Nike provides worldwide list of factories to address abuse issues
Nike provides worldwide list of factories to address abuse issues
Agence France-Presse, Washington
Sports equipment giant Nike Inc. has published a detailed list of more than 700 factories it uses worldwide -- more than half in Asia -- to counter allegations it accepts poor labor standards.
It said it ran training programs to combat sexual harassment and that the incidence of use of children below legal working age was low.
"Our industry is at a crossroads...By being open with this list, and by providing the depth and breath of information in our Corporate Responsibility report, we hope it will encourage others to join collaborative efforts," the company said in its report.
Nike, the world's leading footwear maker, has come under criticism over labor practices in the factories of some of its suppliers, notably in Asia.
In September, it paid US$1.5 million to settle a California lawsuit alleging it had made deceptive statements about working conditions in its overseas factories in its advertisements.
Nike has lately stepped up efforts to establish common standards at its contract factories to resolve labor disputes and demonstrate greater corporate responsibility.
In its latest report, Nike admitted that the work at its factories "can be repetitive and/or challenging, and that the overwhelming majority of jobs in these factories are entry-level positions".
While the report said "verbal harassment" was the most common form of harassment found in its contract factories, sexual harassment was also a problem, although "very difficult to discover".
Nike's compliance teams, it said, had found that "even after intense training, sexual harassment is still not an easily understood concept" that can best be addressed in the long term through "confidential grievance systems ... because they allow workers the right to communicate incidents of harassment and abuse."
It said that in China, where it had 124 contract factories, Nike had worked with local non-governmental organizations "to develop reporting systems for employee grievances" including "grievance boxes, a hotline, e-mail addresses and access to the labor union offices".
On the hiring of under-age workers in overseas factories -- a very sensitive issue in the United States, Nike said that the most frequent complaint was associated with "improper age documentation", with some factories failing to meet company standards either because of "careless human resource management practice", or by falsification of age documentation by the worker.
However, it said that in its 2003 and 2004 audits of 569 factories "we found five workers who were hired below the local legal minimum age standard".
Nike said that while it continued to work hard to discover and prevent child labor from occurring, "the low incidence rate suggests that this is not a common practice within our contract manufacturing base".
Topping the list of 704 Nike contract factories around the world, as of April 1, are China with 124, Thailand (73), United States (49), Indonesia (39), South Korea (35), Vietnam (34), Malaysia (33), Sri Lanka (25), Japan (22), Mexico (20), Portugal (20), Taiwan (19) and India (18).