Ahead of Nike’s record Olympic spend, investors and activists urge Nike to settle debt with workers

Ahead of Nike’s 2024 proxy statement release this week, an unprecedented number of Nike’s own investors are demanding that the brand pay garment workers in Thailand and Cambodia $2.2 million in legally owed wages and benefits. A group of 70 investors with more than $4 trillion in AUM have shown increasing frustration at Nike’s failure to remedy two separate violations of worker rights, with a resolution on the issue filed for this year’s annual meeting after Nike’s failure to meet basic industry standards to pay workers what they are owed.

The $2.2 million that investors and a coalition of more than 50 human rights groups urge Nike to pay, are owed to more than 4000 workers in Nike’s supply chain in Cambodia and Thailand. The Violet Apparel factory in Cambodia closed in July 2020, with all workers losing their jobs without being paid $1.4 million in legally owed wages and benefits. At the Hong Seng Knitting factory in Thailand an illegal wage theft scheme in 2020 deprived Burmese migrant workers of nearly $600,000 in legally mandated wages, which by now, with legally owed interests amounts to $800,000. Workers have been protesting since 2020, and sought the support from allies around the world when Nike ignored them. Despite protests all over the world, from US universities to Dutch shopping streets, and by very diverse allies, from Australian consumers to Croatian garment workers, Nike refuses to listen. 

Nike has been under huge pressure to ensure the workers have been paid from rights groups, investors, unions, and workers themselves and rather than ensuring they receive what they are owed, has instead put considerable energy into refusing responsibility for the workers. In the case of Violet Apparel, the brand refuses to acknowledge that the workers produced its product, despite clear evidence to the contrary. In the case of Hong Seng Knitting, the company falsely claims that workers consented to taking unpaid leave despite clear evidence of their coercion in being forced to sign documents they didn’t want to. Instead, Nike has been hiding behind social audit reports of companies they hired to confirm their side of the story without releasing the content of those reports despite multiple requests by labour rights advocates. 

A former warehouse manager at Ramatex’s Violet Apparel factory from 2010–2020 says that while Nike’s orders officially went to one of Ramatex’s model factories, it was well understood that most orders were redirected to Violet Apparel, which had worse working conditions and that workers were very aware they workers for Nike: “Of course we know what goods we were producing, this was a decade of our lives, 6 days a week! Does Nike think that because we are poor people who do not speak English that what so many of us say means nothing? They conducted an investigation but did not bother to speak to any of us. We worked for $7 a day to make Nike’s clothes, and they can’t even make sure that we are paid what we are owed.”

A new long-read published today by Clean Clothes Campaign and Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network explores the false arguments Nike has spun around these cases and debunks them with extensive proof. As over 50 civil society organisations already stated in an open letter one year ago, and as echoed by 70 of Nike’s own investors: the facts are simply not under dispute - Nike needs to make sure these workers are paid.   

Christie Miedema, campaign and outreach coordinator at Clean Clothes Campaign, said: “In the first quarter of 2024, Nike spent $1 billion on marketing, but it is refusing to cough up the mere $2.2 million that the workers who made its clothes are owed. Nike is spending ridiculous amounts of money to beat competition from new brands Hoka and On Running and not to lose any market among women and presenting itself ever more as a woke and inclusive company. But as long as their customers and investors see them denying justice to the women of colour in their supply chain this money is wasted. The best way for Nike to show it is a brand suitable for women of all intersections to wear is to start showing it actually cares about the women in its supply chain.”  

For more information please contact christie@cleanclothes.org