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Working Conditions at Nike Inc.


Outsourcing was implemented into the business plan and from the beginning cheap labor and exploitation accompany the economic successful development from Nike (todayifoundout).
             Outsourcing is "a practice used by different companies to reduce costs by transferring portions of work to outside suppliers rather than completing it internally" (Investopedia).By manufacturing their products overseas (third world countries in particular) Nike is able to increase their efficiency in form of reduced wages. Besides the advantage to decrease labour costs it is more difficult to control the product quality while using outsourcing and to guarantee a certain level of working conditions (Van Dusen).
             After moving organized labour from Korea and Taiwan to cheaper places like China, Vietnam ,and Indonesia Nike got pointed out for using abusive labor in 1992 when Harper's Magazine published the article: "The New Free-Trade Heel: Nike's profits jump on the backs of Asian workers" (Nisen). In this article Jefrey Ballinger presented his research on a woman called Sadisah who was earning "14 cents per hour, $1.03 per day for a 7.5 hour workday" (Bullert 9). To produce one pair of Nike shoes worth 80$ Nike spends about 12 cents. Sadisah spend 63 hours working overtime where she received 2 extra cents per hour. "For an entire month of work – 6 days at 10.5 hours a day - her net earnings amounted only to about half the retail price of one pair of the athletic shoes she makes in the factory" (Bullert 9). As a reaction for the upcoming demonstration against Nike the company implemented the "Code of Conduct" in their statutes which is a explanation how all workers have to be treated and how the work has to look like. For example it says that Employees have to be age 16 or older, not forced labour is used, contractors do't discriminate the workers, harassment and abuse are not tolerated ,and that working hours are not excessive (not more than 60 hours a week) (Nike).


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