nike sweatshop

In the mid 1990’s Nike started facing criticism after several articles were released showing the poor labor conditions of its workers in sweatshops in places like China, Japan, and other Asian countries. As early as 1993 reports started being released about the poor working conditions. One such report was a CBS exposé by Roberta Baskin describing the working conditions of the Indonesian women working in the factories, explaining that they were making only $1.30 a day. During the report she criticized Nike and its factories saying things like “To them, ‘Just Do It’ isn’t just a catchy ad slogan” (Baskin). Throughout the mid 1990’s many reports like this followed including two 1996 articles by Life Magazine and the New York Times, each of which also criticized Nike for its sweatshops. Following this exposure, Nike faced severe criticism from labor rights activists about the poor treatment of its workers. After this poor exposure Nike worked to clean up its image. What started out as marketing effort to clean up with image ended up transforming the company into an industry leader in ethical behavior.

Although Nike has made vast efforts to become a better company, their approach was completely wrong. The entire situation should never have happened in the first place. Nike wasn’t the only company that was outsourcing to poor countries for the cheap labor, however they were one of the companies that suffered the most for the poor treatment of their workers. They lost several contracts with colleges because of the poor image had come from this scandal and they had to do massive amounts of public relations in order to get their business back. All of this work could have been avoided if Nike had implemented a corporate responsibility code in the first place. It should not have taken a massive scandal like this in order for action to be taken.

Before the sweatshop scandal happened it was clear that Nike had a moral philosophy that was undoubtedly egoism. The company