Labor Alerts: a service of Campaign for Labor Rights

NIKE CAMPAIGN STRATEGY, PART 4: Foot Locker

NIKE AND FOOT LOCKER

Many local factors go into the decision about where to do leafleting on the Nike issue. If the organization doing the event is campus-based, sometimes a university bookstore is the best site. Accessibility also is an issue: stores with street frontage vs. stores in malls.

In this paper, we invite U.S. and Canadian local activists to take a national strategic question into account when deciding where to leaflet. We are asking you to give serious consideration to leafleting at Foot Locker stores. There are reasons in both countries for a focus on this important outlet for Nike products.

Foot Locker is Nike's biggest customer in North America and Nike is Foot Locker's biggest supplier.

Press for Change, which has been tracking Nike sweatshop abuses in Indonesia for almost a decade, urges local activists to focus on Foot Locker. Even with a precipitous decline in sales and stock value, Nike top executives persist in their bunker mentality and have refused to make systematic reforms in the company's overseas labor practices. A few anxious calls from Foot Locker headquarters might be just the wake-up call that Nike needs.

Jeff Ballinger, director of Press for Change, believes that Nike is especially vulnerable to pressure exerted via this major retailer of its products. Ballinger emphasizes that pressure will be felt only if a number of Foot Locker outlets report to company headquarters that they have been the site of demonstrations.

A CANADIAN PERSPECTIVE

In Canada, there is an additional reason for Nike activists to leaflet at Foot Locker stores.

Foot Locker is a division of the U.S.-based Woolworth Corporation. Woolworth also owns the Northern stores (Northern Traditions, Northern Expressions, Northern Getaway) prominent in Canada and states near the Canadian border. The Northern stores have been implicated in the use of sweatshops in the Toronto area.

On April 18, many Canadian activists will be focusing on both Foot Locker and Northern - making the sweatshop connections.

WOOLWORTH'S NORTHERN SWEATSHOPS

If you think sweatshops are a thing of the past, or that they exist only in other countries, take a look at the Woolworth Northern Group.

In Metro Toronto, women are sewing clothes for the Woolworth Northern Group (Northern Traditions, Northern Reflections, Northern Getaway) for piece rates well below minimum wage. Women sewing in small contract factories have been documented to be earning as little as $4.50 ($3.50 U.S.) an hour. Women sewing at home have earned as little as $2.50 ($1.75 U.S.) an hour.

Women sewers have been denied vacation pay, statutory holidays, employer contributions to Employment Insurance and the Canada Pension Plan. During heavy production periods, they often work 12 hours a day with no overtime pay.

A U.S.-Owned Tradition

Despite the very Canadian loons on their label, the Northern Group is a division of the US-based multinational, Woolworth Corporation. Woolworth also owns Randy River, Weekend Edition and Foot Locker, the biggest distributor of Nike products in North America.

You might remember Woolworth as the five-and-dime stores of your childhood, but there's nothing nostalgic about the sweatshop practices of today's Woolworth Corporation.

Contractor Pledges Compliance, but Woolworth Flunks the Test

In response to negative publicity, a former Woolworth contractor, Unité Fashions, agreed to improve its labour practices to comply with the Ontario Employment Standards Act. But don't give any credit to Woolworth. Rather than working with Unité to improve conditions, Woolworth cut off the contractor and the workers. Another retailer, Braemar, has decided to do the right thing. They are working with Unité to ensure that basic worker rights are respected. Meanwhile, additional violations by other Woolworth contractors in Metro Toronto have been discovered. But why would anyone trust Woolworth to resolve the problem?

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

About Nike and Foot Locker:

Campaign for Labor Rights: (202) 232-5002 clr@clrlabor.org
Press for Change: (202) 638-1515 jeffreyd@mindspring.com

About Northern Group sweatshops in Toronto:

Labour Behind the Label Coalition: (416) 532-8584 perg@web.net
UNITE nosweat@unite-svti.org 416-441-1806 (ask for Barb Anderson)

The Labour Behind the Label Coalition has special packets on both the Northern and the Nike campaigns for Canadian activists.

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