Human Rights Violators: Nike - Research Paper Example

Kazim Rizvi 18 January Human Rights Violators: Nike Nike is a global brand, famous for the supply of sports equipment, with its headquarters based in Oregon. It has earned itself worldwide recognition and goodwill after officially adopting the name Nike in 1978. Today, most sports people prefer its products than any other brand and many renowned faces have been its ambassadors all over the world. However, this does not conclude the company’s good faith. Over the years, Nike has also been accused of violating human rights and thus, these issues have cropped up and led to the fall and loss of face for the company to a great deal. In this paper, some of the main matters have been questioned and thrown into the open as to how the company has faced accusations from different sections of society and the world, and what led to it. Since the mid 90s, Nike has been accused of being a violator of women’s’ rights, child labour, exploitation of labour in terms of wages, as well as forced labour. Many of these cases have been uncovered and let out of the bag, thus making the company lose a great deal of its goodwill. This brand has been known to violate a number of Articles present in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well. These are a certain set of rights that are universally applicable to all human beings, not taking into account anything about their race, colour, gender or age. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, it has been set out and stated in Article 1 that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” Article 3 and 4 state, “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”and“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.” Article 5 says “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment and treatment.” All these Articles and more have been laid down with a view to respect human beings all over the world, however, Nike has been found to be violating them in many ways, in its run down factories in the third world countries. A better look has been taken during the course of this report, into how the company has been violating these Articles of the Declaration of Human Rights. The main concerns for the company have been coming in from their factories which are located in South Asia. Here, in places like Vietnam, China, Indonesia etc, there are people who have been contracted by Nike, and work under their name. They mass produce the sports equipment as well as sports apparel, but their work conditions are less than even decent. There have also been many reports about Nike paying the labour there barely two dollars a day, which is not even enough for one person to have three square meals a day. It has been stated that many people due to such unhealthy conditions have even lost parts of their bodies and become permanently sick by working such abnormal hours in order to be able to feed their families some food. Labourers are not even allowed to converse with each other, and almost every principle of management and work ethics has been somehow or the other exploited in the Nike factories in the third world countries. There are absolutely no safety standards within the factories, and the owners of the factories have taken very little steps in order to improve the plight of the workers. They face hazards all the time, and have no health coverage. They are often forced to work with materials that are toxic or chemical in nature, which have led to even the loss of life for so many workers. But this has really not shaken the company or done anything to have it change its mindset and improve the working conditions within the factories. Apart from this, they also face a lot of verbal abuse and humiliation among their co employees. For the company, this has been a source of extremely cheap labour, and that is why they contract most of their work to these places because they are aware that the living conditions are very bad as it is, and thus, they employ people for a negligible amount of money because they know that people will take the job as they get lured by even that kind of a wage. However, this is against the law the lays down the minimum amount of wages that should be given to each labourer, especially in Vietnam. Apart from this, the labourers are also made to work overtime, and this has led to adverse health conditions too. Nike has been majorly accused of using children and forcing them to work in their factories. In places like Pakistan, Bangladesh, India and Cambodia, children are exploited by the company in order to get the job done. The main issue is that the governments of these countries also do very little in order to curb this issue, because they are at very low stages of development and so do not have much of a grasp over how this can be combated. However, whatever may be said and done, child slavery is something that is inhuman and must not be practised, according to every constitution laid down, including the U.S constitution. Children at the young age of just four or five are forced to make the soccer balls that Nike is so famous for selling. These young children are tortured as they are made to work under terrible conditions, and sometimes not even paid at all. The company has been taking advantage of their innocence and converting it for its own benefits. A BBC report in 2001 focused on six young girls from Cambodia, who worked for the company, seven days a week for about sixteen hours a day without any break or proper wages. Each pair of shoes probably costs about $100 and it is