Labor Alerts: a service of Campaign for Labor Rights

AN OPPORTUNITY NOT TO BE WASTED

In the piece immediately following this commentary, Jeff Ballinger, who has closely tracked Nike's labor practices in its Indonesian shoe factories since the early 90s, amply documents Nike's hypocrisy in claiming that it will respect freedom of association. As Ballinger points out, Nike allows its contractors to fire workers who organize for their rights and then Nike slanders the fired workers.

But Nike's hypocrisy is not the most important part of the story. What is of primary importance is that organizing continues in Nike shoe factories in Indonesia. Some of that organizing is being conducted by workers fired for participating in earlier struggles at Nike contractor factories.

The organizing that is going on - still! - in Nike shoe factories in Indonesia is clandestine. Given the necessity for secrecy (to protect workers from firing) and given the very modest resources available to the non-governmental organizations and small unions carrying out the organizing, it could be a long time before there is a sustained union struggle in any of those factories for international labor rights advocates to support ... unless, that is, our movement mobilizes proactively to let Nike workers and their Indonesian allies know that they are not alone.

A combined campus-based / community-based movement could mobilize during the coming academic year to pressure Nike to live up to its pledges to respect freedom of association. Nike is the most visible member of the Apparel Industry Partnership - AIP, the White House task force on sweatshops. At Nike's encouragement, administrators of 56 colleges and universities (at last count) have joined the AIP. The AIP code includes a commitment to respect freedom of association.

Nike may come to regret having pushed schools to join the task force. If the student activists who have been mobilizing around the issue of codes were now to mobilize around Nike and freedom of association and if they were joined by community-based activists, jointly we could greatly strengthen the hand of organizers whom Nike has denied access to its shoe factories in Indonesia. It is thrilling to contemplate the prospect of students mobilizing around this issue on scores, or even hundreds, of campuses and joined by their community counterparts.

U.S. labor rights advocates are currently strengthening their bridges of communication with the courageous Indonesian organizers who are carrying out clandestine organizing in Nike factories. The great question now is whether student activists will take the lead in using their considerable leverage. The collegiate licensing business is a $2.5 billion a year industry. Nike has a sizable chunk of it. Nike has a lot to lose on campuses where it has contracts to produce apparel with the school logo - campuses where students have pressured administrators to sign strong agreements on the issue of licensing codes.

Now that many of such agreements already have been signed, activists are positioned to regain and increase the momentum when the academic year begins in the fall. If activists use those agreements with administrators and use the AIP code to hold Nike to account - with the goal of cracking open Nike's Indonesian shoe factories to free trade union organizing - they will have a cause which could excite and mobilize large numbers of students. Another alternative is to go back into negotiations over minutiae of monitoring schemes ... and watch the mass base disappear.

During the past year, for a number of good reasons, much of the emphasis for both the campus-based and community-based sweatshop movement has been on monitoring systems. However, it is practical to obtain information directly from Indonesian worker advocates. The kind of information we are talking about does not require elaborate schemes of monitoring. If Nike refuses organizers access to its shoe factories - which it does - that is easily determined. If organizers have to do their work in secret - which they do - that is easily determined.

The problem, then, is not the obtaining of information. We already know and can document that Nike violates the AIP code with regard to freedom of association. The question is: Now that we have that information, what will we do with it?

At enormous personal risk, Indonesian organizers are secretly making contact with Nike shoe workers and educating them about their rights. Will we leave those organizers to toil in isolation, or will we seize the opportunity dropped into our laps by Nike's membership in the AIP and the rush by college and university administrators to join Nike on the White House task force?

The prize - cracking open Nike's Indonesian shoe factories to union organizing - could make a palpable difference in the lives of many thousands of workers. What's more, the Nike campaign could now shift from a reform mode to putting worker empowerment front and center.

