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Nike, rivals accused of labor violations

Women applying for work in one of the factories under contract with Nike Inc in China say they were made to take a pregnancy test and were not hired if the test came back positive, according to a study of factory conditions overseas.

Other violations at Nike factories abroad include verbal abuse, unaccounted overtime, illegal wage deductions, missing fire extinguishers, dirty toilets and inadequate lighting, the study found.

But the conditions are similar to those found at factories of other companies that have agreed to be monitored, said officials with the Fair Labor Association, which published its report after auditing 39 Nike factories last year.

The shoe giant, headquartered in a suburb of Portland, is one of 12 major brands -- including Nike rivals Reebok, Puma and Adidas-Salomon -- that have agreed to undergo the monitoring process by the Washington, DC-based watchdog group.

The group's report cites violations at 10 companies last year, ranging from minor sanitary issues to more serious wage and harassment violations.

"There are problems in every single factory. That's the easy part," said Margaret Hawley, monitoring program coordinator for the Fair Labor Association. "The hard part is what are these companies doing to fix them?"

Caitlin Morris, senior manager for global issues at Nike, said the company takes each and every single violation seriously, following up with training sessions for its overseas work force. But she stressed that all manufacturers working with overseas contractors are "dealing with the same kinds of issues."

Investigators arrived unannounced at the Nike plant, which employs 1,700 workers in China, on Aug. 14 last year. Female workers interviewed by the monitors said they were required to take a pregnancy test. If they were found to be pregnant, the factory would not hire them.

Workers also said that if they were late to work more than three times, managers would deduct wages equal to one day's pay. Supervisors yelled at workers, toilets in the women's dormitory were unclean and the factory had not allowed the union to organize.

Auret van Heerden, the president and CEO of the Fair Labor Association, said wage violations are often a problem in China because there are more workers than jobs, but pregnancy discrimination is much more common in Latin America, where factories cannot afford to pay maternity benefits.

According to Nike officials quoted in the report, pregnancy screening is not part of their hiring process, but managers at the Chinese factory do test employees monthly.

The report quotes factory managers as saying the testing is in an effort to comply with Chinese labor law, which prohibits women who are more than seven months pregnant from working overtime.

Nike contends the female workers interviewed by the auditors may have been "confused" by the purpose of the monthly screen, the report says.

Part of their remediation effort, according to the report, includes posting an announcement on the factory bulletin board, informing workers of the purpose of the screen.

At the same factory, Nike's compliance team held a training session to teach supervisors not to yell at workers. And safety issues were addressed as well, the report says.

Nike is far from alone among the 12 companies surveyed.

In Malaysia, at a factory used by both Patagonia and Nordstrom, workers reported being verbally abused. At a Reebok factory in China, monitors found that only 51 of 851 workers were receiving pension, injury, unemployment and medical insurance benefits.

At factory used by Adidas, five randomly chosen employees were found to have worked more than two months straight, without a single day off. Thirty percent of workers at an Eddie Bauer garment plant in China received less than the minimum wage.
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