ironic to note that the person behind the creation of the shoes is probably a young child, and is paid only about $2-$3 for the job done. As part of its corporate and social responsibility, Nike finally even came to admit that it was using unfair means in order to get the manufacturing and production process completed with very little operating expensed. The chairman of Nike, Philip Knight, said that children were employed only accidentally and that the company did not mean to use child labour as a means of getting work done. However, the questions stands that how can it be that the entire episode is just an ‘accident’ if there are some thousands of children employed by the company’s factories to carry out production, and that too, in about five to six different countries? The company thus, indirectly has been known to increase the level of encouragement for the establishment and existence of sweatshops were labour is forced as well as of a very young age, paid negligible wages, and work under the worst of conditions. This is leading to the fall in development of third world countries because the poverty stricken masses here believe lesser and lesser in education as they can make their families work at the company’s factory and earn some money instead. In places like Korea and Taiwan, a lot of women have been employed by Nike to create products. The main reason behind their employment is that they face a lot of problems and issues by being part of the company, apart from receiving very less wages. Women are not empowered enough, and many have even faced a lot of physical and sexual abuse, while the company has done really nothing in order to make their condition better or fight for their rights. Women are forced to work in sweatshops with very poor conditions. They are not allowed to visit the bathroom during work hours, or talk to each other and that is why, they find it very difficult during their menstruation periods to attend work because they cannot change their sanitary napkins. All these little things have led to a lot of torture faced on the part of these women that work at the factories. The worst part is that the company contradicts its own ideals; this is because it talks about empowering women through sports and the field alike, and in South Asian countries, it discriminates against them in terms of work and does very little to look after them or improve their working conditions. The Nike foundation has campaigns trying to preach others about women’s rights, one very famous slogan being “Just Stop It”, however, when it comes to its internal functioning, the company has done very little to talk about women’s rights in these run down sweatshops. In March of 1996, a big case was put forth as fifteen women were hit with a sneaker for showing poor workmanship and not working to the best of their abilities, probably due to causes concerning their health and safety, within the Nike factory, in Vietnam. One woman worker was even reported to have had her mouth taped shut for talking during work hours, later that year. Women are forced to put in overtime work and create more and more products within a span of very little time. If this is how the company treats its women, then how does it expect other women to buy its finished goods and feel proud about the same? Nike has also been charged for scandals that include advertising and sports people. During the Beijing Olympics in 2008, hurdles participant Lui Xiang dropped out of the 100 metres hurdles race for no known reasons and after further investigations into the same, it was found out that he said he had ankle injuries, but it was actually his sponsor, Nike, which asked him to back out because the company knew that he was not going to win, and so that would shame their reputation and ruin their image to an extent as well. Such unfair means taken up are the reason that the company loses its face and not because of sports people coming in second or third. It must understand the true spirit of competition before it begins to take such measures otherwise in the future, it will face a lot of problems. Cheap labour is readily available in such countries, and Nike is doing their best to work on cost effectiveness by taking on such unfair practices. Somewhere down the line, the company’s morals and ethics are questioned as well, but these practices have been going on since a long time, and it was only after reporters and human rights activists made remarks about the entire deal that the company started to take some measures to reduce the levels of exploitation and violation of rights and do something about the matter concerned. So does this mean that if it had not been checked by anyone, Nike would have continued to carry on these practices, just for the sake of capturing the potential market in terms of sports equipment and materials? Is it true that money is after all the only motive behind a person’s work and that he forgets his ethics and gets consumed by the idea of being bought by the same? Works Cited 1. ‘The Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ available at http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml 2. Sun Thyda, 12 (2000-10-15). "Programmes | Panorama | Archive | Gap and Nike: No Sweat? October 15, 2000". BBC News. Retrieved 2011-01-18. 3. "Sweatfree Campus Campaign Launch". Studentsagainstsweatshops.org. 2005-09-28. Retrieved 2011-01-18. 4. “Nike Labour Practices in Vietnam” Vietnam Labour Watch Press Release, May 1997. 5. Boggan, Steven “Nike Admits to Mistakes Over Child Labour” Oct 21, 2001, Independent/UK. Read More