Now on the Spot: Mining Industry

Mining Industry, Laggard on Worker Rights Abuses, Moving to Fore


First it was the garment/shoe industry epitomized by Nike that was in the hot seat. More recently it was the electronic gadget industry headed by Apple.

Now it is the global mining industry’s turn to come under scrutiny for its serious violations of worker rights. On March 4 – March 7, the world’s largest annual gathering of people, companies and organizations connected with mineral exploration will take place in Toronto, when the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada will seek to put the industry’s social responsibility at the front and center of the agenda.

Many mining multinationals operate very differently in developing countries from their behavior in home countries in North America and Australia, writes Paul Klein, the CSR reporter in Forbes. Klein lists some
issues to be explored in his article on “Why the Future of Mining Depends on Social Change”:

 How can companies improve social services for people impacted by mining operations?
 How will doing this support business objectives, such as increasing access to qualified help and reducing the risk of work stoppages?

To buttress his point, Klein quotes R. Anthony Hodge, president of the International Council on Mining and Metals: “It’s leadership of a different sort, very powerful but collaborative and inclusive, not domineering.”

Hodge conceded that there is s “minority” that strongly resists. Applying consumer pressure faces difficulties since the industry is made up of producers almost unknown to the public with no brand name equivalent to Nike or Apple. Read more!

Tiger Woods' complicity with Nike

After reading my article on the anti-sweatshop victory against Nike at the Unversty of Wisconsin (see posting below), a friend, Harry Kamberis, writes: “Never owned any Nike products and never will. What does [his endorsement of Nike] say about Tiger Woods?”

Good question. It is amazing how Tiger Woods has been shamed for his “private” life but has escapes opprobrium for his endorsement of Nike and his lucrative complicity with Nike in exploiting millions of men and women in sweatshops.

Woods seems insensitive to everything except golf and the millions it brings in endorsements. A total cad in private life but also in public life.

Another friend, Dan Turnquist, warns against a hasty proclamation of victory against Nike’s policies. He reminds that Nike can and does play “hardball with [universities] in terms of all the support it gives the athletic programs, free uniforms and all that. Not to mention buying off the coaches with lavish payments for endorsements. Nike does not give up easily.”


Print Page Read more!

The Durability of Nike’s Sweatshops

Nike is turning a blind eye to labor abuses in Vietnam factories that mass produce Nike’s athletic shoes and other sports equipment for export. That’s a finding of on-site research in Vietnam conducted after a strike last year by 20,000 workers in Nike’s supplier factories there.

A three-person team from Denmark that did the investigation spoke directly, and secretly, with the workers, including a low-level supervisor, “Mr. T,” who had presented the worker demand for a pay increase to management.

The Danish Consumer Council, which sponsored the investigation jointly with 10 other organisations, published a feature article on the research in its magazine. One specific finding is really nothing new: that the government/Communist Party apparatus of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has its own “union,” and is hostile to any organization and worker activity independent of the government/party-run union.

What is new in the report is evidence that the Nike’s business operation within the Communist system conflicts with Nike’s own code of conduct and tarnishes its own self-image as a decent company.

A company like Nike ought to “make sure that no workers are inappropriately punished for their participation in a strike,” says Tim Connor, labor rights coordinator for Oxfam/Australia.

In Vietnam, uniformed police, called in by management, successfully broke the strike through ruthless tactics that included firing 100 leaders of an underground movement that promoted it. (Nike says there were no firings.} According to an internal Nike document and the testimony of Mr. T and others, Nike stayed on the sidelines while the police quashed the strike and the movement.

On the surface, the strike was triggered only by the demand for a living wage. Yet, as usual in such circumstances, other grievances fueled the walkout. When a worker fails to meet her production quota, for example, she is hit with a 15% deduction of her monthly pay. Workers assemble shoes with toxic glue, with a bonus for tolerating headaches and other possible effects.

For more information on the conduct of Nike and other brand-name companies, see http://www.consumersinternational.org/.

I learned of the Danish report through one of the regular contributions that Jeff Ballinger makes to lists maintained by Oxfam Australia.

Print Page Read more!

