I am on the L.A. Anarchist email list, as a result I have found out a number of interestingly
scarey things about nike and what goes on in their factories. Before signing on to this 
email list, i could find very little about the whole Nike deal. So here is a series of emails 
that I have received over the past five months about nike. Please read on, sweatshops 
are a very serious matter. (I have removed many addresses to people or places for the 
sake of space and privacy if there is any one interested in finding out more info please 
email me at ebchodess@juno.com. Special thanks to the writers of these essays, especially 
American Homeless Society.)

Date: Fri, 24 Apr 1998 21:32:06 +0000
 
 International News Updated 5:02 PM ET April 20, 1998
 
 Nike Sued Over Work Conditions in Asia 
 By Andrew Quinn
 
 SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Lawyers filed a civil suit
 Monday charging Nike Inc with lying about
 "sweatshop" conditions in Asian factories where its
 world-famous shoes are pieced together. 
 	The suit, filed in San Francisco superior court,
 accused Nike of violating California's consumer laws
 by willfully misleading the public about working
 conditions for the hundreds of thousands of
 Vietnamese, Chinese and Indonesian laborers who
 produce the footwear with its distinctive "Swoosh"
 logo. 
 	"We feel that Nike has one of the worst track
 records that has been exposed for a major
 corporation in this country on worker's rights
 overseas," said Patrick Coughlin, one of the lawyers
 working on the suit. "The conditions are just
 horrendous." 
 	The suit alleges that, contrary to statements by
 Nike, Asian "sweatshop" workers are regularly
 subject to physical punishment and sexual abuse. 
 	It says Nike factory workers are often exposed to
 dangerous chemicals, forced to work overtime,
 sometimes without pay, and often unable to earn a
 "living wage" despite workdays that can be 14 hours
 long. 
 "Nike has failed to tell Californians the truth
 about their business practices," said Alan Caplan,
 another lawyer in the group. "They are telling
 California consumers that they are doing everything
 right ... they are using deception for profit." Nike
 spokesman Vada Manager said on Monday the company
 had no immediate comment and was reviewing the
 allegations. 
 The suit is the latest in a series of attacks on
 Nike for conditions at Asian factories where
 workers, most of whom are women between the ages of
 18-24, are subcontracted to produce most of its
 shoes. 
 	Nike has repeatedly rejected the accusations that it
 implicitly condones worker maltreatment, and in 1992
 published a "Code of Conduct" that the company said
 was intended to ensure that specific guidelines on
 pay and working conditions are followed at all Nike
 factories. 
 The conduct code was followed by a Memorandum of
 Understanding in 1993 in which Nike told its Asian
 subcontractors it would not tolerate any type of
 abuse or maltreatment of workers. 
 The civil suit filed Monday said, however, that
 despite an aggressive campaign to promote its image
 as a "model of corporate responsibility," Nike is
 intentionally ignoring flagrant violations of both
 agreements in factories in Vietnam, Indonesia and
 China. 
 It cites a number of alleged incidents, including
 workers forced to run laps as punishment, workers
 forced to kneel in front of their supervisors, and
 workers smacked with shoe soles for using the wrong
 color in shoe production.
  	The suit also says workers in some factories are
 forced to work up to 14 hours per day and receive
 only two to four days off per month, a violation of
 both Nike policy and local laws.
  	The suit cites a 1996 audit report conducted in
 Vietnam by Ernst & Young at Nike's request, which
 was turned over to company officials but kept under
 wraps until it was eventually leaked to the media in
 November 1997.
  	It says the report details factory work and pay
 conditions that left women workers suffering from
 "desperation, physical exhaustion and pressure to
 work overtime to meet high production quotas."
  	In some cases, the suit says, young women are
 exposed to dangerous chemical solvents like toluene
 and acetone, highly toxic substances that can cause
 serious health problems and potentially lead to
 birth defects.
  	The lawyers, many of whom worked on an earlier
 successful suit to force R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.
 to stop using its popular "Joe Camel" advertising
 campaign, filed the suit on behalf of local activist
 Marc Kasky, who brought the charges as a
 representative of the California public.
  	"We feel that we will win this case, one way or
 another," Kasky told a news conference.
  	Coughlin said the team intended to travel to Asia in
 an effort to compile its own evidence about factory
 conditions, and would seek depositions from a number
 of workers.
  	"I am sure Nike will fight us in any discovery
 (process)," Coughlin said.
  	The suit demands Nike turn over any profits made in
 violation of California's unfair business practice
 laws and undertake a "corrective" advertising
 campaign to explain how its shoes are produced.
  	"Nike is either going to disclose how they have
 these people work, or change their conditions,"
 Coughlin said.
  	Nike officials in the past have denied a number of
 the allegations in the civil suit, and said any
 violations of its code are immediately corrected
 once they are detected.
 
