Oxfam blast for Nike and Adidas

Oxfam blast for Nike and Adidas

Agencies, Sydney, Australia

Poorly paid Indonesian women had to pull down their pants for female company doctors to prove they were menstruating if they wanted leave from a shoe factory supplying Nike and Adidas, a report claimed Thursday.

Australia-based Oxfam Community Aid AbroadOxfam NikeWatch campaign coordinator Tim Connor, author of the report into conditions facing Indonesian Nike and Adidas workers, said Indonesian law provided two days unpaid menstrual leave per month.

However, at the main Indonesian factory Nikomas Gemilang supplying the sports good firms, women had to pull down their pants in front of female factory doctors to prove they were menstruating.

"Very few workers are willing to suffer this humiliation and so forgo that leave," the report said.

The report, conducted between July last year and January 2002, is based on the accounts of 35 workers from four factories producing for both companies in West Java.

It was released to coincide with International Women's Day.

Oxxfam CAA executive director Andrew Hewett, who released the report in Sydney, said it had found Nike and Adidas workers, 80 percent of them women aged 17 to 29, lived in extreme poverty with wages as low as two U.S. dollars per day.

Nevertheless, that amount is already above the Indonesian government-set minimum wages, which stand at around $50 per month for Greater Jakarta area.

Connor said the aim of the report was to assess whether there had been any progress in working conditions since the previous report in September 2000.

The report said Nike and Adidas had responded to international pressure from rights groups and aid agencies to improve working conditions, but had not done enough.

"There have been improvements in terms of a reduction in sexual harassment, the availability of sick leave and a reduction in the level of humiliation against workers but they are still shouted at when they work too slowly," Connor said.

Image-conscious Nike and Adidas have come under mounting pressure in recent years over the treatment of staff in Asian factories subcontracted to produce the bulk of their sporting shoes.

Connor said most of the Nike and Adidas factories operating in Indonesia were mainly owned by Taiwanese and Koreans.

Nike, the world's number one athletic shoe company, has 11 factories in Indonesia which produce between 45-55 million pairs of shoes a year. Only two percent go to the local market, while most end up in the United States.

Nike communications manager Kate Meyers said in the past menstrual leave had been granted on occasions after women proved it to company doctors by pulling their pants down.

However, the company had compliance staff overseeing all factories to ensure such practices did not occur.

She challenged the depth of the report.

"Nike has 50,000 or 60,000 workers so 35 is not a representative sample of the workforce."