Sportswear giants Nike Inc and Adidas-Salomon have taken steps to shed their sweatshop image in Indonesia but employees are still overworked and underpaid, a leading aid agency said.
Australia-based Oxfam Community Aid Abroad released a report yesterday saying the rival companies had responded to international pressure from rights groups and aid agencies to improve working conditions, but had not done enough.
"Our feeling is that changes have occured, but they still fall well short of pulling workers out of poverty or providing them with safe conditions or protecting their rights to have unions which we see as the key issues," Timothy Connor, author of the report, "We Are Not Machines," said by telephone from Sydney.
"There have been improvements in terms of a reduction in sexual harassment, the availability of sick leave and a reduction in the level of humiliation against workers, but they are still shouted at when they work too slowly," Connor said.
The report, conducted between July last year and January 2002, is based on the accounts of 35 workers from four factories producing for both companies in West Java.
The report said full time wages as low as US$2 a day meant workers with children had to send them to distant villages to be cared for by relatives or had to go into debt to meet basic needs.
The average minimum wage in Jakarta is around US$50 per month.
The report said workers feared active union involvement could lead to dismissal, being jailed or physically assaulted.
Nike executive Chris Helzer said the report was not an accurate reflection of work conditions in Indonesia because of the small sample size.
"Interviewing 35 workers out of 110,000 workers in a country is not at all statistically significant or representative," Helzer, Nike director for external affairs Southeast Asia, said.
"On wages, entry level workers are probably paid five to 10 percent more than the [average minimum wage] amount mandated by the government," he added.
Nike, the world's number one athletic shoe company, has 11 factories in Indonesia which produce between 45 million to 55 million pairs of shoes a year. Only 2 percent go to the local market, while most end up in the US.
While Helzer declined to comment on specific cases of verbal or physical abuse cited in the report, he said one of Nike's main problems at its factories in developing countries was the lack of qualified local managers.
Adidas worker Ngadinah, 30, said conditions at her factory were hot and crowded but felt the negotiating power of her union, the Footwear Workers' Association (PERBUPAS), was slowly growing.
"The bathroom is very smelly and workers are forced to work late into the night when the company needs to meet deadlines," Ngadinah said.
Ngadinah, secretary of the union and who was featured in the report, is paid a base monthly salary of 590,000 rupiah (US$59.38).
"Just recently the company has given us the chance to have training for members, before, this was not possible," she said.
Ngadinah was jailed for a month last year for organising a strike that was joined by most of her 8,000 factory colleagues whose demands included being paid overtime at the legal rate.
The report said Nike had also made improvements on union matters.
Taiwan’s Lee Chia-hao (李佳豪) on Sunday won a silver medal at the All England Open Badminton Championships in Birmingham, England, a career best. Lee, 25, took silver in the final of the men’s singles against world No. 1 Shi Yuqi (石宇奇) of China, who won 21-17, 21-19 in a tough match that lasted 51 minutes. After the match, the Taiwanese player, who ranks No. 22 in the world, said it felt unreal to be challenging an opponent of Shi’s caliber. “I had to be in peak form, and constantly switch my rhythm and tactics in order to score points effectively,” he said. Lee got
EMBRACING TAIWAN: US lawmakers have introduced an act aiming to replace the use of ‘Chinese Taipei’ with ‘Taiwan’ across all Washington’s federal agencies A group of US House of Representatives lawmakers has introduced legislation to replace the term “Chinese Taipei” with “Taiwan” across all federal agencies. US Representative Byron Donalds announced the introduction of the “America supports Taiwan act,” which would mandate federal agencies adopt “Taiwan” in place of “Chinese Taipei,” a news release on his page on the US House of Representatives’ Web site said. US representatives Mike Collins, Barry Moore and Tom Tiffany are cosponsors of the legislation, US political newspaper The Hill reported yesterday. “The legislation is a push to normalize the position of Taiwan as an autonomous country, although the official US
CHANGE OF TONE: G7 foreign ministers dropped past reassurances that there is no change in the position of the G7 members on Taiwan, including ‘one China’ policies G7 foreign ministers on Friday took a tough stance on China, stepping up their language on Taiwan and omitting some conciliatory references from past statements, including to “one China” policies. A statement by ministers meeting in Canada mirrored last month’s Japan-US statement in condemning “coercion” toward Taiwan. Compared with a G7 foreign ministers’ statement in November last year, the statement added members’ concerns over China’s nuclear buildup, although it omitted references to their concerns about Beijing’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong. Also missing were references stressing the desire for “constructive and stable relations with China” and
Foreign ministers of leading Western democracies sought to show a united front in Canada yesterday after seven weeks of rising tensions between US allies and US President Donald Trump over his upending of foreign policy on Ukraine and imposing of tariffs. The G7 ministers from the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the US, along with the EU, convened in the remote tourist town of La Malbaie, nestled in the Quebec hills, for two days of meetings that in the past have broadly been consensual on the issues they face. Top of the agenda for Washington’s partners would be getting a
RSS