labor Code of June 23 1994 and Article 5 (2) of Decree 198-CP of Dec 31, 1994). Of the 35 workers that Vietnam Labor Watch interviewed, only 8 of them finished high school. In terms of training, the majority of shoe factory jobs other than stitching and sewing require about one week of training, according to the workers we interviewed. We also were informed by the Vietnamese General Confederation of Labor as well as Ho Chi Minh City Confederation of Labor that the legal definition of training and probationary wage under the Vietnamese legal code is one and the same.
Nike contractors might also claim that the workers, during the first three months, are considered students receiving a technical or vocational education and therefore can be paid below the minimum wage. We firmly believe that this is just an excuse to squeeze further profits out of these workers. Nike workers are not receiving a formal technical education or vocational training. There are no classroom facilities in the factory and no educational materials are provided to the workers. The proof that Nike factory jobs require no formal training is the fact that Nike factories currently employ workers on the assembly lines who only have a 9th grade education, and new workers are usually immediately placed on the assembly line after only a few hours of training These "students" also work many hours of overtime, just like regular workers. If a worker is good enough to virtually immediately start producing shoes and to work many hours of overtime, then they should get the wage of a regular employee.
4.Article 69 of Vietnam's Labor Law stipulates that "The labor user and the laborer may agree to work overtime, but not for more than four hours a day, 200 hours a year". Several workers told CBS News that they are forced to work overtime to meet a daily quota that is set very high. We have found that on average Nike workers are forced to work 500+ hours of overtime per year.
Our pay stub records (exhibits 6 to 12) show that one Nike factory worker worked 238 hours of overtime from April 1996 to October 1996. Exhibits 13 to 17 show that another worker worked 236 hours of overtime from May 1996 to October 1996. Both of these women work on different assembly lines, and said they were forced to work this much overtime. Since each assembly line involved 50 workers, additionally there must be at least 98 other workers who were forced to work over the legal overtime limit. We found one pay stub indicated that a worker has worked over 73 hours in February 1997 alone (exhibit 19), and 84 hours of overtime, including three Sundays, in January 1997 (exhibit 18).
5.The many irregularities we found in our analysis of pay stub records suggests a deliberate form of wage cheating. We also received complaints from workers about not getting the correct compensation for overtime wages, night shift wages or Sunday wages. According to Vietnamese labor law, the overtime wage is 1.5 times the regular wage, night shift wages should be 1.3 times, and Sunday and holiday wages should be twice the regular wage.
For example, we have two pay stubs for the month of February 1997 from two workers (exhibit 5 and exhibit 19). They told us that during February, they worked many hours of overtime, including double shift days, several Sundays, one worked over 100 hours of overtime and the other worked over 60 hours of overtime. According to these pay stubs, both workers worked 29 days in February, but there are only 28 days in February 1997. During the month of February, the workers were supposed to have received 4 days off for the Lunar New Year. Either they did not receive the holidays according to the law or they did not receive the correct overtime compensation. Another legal violation is that if they have worked the entire month of February 1997, they must have worked four Sundays but the pay stubs did not indicate any Sunday hours.
Over 60% of the workers we interviewed complained about not being paid overtime even when they worked overtime. They told us that in some parts of the factories, each assembly line is assigned a specific daily quota, and if the workers do not meet this quota, then they have to work extra hours until they meet the quota—without getting overtime pay.
6.In conclusion, Nike factories violate many labor laws in Vietnam, including the provisions regarding minimum wage (Article 3 of Decree 198-CP of December 31, 1994, Section II. (1.) of Circular 11/LDTBXH-TT of May 03 1996), provisions regarding probationary period (Article 28 of the Labor Code and Article 5 (4.) of Decree 198-CP), in addition to the above-cited provision regarding the overtime limit.
More Facts
Nike is one of the most richest, most profitable companies in the WORLD. Philip Knight, founder and CEO, is one of the top 10 richest men in America; yet NIKE:
1) locates factories in Third World countries which have been recognized to JAIL or KILL union organizers;
2) has been recognized as using child labor in China,Indonesia and Vietnam;
3) refuses all independent monitoring of NIKE factories;
4) has been associated to the Suharto military in Indonesia which has occupied East Timor and has been accused of killing and torturing over 200,000 civilians;
5) Even though NIKE founder and CEO, Philip Knight is worth an estimated $5.3 Billion, and his compnany has well over $750 MILLION in cash avaiable, he was quoted as saying "If I raised wages, I wouldn't stay competitive."
6) "Over 90 percent of the NIKE workers in Vietnam are women, and most of them are between the ages of 15 and 28. A uniform complaint among the women we interviewed was that th ey were not being paid a livable wage. The daily wage is approximately $1.60 and the cost of three simple meals is $2.10 per day."
