How Nike Affects the Planet, Animals, and Millions of People

How Nike Affects the Planet, Animals, and Millions of People Nike is a company that has been people’s preferred clothing and footwear retailer for decades. Unfortunately, these people probably did not know about the poor treatment of their workers in Indonesia. A couple years ago though, there were reports published on how badly the workers were treated and the public went crazy. People began boycotting Nike in crowds (Lutz, 2015). So many people refused to purchase anything from Nike that they had such a downfall in sales that they had to lay off some of their staff.

Lara Robertson (2018) states that, “soon after, the brand became the subject of an aggressive and sustained campaign by United Students against Sweat Shops. ” People now knew the horrible acts that Nike had committed and continued to commit and were making a stand and making sure that everyone knew about it. Timeline of Nikes Unethical ActsAt first Nike did not act unethically that we know of, but when prices of supplies started to rise, and Nike wanted cheaper labor they decided to push contractors to move to Indonesia, China, and Vietnam.

Get quality help now

WriterBelle

Verified writer

Proficient in: Nike

4.7 (657)

“ Really polite, and a great writer! Task done as described and better, responded to all my questions promptly too! ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

This is what brought about the unethical acts.

1991: Activist Jeff Ballinger documents the low wages and poor working conditions in Indonesia (Lutz, 2015). They create a code of conduct for people to follow on how to treat workers, but I did very little.

1992: Another article came out providing specific details on an Indonesian worker who worked for a Nike subcontractor for 14 cents an hour, less than Indonesia's minimum wage, and documented other abuses (Nisen, 2013).

1992-1993: There were people who protested at the Olympics about the unethicality of Nike. There were a few things that set off a wave of media attention on the unethical acts of Nike (Nisen, 2013).

1996: Nike realizes that it needs to do something to try to fix their bad rap. They decide to put a team together that is to do something to help factory workers.

1997: People are still outraged in Nikes effort to change, because they really aren’t changing they’re just trying to make it look like they are. People in sports try to change spokespeople’s minds and make them aware of the situations (Nison, 2013). A report came out about the abuse that happened by a Vietnamese sub-contractor who had women who didn’t have the correct shoes on run until they collapsed (Nison, 2013).

So many situations caused people to protest the company but specifically in this year there were many college students who did so.

1998: Nike realizes that they need to do something because the drop of their sales and the constant criticism that they are receiving is too much and they re having to lay off many workers (Nison, 2013). Finally, CEO Phil Knight makes a speech stating what they did and why it was wrong and what they are going to do to fix all the issues.

1999: Nike creates the Fair Labor Association to protect workers from being mistreated (Nison, 2013).

2002-2004: Nike starts to do factory audits and focuses on the more challenging ones by returning to do another audit. Human rights activists state that this helped some issues but didn’t fix all of them (Nison, 2013).

2005: Nike publishes list of all the factories it contracts with and they are the first in their industry to do this (Nison, 2013). They publish a report revealing conditions and pay in its factories and acknowledging widespread issues (Nison, 2013).

2011: There was a riot at an Indonesian factory by workers who were abused both physically and mentally and they wanted it to end.

2016: The report done in 2005 did not change a thing, it made it look like it did though. They are making slow action to fix the major issues that have been discussed such as wages. Nikes Factories in IndonesiaNike made sure that in the beginning, nobody could know about the sweatshops. In 2011, workers finally came out and told anyone and everyone about the abuse that they are enduring. The abuse was physical and mental for these workers. They were slapped, kicked, they were working in temperatures that were against regulation, they had things thrown at them, and the list goes on. The mental abuse was just as bad as the physical abuse. The workers were screamed at and they were threatened that they were never to question the management or else there will be consequences. The workers in Indonesia were working for as low as $0. 14 per hour (Lutz, 2015).

This is not something that families can live on, so this caused families to live in one-bedroom huts with no sanitation, not clean water, and limited to eat (Robertson, 2018). Now some might ask, why don’t they just quit? Well, they needed a job of some sort and they are limited on their options so instead of quitting or standing up for themselves they just endured it so that they could survive even though their lives were horrible.

Corrective Action Plan that could Correct these Issues. Nike knew the issues that needed to be corrected so they should have taken corrective actions to fix them. Then these actions should be monitored and managed so that workers are treated correctly all the time not just when an audit is happening. They should have done a documentary or something showing what the factories are like now and how much better they are than before so that people can see the changes and not just hear about them from a random source. They should continue to show their actions taken to fix all the horrible issues for years, not just when they are changing things. They should have continued to change things not just stop when one issue is fixed. Nikes Corrective Action Plan. Nike was selfish, and they only cared about money. If they would have made procedures when moving factories, they never would have had to go through all the hate. If they would have thought about their ethics and how the people in the factories feel, they never would have had the issues they did. They started to change problems after they were discovered by the public, what if the public never found out? I bet that they would still be doing the horrible things and there never would have been any sort of change. They made minimal changes but not enough to make the lives of factory workers that much better than before. Stakeholders. Stakeholders include factory workers and their families, factory management, consumers, customers, and Nike itself (Robertson, 2018). All the unethical practices that were done in Indonesia affected only the factory workers and their families.

The factory management were the ones who enforced the unethical behavior and so was Nike itself. Not until a certain point did customers and consumers even know about the unethical practices that were going on. People who invest in a company like Nike, that act very unethical, are also unethical in my opinion. Even if you didn’t know about the unethical procedures when you first invested in them, when you find out all your investments should stop. How can you show your support in a company like that? If that was your family and you were a worker I’m sure you wouldn’t want people supporting a company who does that to people. The people that are endorsing Nike are just as unethical as Nike itself. Instead of only being concerned about money, investigate a company before you endorse them. They may think they know what Nike is about but, they only see the money they will get out of wearing their clothing or their shoes. The people who are endorsed by Nike are making millions of dollars just by doing nothing. People in the factories in Indonesia are making less than $1. 00 an hour. I don’t understand how someone can know about that and not do a thing. People in Indonesia need a job, but they need fair and proper working conditions. ReferencesLutz, A. (2015, June 06). How Nike shed its sweatshop image to dominate the shoe industry.