NIKE IN VIETNAM: an eyewitness account

written by Thuyen Nguyen, Vietnam Labor Watch

All the credits should go to Global Exchange, Tony and Medea, who managed to organize a press conference a coast away and somehow convinced the press people to come. I sent out press release before and no one even called me.

Enclosed is my speech and highlights of my report. For those of you who wants a copy please send me your mailing address or email (in zip format). I will try to put the report on the web site soon.

BTW, This report would not have been done without the help of many: Medea who worked many hours on it, Max who sent me last minute suggestions, Jeff, Tin, Trim, Ky Anh, Thong, Tam, Trinh, the Nike protest group on Saigon.com, Justice-do-it-Nike group in Teleport.com, Campaign for Labor Rights and those people who do not want to be mentioned by name but who sent me many valuable information about the conditions of these Nike factory workers in Vietnam. Keep those paystubs coming, keep those eyewitness reports coming, and please keep coming to the protests.

Regards, Thuyen Nguyen http://www.saigon.com/~nike

Here is what I found.

Unfortunately, I discovered that the labor conditions in Nike shoe factories are worse than I had expected. Nike has a good Code of Conduct, but Nike cannot control its contractors under the current system of monitoring. Nike contractors are exploiting workers in terms of wages and working conditions.

I spoke to 35 workers individually and at length. Most Nike workers are young women from poor rural areas of VN. They have no work in the countryside and their families cannot support them, so they are forced to come to HCMC to look for work. These are young women used to working on farms, used to poor living conditions. Yet they told me that their lives working in Nike factories are even worse.

Many of them work up to12 hours/day. They work in noisy, hot factories that are filled with the smell of paint and glue. In an 8-hour shift, they are not allowed to go to the bathroom more than once; they are not allowed to have a drink of water more than twice.

Worse than the physical conditions are the management practices. The men and women supervising factory workers routinely engage in conduct that is specifically designed to humiliate these women, to take away their human dignity and to make them feel worthless. Some examples of "personnel management" that I have heard of are: forcing workers to kneel on the ground holding their arms in the air; forcing workers to stand in the sun; forcing them to write down mistakes they made over and over again. They are being treated as if they are recruits in some boot camps.

In VN, International Women's Day is a real holiday: women in VN are honored, festivities are held; women often get bonuses at work. On IWD this year, at one Nike factory, 56 women were sent outside to run around the factory grounds, a distance of 4km. 12 of them fainted and were taken to the hospital by their friends. Their offense? A few of them had worn outdoor shoes inside the factory. Other incidents are detailed in my report. I want to remind you that these young women did not sign up for boot camp. They signed up to work for a shoe factory. They are factory workers making shoes for us Americans. They should not be treated as recruits in the military.

Many of the things I learned during my two-week visit I had already known from earlier reports. But meeting these workers face-to-face made me realize just how bad the conditions are. I cannot describe to you these women's sense of desperation. Many of them told me they had lost weight since coming to work at the Nike factories. They complained of being tired all the time. Most of the women I spoke to work ten to 12 hour days, six or seven days a week. But the real problem is the pace of their work: they are forced to meet very high quotas, so the assembly line is very fast-paced. There is also a lot of stress, stress from the fear of corporal punishment, stress from enduring daily indignities and stress from the fear of sexual harassment.

Another problem is pay. Every single Nike worker that I spoke to told me that she could not live on her wages. The basic wage for a factory worker is $1.60 per day but the cost of eating is about $2. None of them save enough money to send home to their families. All of them require some help from family members in terms of money, food or housing.

I want to be clear about Nike's responsibility for these conditions. Nike does not run these factories directly; Nike contracts with foreign companies to run them. Nike's responsibility is this: It has known for a long time about the conditions in its factories, yet Nike has consistently refused to take an aggressive stance to end the labor violations routinely occurring in Viet Nam. Nike has the upper hand; the contractors need Nike's business.