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@


Subject:       Nike mobilization Oct. 17, 1998

This alert posted July 13, 1998

NIKE MOBILIZATION: Saturday, October 17, 1998

In this alert:
1) Nike mobilization
2) Fall labor rights calendar
3) Update

1) NIKE MOBILIZATION

The third Nike mobilization will take place on Saturday, 
October 17, 1998. Some cities also will be having Nike 
protests on a weekday earlier in October; when the date 
for those earlier actions is decided, we will post it.

Campaign for Labor Rights will assist local contacts in 
the United States who are organizing activities in their 
cities. We also be consulting with organizations in other 
parts of the globe to see whether our counterparts would 
like to make this an international event.

The purpose of this mobilization, as with those in April 
1998 and October 1997, is to keep up the heat on Nike so 
that the company will address the core demands of the Nike
campaign. More than ever, Nike is now highly vulnerable to
consumer pressure. We have come a long way in spreading 
awareness. It is important to let Nike's top executives 
know that we remain committed to winning basic rights for 
the company's Asian shoe workers.

The fall action takes place during a week-long national 
action organized the National Network for Immigrant and 
Refugee Rights. The NNIRR has called for this action to 
protest the increasing rate of raids by the Immigration 
and Naturalization Service (INS, also known to many as 
"La Migra"). Immigration, by either documented or 
undocumented workers, is often a result of economic 
policies promoted by the U.S. government. Campaign for 
Labor Rights urges local activists to join forces on these 
two issues and will help people working on either of these 
actions to link up with one another.

Campaign for Labor Rights will put together a special 
action packet for the October Nike mobilization. We will 
start making it available about one month before the event. 
The packet, which will be in hard copy, will include a 
leaflet master.

Saturday, October 3: National action day to kick off 
campaign to press companies to disclose the name and 
location of all factories where they produce. Initially, 
the campaign will focus on WAL-MART. Contact the National 
Labor Committee for more information: (212) 242-3002
.

One weekday during Oct. 5-9: NIKE shoe returns in New York 
City and San Francisco and local Nike protests for other 
committees which choose to have a weekday event. Contact 
Campaign for Labor Rights for more information: (541) 
344-5410 . 

Friday-Monday, October 2-5: National conference in 
Washington, DC on THE WORLD BANK AND THE INTERNATIONAL 
MONETARY FUND and other institutions whose policies have 
resulted in the global sweatshop. 

Monday-Sunday, October 12-18: National week of actions 
protesting INS RAIDS. Contact National Network for 
Immigrant and Refugee Rights for more information: 
(510) 465-1984 .

Saturday, October 17: NIKE mobilization. Contact Campaign 
for Labor Rights for more information: (541) 344-5410 
(CLR@igc.apc.org>.

Thurs., Dec. 10: Human Rights Day. Second national action 
day in campaign to press companies to disclose the name 
and location of all factories where they produce. Focus 
on WAL-MART. Contact the National Labor Committee for more 
information: (212) 242-3002 .