NIKE AGAIN DENIES CONTRACTOR'S LAW-BREAKING

[ The following item was provided by Jeff Ballinger of Press for Change, publisher of the newsletter, Nike in Indonesia. Six issues: $20.00. Free to teachers. See address below. jeffreyd@mindspring.com, web site: www.nikeworkers.org. Also see: "Behind the Swoosh: The Struggle of Indonesians Making Nike Shoes," a 224-page book written by Jeff Ballinger and Claes Olsson. Send $12.50 (includes shipping costs) to Press for Change, P.O. Box 161, Alpine, NJ 07620. ]

ARIZONA AND ILLINOIS STUDENTS HEAR DIFFERENT STORY FROM SACKED NIKE WORKER, CICIH SUKAESIH: Earlier this month, Cicih Sukaesih visited the campuses of the Universities of Illinois and Arizona and spoke about her dismissal from a Nike-producing factory and the ensuing six-year legal battle. Even after [ the workers' ] winning at the Indonesia's Supreme Court, Nike's contractor refused to pay more than 10% of lost wages to Cicih and the 22 others involved in the case.

In an interview with the Arizona student newspaper (http://wildcat.arizona.edu), Nike spokesman Vada Manager blamed the workers for causing "disruptions" leading to their dismissal and denying that factory issues were to blame - a position the company has repeated over the years.

The facts clearly show otherwise and can be found in Indonesian labor and administrative court records. (Press for Change has translated these to English.) The reason that the Nike contractor was ordered to hire back the workers and pay back wages was because some workers were receiving below the minimum wage ($1.30/day at the time), giving the strike organizers a legitimate grievance.

BACKGROUND: While Nike officials often point to the company's Code of Conduct for contractors making Nike shoes and apparel, here is a well-documented case proving that the pledge made by [ Nike contractor ] Sung Hwa Dunia to Nike in 1992 was worthless. Cicih and a couple dozen other workers circulated a petition in November of 1992, calling on SHD to pay the minimum wage to all workers. 62 brave workers signed the petition and demanded action from the management of SHD. After being rebuffed, the workers (over 6,000) struck. While there was some minor property damage inside the factory compound, courts in Indonesia placed the blame squarely on the wage-chiseling managers of SHD. (Even the U.S. State Department's report on Human Rights practices in Indonesia for 1992 singled out foreign investment shoe factories for refusal to pay the legal minimum.)

The number of strikes in Indonesia had risen dramatically in 1991 and 1992. This is partly because of a government campaign in these years aimed at shaming foreign investors who were cheating workers. Stories in the highly-controlled Indonesian press carried threats to jail factory managers found paying less than the minimum. This, of course, emboldened workers used to toiling at wages below the subsistence-level.

The security forces, on the other hand, had a low tolerance for worker unrest. For two months after the SHD strike, workers were interrogated by the military. Finally, in early 1993, the "troublemakers" were dismissed. It should be pointed out that the labor court's decision to force the Nike contractor to hire back the workers was an extraordinary rebuke. In normal practice, Indonesian labor courts would make an employer pay a severance settlement, not re-hire workers that organized a protest. This fits with the government's stated goal of building harmonious worker / management relations (as meaningless as such platitudes are in daily practice).

NIKE AND FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION: Since the dismissal of these two dozen workers in 1993, Nike officials have gone out of their way to heap abuse on them. Donald Katz, author of Just Do It (Random House, 1994) was told by top Nike managers that Sadisah [ another of the fired workers ] had "destroyed documents" - a claim she vigorously denies and which does not appear in any of the court records. (She was interviewed in a CBS TV story in 1993.) Interviewers for The Sweatshop Quandary: Corporate Responsibility on the Global Frontier (Investor Responsibility Research Center, 1997) were told by Nike that the workers deserved to be fired. This is well after the company knew that SHD had been paying illegally low wages, in violation of the Nike Code. During Cicih's earlier visits to North America, similar sentiments were expressed.

Based on this case, therefore, there is little hope that Nike [ will fulfill its ] recent pledges - through the Apparel industry Partnership and revisions of its own code - on respecting Freedom of Association principles. As a matter of fact, workers who stand up to Nike contractors can expect no helping hand from Nike officials.