Fighting Sweatshops, Recession or No Recession

In the midst of a global recession, isn’t it time to suspend campaigns against sweatshops? Not at all, says Jim Ready, a 10-year veteran in the struggle for worker rights.

In fact, he has intensified his anti- sweatshop campaign, Team Sweat, with new initiatives that include:
· Inserting an ad on Facebook that is attracting a thousand hits a day;
· Launching a new Weblog called Team Sweat.
· Working on a documentary that includes an interview with Nobelist Joseph Stiglttz.
· Planning a May Day demonstration in New York City.

That’s on top of work schedule already heavy with varied activities, all focused on Nike, the No. 1 apparel distributor in the world, which has its many wares produced by 800,000 workers in 700 factories in 52 countries throughout the world.

Keady can rattle off Nike statistics because he himself is a Nike shareholder and attended Nike’s shareholder meeting in Oregon in September last year. During the meeting he attempted to put on the record Nike's failure to pay a living wage, but management edited out most of the content of Ready's statement/query to the board of directors.

After the official meeting, Keady had a brief conversation with Mark Parker, CEO of Nike Inc., followed by a three-hour meeting with five members of Nike’s executive team. According to his Web report, he pushed hard on two key issues:

1. The current wages paid to Nike’s workers in Indonesia are not enough for these workers to meet their basic living needs. He based this claim partly on his own personal experience in 2000, when he and a colleague lived on $1 a day for two months. (See “Learning How You Survive on $1 a day.")

2. The ultimate goal of the campaign is to have Nike’s Indonesia workers become actual Nike employees, rather than subtracted workers.

There was a “lively discussion” covering a lot of ground, but not the issue of turning subcontracted workers into employees, an ideal that the executives dismissed by ignoring it. One result from that give-and-take was what Keady regarded as a commitment that members of Nike’s executive team would, sometime in the next months, visit Nike plants in Indonesia with Keady to hear Nike workers themselves make the case for increasing wages and holding negotiations for a collective bargaining contract. So far that joint inquiry has not taken place, although it may in July, when Keady will making be his latest fact-finding visit to Indonesia, where Nike still employs some 110,000 workers.

Keady remains optimistic. “We have momentum,” he says, in the context of his 10- year campaign.

In a phone conversation with Keady today, I wondered what motivates him to keep on. “A big part of it is my faith,” he says. He is grounded in a liberation theology that values working toward the kingdom of God in the here and now, through our daily work.

Keady is also energized by the sessions he has with groups of college students and others, 20 to 40 of them a year. These are interactive, starting with asking people to check the label of origin on the clothes they wear, followed by a multi-media presentation depicting the plight of the foreign workers, mostly young female, who make those clothes.

He finds that the typical audience is shocked by the facts. At the end of his most recent session, at Canisius College in Buffalo, he got a standing ovation at the end, and dozens of students approached him afterwards, wanting to get involved.

Those sessions are stimulating in another way. He hears challenging questions, the most recent centering on the recession and whether having a sweatshop job isn't better than having no job at all. He has thought through an insightful response. Its most telling part, in a nutshell, goes like this: Paying a living wage to those still working would have little effect on Nike’s revenues ($18,600,000,000 in 2008) and would aid the nation’s economic recovery by its multiplier effect throughout the economy.

The either/or question, Isn’t a sweatshop job better than no job at all?, has a seductive appeal, I find. Certainly, for an unemployed person (and dependents) a sweatshop job is better than no job, at least in the abstract, but not always in real life. What if the sweatshop is rife with sexual abuse? Or if sweatshop conditions endanger your health and safety?

Keady points out that Catholic social teaching is clear about this type of "choice." "Church teaching," he insists, "tells us that if a person, out of fear or desperation, accepts working conditions that they would not normally accept, then that is an injustice. If it is an injustice, then people of faith have a moral obligation to fight to end that injustice."

The either/or choice also has a policy dimension. Even if economic conditions are so bad that many persons have a sweatshop job as their only choice, should that grim reality determine the policies of governments and non-governmental groups?

That’s a common good issue, different from the issue of individual good. There is a difference, often slighted. Women of 55 with abusive husbands may have no choice except to stay married, but that should not require abandoning public or private efforts to end wife abuse.

Print Page Read more!