Late fall or early 1999: Human rights tribunal in New 
York City to consider DISNEY sweatshop practices in Haiti.
Possible simultaneous national day of action to protest 
Disney. Campaign for Labor Rights will post information as 
plans develop.

3) NIKE UPDATE

NIKE POSTS A LOSS: Nike's 1998 fiscal year, which ended 
June 30, had a 49 percent decline in earnings compared 
with fiscal 1997. Furthermore, Nike lost $67.7 million in 
the last quarter, the first time in 13 years that the 
company has had a quarterly loss. The indicators for Nike's 
1999 fiscal year are not giving Nike executives any reasons 
for optimism.

The company had been counting on expanding sales in Asia 
to boost its earnings. However, the financial crisis in 
that part of the world has taken a huge toll on Nike sales. 
Nike sales in the U.S. and other Western industrialized 
countries have not been spectacular either. Although there 
is no way to gauge exactly how much of that downturn is due 
to consumer awareness of Nike's sweatshop practices, it is 
clear that the public has not been convinced by Nike's claims
that the company is cleaning up its act.

As the value of Nike stock has declined, so has the personal
fortune of major stockholder, Nike CEO Phil Knight. The 
Nike founder dropped to position number 62 on Forbes 
magazine's annual list of the world's wealthiest people, 
down from number 39 last year.

"TIGER WOODS" LINE A FLOP FOR NIKE: Trying to cash in on 
Tiger mania, Nike designed its garish new line of golf 
shoes and apparel for the hip younger golfer but priced 
them for lawyer golfers - and ended up selling to neither. 
Woods's lackluster performance on the links has not sent 
buyers rushing to the Nike section of pro shops so they 
can "be like Tiger."

NIKE CUTS WORKFORCE: With its fortunes falling rapidly, 
Nike has been laying off many from its Asian workforce. 
In Indonesia alone, Nike's footwear workforce has fallen 
from almost 120,000 at its peak early last year to 76,000 
workers as of May. The company's total worldwide workforce, 
which makes shoes, apparel and other products, fell from its 
peak of 550,000 last year to 483,000. That is, out of Nike's 
67,000 lost jobs in one year, 44,000 thousand of them were 
Indonesian shoe workers, plus an unspecified number of 
Indonesian garment workers. (Nike has severed contracts with 
at least four Indonesian garment actories in less than a 
year.) In other words, just when Indonesia is experiencing 
a major economic crisis, Nike has chosen that country's 
workers to bear the brunt of its layoffs.

Layoffs are only part of the story. Because Nike's basic 
wage for regular hours was far too low to pay for necessities, 
Nike shoe workers depended on outrageous hours of overtime 
to fill out their paycheck. Not only are there now fewer 
workers; the remaining workers are putting in little if any 
overtime. Add to that the fact that inflation is out of 
control and this spells disaster even for single workers, 
worse for workers with a family to support.

PRESSURE ON CONTRACTORS: A June 15 story in the Oregonian 
newspaper reported that at least one Nike contractor in 
Vietnam requested an exemption from the country's minimum 
wage law but backed off after Nike indicated that such a 
request could generate bad publicity. In one respect, the 
Asian currency
crisis has been a windfall for Nike because it gets more 
labor per U.S. dollar that it spends. For Nike contractors 
in Asia, the crisis has been a triple disaster: falling 
orders from Nike; higher costs for imported materials; 
and tighter bank credit at higher interest rates. Although 
the contractors are the ones who actually commit the highly 
publicized abuses of Nike workers, the system is driven by 
the buyer companies such as Nike, which set the price per 
unit. Due to international scrutiny, Nike was unwilling to 
let its contractor pay less than the legal minimum wage in 
Vietnam but Nike also is unwilling to pay a unit price which 
reflects needs of its contractors and its workers.