OTHER RESOURCES ON THIS CASE:

Reclaiming America: Nike, Clean Air and the New National Activism, Randy Shaw (Univ. of California Press, 1999) pp. 38-43

Law and Multinationals: An Introduction to Law and Political Economy, John J. Bonsignore (1994, Prentice-Hall) pp. 309-312

Indonesia's Labor Relations Dispute Resolution Process - a Base Line Study (Monograph by James J. Gallagher, member of American Arbitration Association) pp. 48-58

Ministry of Manpower, Registrar of Central Industrial Dispute Settlement Panel No. : TAR. 496/M/KP4P/1993 Jakarta, 23 August 1993

Ministry of Manpower, Directorate General of Industrial Relations, Development and Work Norms Supervision No. : TAR 62/BW/BK1994 Jakarta, 28 February 1994

Acknowledgment of Supreme Court Judgement No. : 96 K/TUN/1996

Shoemaker Mulls Court's Decision, Jakarta Post, 22 June 1998

Indonesian Takes on Nike=85, Portland Oregonian, 24 July 1996

Trampled Dreams, New York Times, 12 July 1996

The Wrong Indonesian, New York Times, 1 November 1996

These Sneakers=85, New York Daily News, 18 July 1996

Just Do It, Donald Katz (Random House, 1994) pp. 188-191 (This book is at the top of Nike's "reading list" sent to students who express an interest in the shoe industry. Katz describes the Nike/Indonesia factory regime as "management by terror.")

Nike In Indonesia (Press for Change newsletter) Vol. 2, No. 2 and Vol. 4,= No. 3

NIKE LABOR ABUSES IN AUSTRALIA

[ The following report was sent to us by Pamela Curr of FairWear in Australia: fairwear@vic.uca.org.au. Note: In the United States, homework / outwork - manufacturing conducted outside of regular factory premises - is illegal, although instances still frequently occur in the U..S. garment industry. In Australia and a number of other countries where homework / outwork remains legal, abuses frequently occur, even though outworkers are supposed to be protected by labor law. To supplement legislative protections, labor advocates in Australia have drawn up a voluntary Outworkers Code of Practice, which Nike has refused to sign. ]

Just a quick note to let you know that Nike is in trouble down under. The Textile Clothing and Footwear Union ( TCFUA) is taking Nike to the Federal Court for Breaches of the Australian labour laws. FairWear (the community-based campaign supporting outworkers / homeworkers in the clothing industry) went along to the Court to support the union case. We wore calico bags with RATHER WEAR A BAG THAN NIKE painted on the front. Nike was refusing to allow union access to records of contracts; however, this was disallowed and the Judge stated three times that there was an obvious public interest / community concern about the case as we sat in the front row in our elegant bags. Nike manufactures clothing in Australia and opened a Nike Superstore in Melbourne last year. Nike says that it does not use outworkers and has refused to sign the Outworkers Code of Practice, which guarantees fair wages to outworkers. However, as 95% of clothing manufacture is now off-factory in the homes of outworkers, Nike's claims are hollow. The case adjourns for further legal jousting in June. In the meantime, we are making sure that Nike stays in the news for its actions.

Last week, four FairWear supporters went into the change rooms of Motto (a fashion boutique in court with Nike for similar offences) and came out in their underwear to the doors of the shop and the waiting TV cameras to announce that they would rather wear nothing than wear clothes made by exploited workers. News reports followed up on the issue.

1999 SWEATSHOP ACTIVIST ORGANIZING PACKET

Campaign for Labor Rights has prepared a multi-theme, multi-campaign packet for local activists who are organizing around sweatshop issues. Updated and additional materials will be mailed automatically during the year to everyone who orders the initial installment. The initial packet includes brochure masters (INS and immigration issues, living wage, What can I buy?), leaflet masters, masters for consumer cards, masters for sign-on letters, background information on campaigns (farmworkers, Disney, Nike, Phillips-Van Heusen, The Gap) and a resource list. Order by email clr@clrlabor.org or phone (202) 232-5002. Include your postal address: Packet is in hard copy. Whole packets only; it is not practical to break down packets and send selected pieces. Packet includes a donation form and a return envelope. Suggested donation: $10.00.

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