Nike has a good code of conduct; if it wanted to, the company could enforce that code. It could set up an independent monitoring board to help Nike monitor conditions more closely, to get better information and to provide the workers a trusted neutral party. Nike could give its contracts to factories that provide better working conditions.. It could insist on contract provisions to allow for monetary fines each time a code violation occurs. It could cooperate with the Vietnam General Confederation of Labor to enforce local labor laws and wage standards. Nike could hold upper management accountable for the behavior of lower level managers. The problems are systemic, and Nike need to address them in a systemic way. Nike needs first to stop denying that the problems exist on a wide scale. Nike can no longer insist that each incident of abuse is an isolated incident, that each underpayment of workers is a simple miscalculation. Rather than trying to avoid blame for them, Nike should admit to its responsibility.

Nike has the means to improve working conditions for ALL its overseas workers. It is not a fledgling company struggling to stay in business. Nike has posted record profits for the past several years. Its CEO, Mr. Phil Knight, is the 6th richest man in America. Certainly this man and this company can do better.

The one thing from this trip that I would not forget is listening and watching this young women telling me when asked how she is being treated, "They treated us like animals." Nike told Americans that it is proud of its overseas factories. What I found was nothing to be proud of.

Highlights of the Vietnam Labor Watch report on Nike factories

Workers cannot go to the bathroom more than once per 8-hour shift and they cannot drink water more than twice per shift.

It is a common occurrence for workers to faint from exhaustion, heat, fumes and poor nutrition during their shifts.

Verbal abuse and sexual harassment are frequent, and corporal punishment is often used. One day during our two week visit, 56 women workers at a Nike factory were forced to run around the factory's premise in the hot sun because they weren't wearing regulation shoes. 12 fainted during the run and were taken to the hospital. This was particularly painful to the Vietnamese because it occurred on International Women's Day, an important holiday when Vietnam honors women.

Other forms of punishment used are forcing workers to stand in the sun (sun-drying), kneel on the floor with hands up in the air, write down their mistakes over and over again like parochial school children, clean the toilet and sweep factory floors. In November 1996, 100 workers at the Pouchen factory were forced to stand in the sun for an hour because one worker had spilled a tray of fruit on an altar.

Women workers have complained about frequent sexual harassment from foreign supervisors. Even in broad daylight, in front of other workers, these supervisors try to touch, rub or grab their buttocks or chests. One supervisor told a female factory worker that it is a common custom for men in his country to greet women they like by grabbing their behinds.

Health care is inadequate. At the Sam Yang factory, with 6000 employees, one doctor works only two hours a day but the factory operates 20 hours a day.

We found numerous examples of workers making below the minimum wage of $45 per month, and have pay stubs as evidence. Moreover, all 35 workers we interviewed in depth said they received below minimum wage for their first 90 days at the factory, a clear violation of the minimum wage law.

Forced and excessive overtime to meet high quotas is the norm. While Vietnam's labor laws say the maximum yearly overtime is 200 hours, on average Nike workers are forced to work 500+ hours per year. If workers refuse, they are punished or receive a warning. After three warnings, they're fired.

Workers say they do not get the legally mandated compensation for overtime wages, night shift wages or Sunday wages, and their pay stubs confirm this. Over 60% of the workers we interviewed complained that when they did not meet their daily quota, they were forced to work extra hours until reaching the quota - with no overtime pay at all.

Almost all the workers we interviewed told us that they had lost weight since working at Nike factories. They complained of poor nutrition, frequent headaches and general fatigue.

Other non-Nike shoe factories we visited in Vietnam pay higher wages and have much better working conditions.

Given the distressing conditions, the relationship between factory managers and workers in the Nike factories is extremely tense. We believe that if this antagonistic relationship continues, there could well be very serious clashes.

