Nike, the international sports apparel and equipment manufacturer, has
stopped buying hand-stitched soccer balls from Saga Sports in Sialkot,
Pakistan. Nike complains that the supplier has failed to correct its
labour violations, including the use of child workers.
The company found Saga was outsourcing the stitching to homes in the
Sialkot area, where children were put to work. Nike objected to the use
of child labour on principle and to the absence of health and safety
controls in homes where the work was done.
In addition, Nike found labour, environmental and health and safety
violations in Saga workplaces. Trade unions and other employees spoke
of harassment, wrongful dismissal and underpayment of wages.
Mark Parker, Nike’s chief executive and president, said: ‘This contract
factory has persistently broken its commitments and irrevocably
breached its trust with us. Most importantly, the factory has failed
its employees. Rather than continue with Saga, we have decided to limit
our supply of hand-stitched soccer balls as we are developing new
sources with factories committed to upholding our standards and
treating workers fairly.’
Nike had conducted a six-month-long investigation into work conditions
and held repeated meetings with Saga executives to persuade them to
make changes. However, Hannah Jones, Nike’s corporate responsibility
vice-president, reported: ‘Remediation didn’t work. In fact, we saw a
further significant deterioration of working conditions due to a lack
of commitment by management to address the problems. We also are deeply
concerned about the broader conditions and practices we saw in
home-based settings.’
Nike is now talking to governmental, non-governmental and industry
stakeholders to get support for the workers involved and find ways of
improving labour standards in the area.
The company says the soccer teams and leagues it sponsors will not be
affected by the decision and it will try to maintain supplies to
retailers. It will continue to source hand-stitched and
machine-stitched footballs from several existing contract factories in
China and Thailand.
When revelations about child labour at factories in and around Sialkot
first emerged in the late 1990s Nike was said to be a bad offender, but
it has since been praised by charities for tackling the problem.
Samar Verma, an Oxfam senior policy adviser, said Nike’s decision to withdraw this work from Saga was ‘a very positive step in the right direction’, but he
added: ‘It’s a small step and the company needs to do more to ensure
that trade union rights are respected.’
Last year an Oxfam report criticized Nike for cutting orders to Asian
factories with established unions. It said the company should favour
suppliers that permit worker representation.
