Labor Alerts: a service of Campaign for Labor Rights

ALL SCHOOLS WITH NIKE DEALS - URGENT!

Seminar on Nike labor practices - for administrators

SPECIAL NOTE TO STUDENTS: Inform the administration on your campus about this opportunity to learn firsthand from some of Nike's most prominent critics. If the administration fails to send a high-level representative to this seminar, you have a right to make an issue of that refusal. The heads of institutions devoted to higher learning have no basis for refusing to inform themselves adequately about the companies whose money they accept. Please notify Campaign for Labor Rights about your efforts to get your administration to attend this seminar: clr@clrlabor.org or (202) 232-5002.

Students, faculty and staff on many campuses are raising serious concerns about their schools' endorsement and licensing contracts with Nike. These students have informed themselves about allegations of sweatshop abuses by reading reports from credible human rights groups. No matter how carefully students undertake their investigations, however, they rarely are able to achieve a high level of expertise.

To hear the other side of the story, administrators typically turn to Nike. Nike's polished public relations staff reassure the administrators that all is well in the Asian factories where the company has its shoes produced. This imbalanced process of gathering information does little to promote either truth-finding or the credibility of administrators whose reputations can be badly tarnished by ill-advised contracts with companies notorious for labor rights abuses.

Now there is a practical way for administrators to expand their information gathering and to lay the basis for serious dialogue within the campus community. It is time that these officials hear from some of Nike's most prominent critics, who have been on the scene and who know about the company's pledges and denials.

Press for Change has organized a seminar designed exclusively for administrators from colleges and universities with Nike endorsement and/or licensing deals. This half-day presentation on supplier standards, labor rights and related issues will have a special focus on the performance of Asian contractors making Nike shoes. The seminar will be on May 1st at Georgetown University, in cooperation with the Georgetown Solidarity Committee.

Jeff Ballinger, director of Press for Change, lived in Indonesia for four years and, since he left in 1992, he has maintained regular contact with Indonesian non-governmental organizations monitoring the foreign-owned shoe factories there. Press for Change has been disseminating reliable information on Nike labor practices in Indonesia for more than seven years.

In addition to information which Ballinger has gather directly from Indonesian sources, the seminar will include presentations from Medea Benjamin, director of Global Exchange (shoe factories in China and the current human rights situation in Indonesia) and Thuyen Nguyen, director of Vietnam Labor Watch (shoe factories in Vietnam).

The objectives of the seminar are: 1) to provide a solid basis for dealing with questions of accountability in campus governance issues involving endorsement and licensing contracts; and 2) to provide updated information from field research.

Students from the Georgetown Solidarity Committee will monitor the presentation and will make their report on the seminar available to all interested student groups.

Don't let this chance slip by!

Reply to Jeff Ballinger by April 23:
jeffreyd@mindspring.com
phone: (201) 768-8120; fax:(201) 768-5812
Box 161 Alpine, New Jersey 07620

May 1st, noon to 4 p.m., lunch included

Administrators will be responsible for their own travel and accommodations.

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