IN AMERICA / By BOB HERBERT

Brutality in Vietnam

Cynics might say that Nike is horrified that the story got out. But give Ms. Ramsey the benefit of the doubt. For whatever reasons, Nike wishes the incident had never occurred.

On March 8, which happened to be International Women's Day, 56 women employed at a factory making Nike shoes in Dong Nai, Vietnam, were punished because they hadn't worn regulation shoes to work. Factory officials ordered the women outside and made them run around the factory in the hot sun. The women ran and ran and ran. One fainted, and then another. Still they ran. They would be taught a lesson. They had worn the wrong shoes to work. More women fainted. The ordeal didn't end until a dozen workers had collapsed.

Thuyen Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American businessman who has been studying conditions at factories that make Nike shoes in Vietnam, wrote in a report released yesterday: "Vietnamese all over the country were outraged that on International Women's Day, when most companies in Vietnam give women workers flowers and other gifts, 12 Vietnamese women were so abused they had to spend the day in the emergency room."

Mr. Nguyen, a partner in a financial services company in New Jersey and a former vice president of the Bankers Trust Company, became interested in the treatment of workers in factories that make Nike products in Vietnam after watching a television report last fall about the abuse of such workers.

He contacted a number of organizations familiar with the plight of foreign sweatshop workers. And he called Nike. Nike officials invited Mr. Nguyen to tour a factory run by one of its contractors in Ho Chi Minh City. Mr. Nguyen accepted and the tour took place early this month.

On the surface, conditions in the plant seemed more or less satisfactory, although the workers appeared tired and Mr. Nguyen got the impression they were afraid to speak candidly to him. What Nike officials probably did not expect was that Mr. Nguyen would return later and, on his own, talk to workers away from the intimidating grounds of the factory. He would then go on to investigate conditions at plants run by three other Nike contractors.

What he found were the same kinds of demoralizing and debilitating abuses that a wide array of Nike critics have been spotlighting for a long time. Nike set up shop in Vietnam because labor there is even cheaper than in Indonesia. But apparently not cheap enough. Mr. Nguyen found that in some cases Nike contractors in Vietnam didn't even bother to pay the locally established minimum wage. And even when the minimum is paid it is not enough to cover the cost of three meager meals a day.

He found that the treatment of workers by the factory managers in Vietnam (usually Korean or Taiwanese nationals) is a "constant source of humiliation," that verbal abuse and sexual harassment occur frequently, and that "corporal punishment is often used." He found that extreme amounts of forced overtime are imposed on Vietnamese workers. "It is a common occurrence," Mr. Nguyen wrote in his report, "to have several workers faint from exhaustion, heat and poor nutrition during their shifts. We were told that several workers even coughed up blood before fainting."

Rather than crack down on the abusive conditions in the factories, Nike has resorted to an elaborate international public relations campaign to give the appearance that it cares about the workers. But no amount of public relations will change the fact that a full-time worker who makes $1.60 a day is likely to spend a fair amount of time hungry if three very simple meals cost $2.10.

Nike has hired former United Nations representative Andrew Young to oversee -- and presumably attempt to improve -- the conditions in the factories of its contractors.

"Mr. Young," said Mr. Nguyen, "has a lot of work to do."

Copyright 1997 The New York Times

NOTE: Campaign for Labor Rights and Press for Change are organizing a Canadian/U.S. speaking tour by Cicih Sukaesih, to take place during much of May. Watch for further alerts on this important event. Ms. Sukaesih, who toured parts of the U.S. last summer, was part of a group of Indonesian women fired by a Nike contractor when they organized for their rights. The Canadian portion of this speaking tour is being generously funded by the Social Justice Fund of the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), with additional financial support from the Alberta Federation of Labor. The tour coincides with the culmination of a CAW postcard campaign in support of Muchtar Pakpahan, who is on trial for his life in Indonesia -- allegedly for treason but in reality because he a leader of the largest independent trade union in his country. Such is the climate of repression from which Nike profits in Indonesia and China.

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