Nike official talks sweatshops

Despite the recent controversies over his company's labor practices, Simon Pestridge insists that Nike is just doing it right. Pestridge, a representative of Nike's Fair Labor Division, addressed a crowd of about 30 Wharton MBA students Wednesday afternoon in Vance Hall regarding the negative media coverage Nike has received in the past several years alleging unfair labor practices. Among the recent accusations against Nike: Workers in Vietnam allegedly worked 65 hours a week -- far more than is allowed by law -- for $10 a week, and workers at a Ho Chi Minh factory were allegedly exposed to carcinogens and 77 percent of employees suffered respiratory problems. Human rights groups have also consistently claimed that the company treats workers poorly while paying millions to star athletes to endorse its products. In the talk, sponsored by Students for Responsible Business, an MBA organization, Pestridge concentrated on Nike's most recent efforts to raise standards for workers in all of its approximately 350 contracted factories but also readily admitted that "some bad things happened that got reported in the press. Some were accurate, some were not." Nike does not deny that there were problems involving the exploitation of workers in Third World countries. They are simply trying to fix them, he said. "It's just something that people are going to associate with us," Pestridge said. Last May Nike released an aggressive labor initiatives campaign, which requires that all factories contracted by Nike comply with or exceed the Occupational Safety and Health Association's air quality standards and that no child younger than 16 be employed in apparel production and no one younger than 18 in footwear factories. Pestridge said that Nike's rigorous system of checks ensures that the new production codes are not violated. All factories have resident Nike employees that keep track of factory conditions and procedures on a daily basis as well as quarterly inspections and yearly reviews by an outside party, according to Pestridge. "We have about seven or eight different layers of oversight," he said. "We're pretty much on top of it." Nike's "Micro-Enterprise" program, designed to provide women who work in factories contracted by Nike with loans to create small businesses, has also been expanded. In addition, Pestridge said Nike has begun to require employees to take an education program in connection with its subsidiary factories. Programs are already in place in 11 different factories, a figure which Pestridge said will continue to increase. He also pointed out that despite Nike's laudable efforts to correct the problems criticized by the media, Nike "seems to be measured by one set [of standards] and other companies by another." Perhaps because of its high visibility, Nike has taken the fall for hundreds of other companies who have much more lax codes of conduct, or none at all, Pestridge added. After the talk, event organizer Tannaz Grant said she thought Pestridge "raised some really good issues."