Please read the report by Vietnam Labor Watch
YOU CAN GET INVOLVED AND HELP:
1) Boycott NIKE products;
2) Call Philip Knight @ 800-344-6453 and let Mr. Knight know how you feel about this;
3) Send email to NIKE and let them know what you think. let them know you are going to boycott the use of their products;
4) Contact your House and Senate Representatives and ask them to investigate NIKE and other companies that have been recognized as using child labor. Ask them to enact a bill that prevents the import or delivery of products into the U.S. from companies that have been recognized as using child labor;
5) Contact The NIKE Campaign @ 650-326-8837
BACKGROUND:
A recent update from the Disney/Haiti Justice Campaign reported that over 150 garment workers in Haiti had been fired by Disney contractor L.V. Myles as part of a campaign to stamp out worker protest. Activists were asked to write L.V. Myles in New York or Disney in California to denounce this injustice.
UPDATE:
Chuck Champlin, Director of Communications for Disney Consumer Products has communicated with labor rights activists in recent days saying that he had talked with Yannick Ettienne of Batay Ouvriye in Haiti and "She did not mention the 150 workers being fired."
Ms. Ettienne, however, told Campaign for Labor Rights said that she did not mention the 150 workers because Mr. Champlin did not ask her about them. Ettienne confirmed that more than 150 workers were fired before a Disney internal monitoring team visited the L.V. Myles assembly plant recently. Ettienne said that she told Mr. Champlin that Batay Ouvriye would try to obtain the names of fired workers but that it would be much easier for Disney to do so.
In their contacts with workers, Batay Ouvriye does not ask workers their last names and the workers know each other only by first names on the factory floor. They only find out when one of their fellow workers has been fired when someone else is assigned to that person's workstation. The firing process is very fast; workers do not return to the factory floor to tell co-workers that they have been fired. Much of the time they leave directly for the countryside. Suddenly, workers who have been known to Batay Ouvriye are no longer at the factory and cannot be easily traced.
Disney could find out easily which workers have been fired and why simply by asking L.V. Myles for its records. Disney's code of conduct, which is now available in French according to Champlin, stipulates that Disney will have access to the "books and records relating to employment matters" of its contractors.
Disney's code of conduct also requires that "manufacturers will respect the right of employees to associate, organize and bargain collectively." It does not mention a living wage but says that Disney expects manufacturers to "recognize that wages are essential to meeting employees basic needs."
ACTION NEEDED:
Write Disney and ask the company to find out from L.V. Myles the names of the recently fired workers and ask L.V. Myles to reinstate those who were fired for speaking up about low wages and high work quotas. Congratulate Disney for translating its corporate code of conduct into French but ask if the code is posted in places where Haitian workers can see it in all of the factories of Disney contractors in Haiti. Batay Ouvriye organizers say that nobody in the L.V. Myles factory had yet seen the code.
Write to:
Mr. Michael Eisner, C.E.O.
The Walt Disney Company
South Buena Vista Street
Burbank, CA 91521
Tel: (818) 560-1000
Fax: (818) 846-7319
For more information about this campaign, contact THE DISNEY/HAITI JUSTICE CAMPAIGN, Village Station, P.O. Box 748, New York, NY 10014; (212) 592-3612; or BATAY OUVRIYE, P.O. Box 13326, Delmas, Port-au- Prince, Haiti (W.I.) Tel: 011 (509) 22-67-19-
1) Mickey Mouse Goes To Haiti: Walt Disney and the Science of Exploitation
2) Zoned For Slavery: The Child Behind the Label
Both videos run about 20-30 minutes and are available from the National Labor Committee. I'll put their contact info below. Both include a great deal of on-site footage. Kernaghan gave both videos to me for free when I told him that I teach "Ethics in the Business Environment".
Workers get wages as low as $0.15 an hour; forced overtime; 12-hour shifts; strip searches; cursed at, even hit to work faster; sexual harassment; fired and blacklisted for trying to defend themselves; forced to live in misery.
Esprit USA produces a good deal of clothing in Guatemala for sale in the United States. In fact a recent survey shows that 95% of the clothing Espit makes is made in China, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Phillippines, and Guatemala)
Locked in the factories/forced overtime/sometimes all night long!
Standard hours for Esprit are from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30p.m., however most days workers are forced 1-3 hours overtime, making daily shifts 9.5 to 11.5 hours, with only one half hour break for lunch! When workers are told to work overtime the doors are locked so that no one can leave! Sometimes workers are forced to work over night and to continue working until 7:30 just to immidiately start work again, thereby putting in a 32 hour work shift!
No masks to protect from lint:
The young women are not provided with respiratory masks to protect them from breathing in lint or dust dust in the air.
Links:
My Home Page
Campaign for Labor Rights
Nike Labor Information
More Nike Labor Information