NIKE STONEWALLS IN TASK FORCE: Since August 1996, Nike has been pointing to
its participation in the Apparel Industry Partnership (the White House task
force on sweatshop issues) as evidence that it is a leader in advancing
worker rights. Away from the cameras, on the other hand, Nike and other
companies on the AIP have refused to budge on core issues of paying a living
wage and permitting independent monitoring. An unidentified non-corporate
member of the task force recently confided to New York Times columnist
Steven Greenhouse that the task force is "teetering on the edge of collapse."

The fact that Nike has refused to budge on important issues in the task
force casts additional doubt on the sincerity of the new labor initiatives
announced by Nike CEO Phil Knight at the National Press Club on May 12.

LAWSUIT IN AUSTRALIA: Nike is one of 13 companies which are the subject of
an Australian lawsuit filed by officials of the Textile, Clothing and
Footwear Union of Australia as part of its campaign to protect local
outworkers (people who sew and do other industrial production in their own
homes). The suit charges that many of these workers receive as little as $2
per hour. Nike clothing contractors in Australia are among those who farm
out their production to outworkers.

The Australian union expects to settle out of court with Adidas and a few
other companies but does not expect Nike to settle because of the company's
strong resistance to an industry code intended to protect outworkers.

NEW INDONESIAN PRESIDENT SUGGESTS FASTS: Indonesia's new President, B.J.
Habibie, who enriched himself under Suharto's crony capitalism, recently
asked Indonesians to fast twice a week to save rice. In response to the
Asian currency crisis and as a condition for bail-out loans, the
International Monetary Fund has imposed "reforms" which have sent both
unemployment and inflation skyrocketing. As millions of Indonesians worry
about where their next meal is coming from, Habibie blithely encourages them
to forego eating twice a week.

THOUSANDS STRIKE IN INDONESIA: Worker protests have intensified since May as
Indonesia's deepening economic crisis has caused food prices to soar. The
strikes included 10,000 from a shoe factory. (There was no indication in the
report that this factory produces for Nike.) In one protest, on June 5, a
33-year-old worker was beaten to death by the military when he took part in
a demonstration with 25,000 other workers.

NIKE SEEKS SUIT DISMISSAL: On June 29, Nike sought (but has not received)
dismissal of a lawsuit brought against the company in California. The suit
claims that Nike defrauded consumers by falsely claiming to pay a living
wage and to protect workers' rights.

NIKE GIVES $2.2 MILLION TO DUKE: In late June, Nike and Duke announced that
the company would give the university $2.2 million to help equip and staff a
high-tech sports medicine lab. The K-Lab's goal is to find ways to enhance
athletic performance by preventing injuries. While athletes will no doubt
appreciate the lab, it should be noted that Nike CEO Philip Knight is highly
skeptical about shoe workers' claims of work-related injuries such as carpal
tunnel syndrome, a condition which Knight refers to derisively as "whiplash
of the wrist."

Last year, to great acclaim, Duke administrators signed a code which holds
licensees to high labor standards. A key item for enforcing the code was a
provision that any company signing a licensing agreement with Duke would
have to disclose the names and locations of all factories where it produces.
Students who had pushed for the code soon learned that the disclosure would
be made only to university administrators. Now that Duke is awash with new
Nike millions, students will be watching to see whether administrators
intend to hold Nike to the standards laid out in the code.

HERO GETS BUM'S RUSH: A June 19 story in the Oregonian newspaper reported
that a man who saved two co-workers from an explosion and fire in Nike's
Garuda factory in Indonesia and who suffered extensive burns in the process
was fired for his efforts. Instead of a hero's welcome, Kusnadi received a
reprimand when he returned to the plant after hospitalization. "The
supervisor said, 'It's not our business if you try to help your friends,' "
said Kusnadi, who like many Indonesians goes by only one name. "I was
abandoned by the company, Nike's Code of Conduct is only empty words."

