NEWS - Nike Sweats

[Rangoonp@xxxxxxx]

<<An article from earlier this year>>

Nike Sweats - The Village Voice  - By James Ridgeway
Third World Plant Horrors Detailed

When Third World sweatshops became a media scandal more than a year ago,
the administration stepped in to broker a voluntary industry agreement
with companies such as Liz Claiborne, Nike, and Reebok. Known as the
White House Apparel Industry Partnership, it set up a task force to
establish a code of conduct covering child labor, minimum wages, and
working conditions. 
But despite renewed efforts to get things moving, the agreement lacks
teeth. And Charles Kernaghan, director of the National Labor
Committee? a union-sponsored group that tracks sweatshops around the
world? reports that little improvement has taken place. According to a
recent committee report workers in Myanmar make apparel at four cents an
hour for Bradlees, J.C. Penney, Sears, Marshalls, and other U.S.
companies. In Honduras, women making clothes for U.S.-owned companies
are injected with Depro Provera to block pregnancy for up to three
months, according to the labor committee. 
One focus of the labor committee's report was the Formosa Textiles plant
in El Salvador, where apparel is made for Nike. A 22-year-old single
mother described conditions there. "The supervisors scream at you to go
faster," she said. "You need permission to drink water and to go to the
bathroom. . . . " 
According to the labor committee, the plant operators don't allow sick
days or even let workers visit a health clinic, although fees to pay for
the clinic come from their wages. They are routinely subjected to
searches. Workers get 60 cents an hour, but new workers must labor for
three months at half that. 
One day, the young mother said, she stayed home because her child was
sick. Whe she returned the next day, the chief of production "grabbed me
by the shoulders, shook me violently, pushed me and hit me hard in the
thigh with his knee. . . . He shoved me again and tried to trip me. As I
ran away, he cursed at me. They fired me on Friday." Nike shirts sell
for about $70 in the U.S.