By Monica Wilson and Deborah Simmons
Arizona Daily Wildcat
April 13, 1998

Nike defense report flawed

To the Editor:

In the letter in the Apr. 8 Wildcat ("Setting the record straight on Nike"), Nike representative Vada Manager claims that Nike has been definitively cleared of its reputation as an abusive employer. The Dartmouth College report Manager refers to was issued by business students at arguable the most politically conservative campus in the U.S. It was released on Oct. 16, 1997, two days before a massive international protest of the company's sweatshop practices, clearly damage control from Nike's side.

The Dartmouth team explicitly avoided interviewing individual workers at Nike factories. As they explain without even the slightest sense of irony, "After initial discussions with Nike Vietnam management, it became evident to us that the factory workers would not be an 'objective' population to sample."

Dartmouth's report is replete with contradictions. They draw claims that are directly refuted by their own data. Buried deep within the appendices of the report, another picture emerges of life for Nike's workers than is given by Mr. Manager. Dartmouth's data shows that many Nike workers are paid below the legal minimum wage. The Dartmouth team apparently did not find this violation of Vietnamese law relevant or interesting enough to merit comment in the main report. The study did not look specifically at Nike workers when saying 54% owned VCRs and stereo equipment; they took random surveys of people living near Nike factories. In fact, Nike workers earn less than half the wages of workers in state owned factories in the area and 2/3 of wages earned at nearby factories of foreign firms. The few interviews conducted with Nike's workers in the report showed that they "very rarely accumulate personal savings for emergency purposes or for future expenditures such as education."

The Transnational Resource and Action Center (TRAC) takes a close look at the Dartmouth report. The TRAC report concludes, "Overall analysis of the [Dartmouth] team's report is that they earned a B+ for obfuscation and an F for reasoned analysis . . . the data highlight that both Nike's Code of Conduct and its stated commitment to the legal minimum wage are being violated." For the complete TRAC analysis of the report, see www.corpwatch.org.

April 15-18 are International Days of Action on Nike and labor rights. In conjunction with international actions, on Thursday, April 16, Students Against Sweatshops are sponsoring Christmas in April on the mall at 11:30 a.m., and a teach-in on Nike, free trade and labor rights at 6:30 p.m. in Room 281 of the Student Union. We invite everyone to come!

Monica Wilson
Anthropology and German senior

Deborah Simmons
Southwest Center