After a reporter brought the story to Nike's attention, a company
representative tracked down Kusnadi and presented $91 for unreimbursed
expenses - 21 months after the Sept. 11, 1996 fire. Vada Manager, a Nike
spokesman based in Beaverton, said that he was disturbed that the media
spend so much time focusing on small incidents in the past, instead of on
Nike's efforts to improve workplaces. "What we're doing there gets lost,"
Manager said.

NO PAYMENT YET: Justice has been even slower in coming for 24 women fired in
early 1993 after taking part in strike to protest being cheated out of the
minimum wage by a Nike contractor in Indonesia. Nineteen of the workers
filed a suit after being fired. Although the Supreme Court of Indonesia
ruled early this year that Cicih Sukaesih and 18 co-workers were unjustly
fired and are due reinstatement and more than 5 years of back pay, Nike has
yet force its contractor to comply with the decision.

NO JUSTICE YET: Also languishing because Nike executives have refused
multiple pleas to review her case is Ms. Lap Nguyen, who was demoted and
humiliated and eventually pressured into quitting by managers of a Nike shoe
factory in Vietnam. The worker's problems began when managers learned that
she had spoken with a reporter from ESPN. Nike executives have consistently
claimed that they have an adequate monitoring system in place but they are
unwilling to act on behalf of this worker whose "fault" consisted in telling
an outsider about wages in her factory.


@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@


Date:          Wed, 20 May 1998 18:22:53 -0700 (PDT)
Subject:       Nike & Indonesia, part 1

NIKE AND INDONESIA:
Part 1: Sweatshops, economic disaster and repression
May 20, 1998

Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation, is in turmoil. For
years, the Nike company has been taking credit for Indonesia's "economic
miracle." Now that the miracle has soured, Nike is not rushing forward to
take the blame. Indonesia demonstrates an immediate economic crisis
(intensified by recent International Monetary Fund intervention) as well as
longer-term economic problems which developed under the Suharto
dictatorship. Indonesia now appears to be edging toward some kind of
transition. The following two-part offering is intended to provide a context
for analysis.

WHAT DOES NIKE SAY?
According to a pamphlet published by Nike, "When Nike enters a country to
manufacture products, wages increase and poverty decreases."

NIKE IN INDONESIA
In early 1997, when Indonesia raised its minimum wage by the equivalent of
20 cents per day to a total of $2.46 a day, the Indonesian government
admitted that the increased minimum was still inadequate to meet the basic
needs of workers. However, Indonesia and other governments are forced to
price their labor market below the poverty line in order to attract new
foreign investment and not to lose existing production by foreign
corporations. After the new minimum was announced, a Nike spokesperson
stated that Indonesia "may be pricing itself out of the market." That is,
Nike used a thinly disguised threat to cut and run in order to make sure
that Indonesia does not raise its minimum wage to a level which might
provide adequate support for workers.
In Indonesia and other repressive countries where Nike produces, workers
risk job loss (and more) when they participate in walk-outs. Even so, 10,000
workers struck at one of Nike's Indonesian factories in April 1997, and in
October another 6,000 went on strike to protest contractors who cheat them
out of the already inadequate minimum wage.
When the currency crashed in Indonesia last fall, Nike refused to adjust its
wages to compensate for the 70 percent loss in its workers' purchasing
power. What this means for Nike is that the company now has to shell out
less than 75 cents to its contractors to get the same day's labor from an
Indonesian worker who formerly received the equivalent of $2.46. Under
pressure, Nike recently agreed to give 37 percent of its Indonesian
workforce a raise...of $3.00 per month! Nike is giving back to about a third
of its workers a portion of the windfall that the company has made due to
the currency devaluation.

NIKE ADMITS THAT IT PREFERS TYRANTS
In October 1997, Nike representative Vada Manager traveled to the University
of Colorado in Boulder and handed out a packet presenting the company
position on sweatshop issues. Included in the packet was a reprint of an
article produced by the research department of Jardine Fleming International
Securities Limited. It is a truly astonishing window into the mentality of
Nike management that the company distributes this kind of material in an
effort to defend its record on labor issues. The section titled "Nike likes
a strong government" states:
"If we delve deeper into where Nike has produced sneakers and its comments
about political stability, we notice that Nike tends to favour strong
governments. For example, Nike was a major producer in both Korea and Taiwan
when these countries were largely under military rule. It currently favours
China, where the communists and only two men have led the country since
1949, and Indonesia where President Suharto has been in charge since 1967.
The communist party is still very much alive in Vietnam. Likewise, Nike
never did move into the Philippines in a big way in the 1980s, a period when
democracy there flourished. Thailand's democracy movement of 1992 also
corresponded to Nike's downgrading of production in that country."
Apong Herlima, a lawyer for the Indonesian Legal Aid Foundation who
specializes in labor cases in Jakarta was quoted in a March 1996 New York
Times article about Nike: "There are so many labor strikes. Employers always
call in the police and they come and interrogate the workers. Then the
workers are fired." Nike has never lifted a finger on behalf of any worker
fired by its contractors after police interrogations.
As Nike always has understood, sweatshop economies and repression go
hand-in-hand.

THE INDONESIAN "MIRACLE"
For decades, Indonesia's economy achieved dramatic growth. Economists
measure growth by such standards as the gross domestic product. It is true
that recent decades saw a rapid industrialization in Indonesia. For maybe
200 families, many of whom became multi-billionaires, there also was a rapid
growth in wealth. For the great majority of Indonesians, however, this has
been a period of immeasurable pain. By design and by default, the
agricultural foundation of Indonesia's economy has collapsed, causing
millions of peasants to leave the land and to head for the cities, where
they became a desperate army of the unemployed, lined up outside the
sweatshop hiring gates. Fundamentally, what is wrong with Indonesia's
economy is that is impoverishes hundreds of millions in order to enrich a
few hundred.
On top of that basic inequity built into the Indonesian economy are the
problems of corruption and cronyism. Some of the measures imposed by the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) address those latter problems. However,
not only does the IMF "reform" package not address the fundamental
inequities of the Indonesian economy, it actually exacerbates them, forcing
wage freezes and cuts in social services at a time when the currency is
drastically devalued.

A BLOODY DICTATORSHIP
With encouragement from the U.S. government, in 1965 the Indonesian military
overthrew President Sukarno, whom Washington considered too independent, and
then installed Suharto as dictator. Between 500,000 and one million
Indonesians were murdered as a result of that coup. With further
encouragement from the U.S. government, in 1975 Indonesia invaded the newly
independent country of East Timor and slaughtered 200,000 out of its 700,000
citizens. Indonesia is a long-time recipient of U.S. military equipment and
training. Every U.S. President since the coup has embraced Suharto as an
exemplary leader.
All analysts with a knowledge of Indonesia confirm that, in order to do
business in Indonesia, foreign companies must pay very substantial bribes to
the family and cronies of Indonesian dictator Suharto, thus helping the keep
the military dictatorship in place in that country.

AFTER SUHARTO
As a result of widespread resistance to the Suharto regime and due to
Suharto's unwillingness to loosen his family's and his friends' deathgrip on
the economy, the inevitable is upon Indonesia: Suharto has announced that he
will resign before the end of his term. As widely reported in the mainstream
press, in recent months the U.S. Secretary of Defense and a number of other
officials high in the U.S. military establishment have traveled to Indonesia
for "consultations." This is a well-established pattern of U.S. behavior in
the waning days of dictators. Unfortunately, we probably can predict the
result of those consultations.
Once Suharto and his family withdraw into retirement, to enjoy their stolen
tens of billions, we are likely to hear more and more statements from
Washington about the need to preserve "stability" in Indonesia. We can
suppose that the U.S. and Indonesian militaries already have discussed who
will succeed Suharto and that it will be someone who will do nothing to
challenge the basic inequalities of the Indonesian economy but instead will
swiftly offer promises to implement the IMF "reform" package.