[Prepared by Karen Collins, author of Exploring Business]
This assignment provides you with an opportunity to strengthen your writing and/or debating skills and form opinions on current issues affecting a major corporation.
Preparation for the Assignment
This assignment solicits your opinions on Nike’s reaction to labor practice problems in a
Malaysian contract factory. To complete this assignment, you should read the following (which are all attached) and watch the referenced UTube video.

Nike Case: Jump Starting Corporate Responsibility

Nike Press Release, August 1, 2008: Nike, Inc. Statement Regarding Hytex Contract
Factory

Watch video (Nike Contractor in Malaysia using forced labour) of Malaysian factory and its employees filmed by undercover crew and posted on YouTube at this URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qzm7MCusGM

Read the following articles: o Malaysian Factory Violates Major Rights o Nike Supports Migrant Workers in Malaysia o No Violations of Labour Law in Nike factory o CRO (Corporate Responsibility Officer) Magazine Publishes CRO's 100 Best
Corporate Citizens 2008 and Names Nike No. 3
Instructions
If your instructor wants you to write a memo, you should use the attached Memo Format for this assignment. Your memo should not exceed two pages. It should be single spaced (with a double space between paragraphs and bulleted items).
If your instructor wants you to prepare to debate the issues, follow the steps outlined in the attached article, “How to prepare for a debate.”
Scenario
Because you love surfing and scuba diving (the use of s elfc ontained u nderwater b reathing a pparatus), you were understandably delighted when you were promoted to manager of the
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Honolulu NikeTown. It’s a big step up from your current position as assistant manager of the
Chicago NikeTown. Plus, your quality of life promises to improve immensely: Not only will you be getting plenty of practice in your favorite sports, but you’ll be basking in the sun on Wikiki.
On your very first day of work at the Honolulu store, you overhear a customer saying that Nike had abused workers in one of its contract factories. You had recently attended a national sales meeting at Nike’s headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon, and you remember hearing Hana Jones,
Vice President of Corporate Responsibility at Nike, speak about the recognition the company recently received when it was voted #3 in corporate responsibility. You also found her talk on
Jump Starting Corporate Responsibility interesting. (You were pleased to see that her talk was written up as a Nike case for Introduction to Business students around the country.)
You decided to talk with some of your employees to learn if they knew why the customer made the statement that Nike had abused workers in one of its contract factories. Your employees were unaware of the situation so you decided to go online and see what you could find. You felt fortunate that it was relatively easy to determine that the customer’s comment stemmed from negative publicity about recent labor practice problems in a Nike contract factory in Malaysia.
You found some interesting articles about the situation from various sources. Plus you found a video of the factory and its employees that was posted on YouTube.
You believe it is important that they know what has happened so you decide it’s time to educate your employees about the situation and provide your opinion on the issues. After briefly explaining the situation, you plan to provide your opinion on the following:
 Are Nike’s proposed actions reasonable? Why/why not?
 Are Nike’s actions similar to those taken in the past or has the company learned from its mistakes? Why/why not?

Is Nike a good (or bad) corporate citizen? Why/why not?
As Nike managers are encouraged to share their opinions about issues, you feel you can be honest with your employees. In fact, it is Nike’s tolerance for openness that has kept you with the company for ten years.
You’ll start first thing tomorrow. Surf’s up today.
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Memo Writing and Debating Materials:
How to Write a Memo
Grading sheet for memo assignment
How to prepare to debate
Nike Case Materials:
Nike Case: Jump Starting Corporate Responsibility
Nike Press Release:
August 1, 2008 (Beaverton, Oregon): Nike, Inc. Statement Regarding Hytex Contract
Factory
Articles on the Malaysian Contract Factory and Nike’s Corporate Citizen Award: o Malaysian Factory Violates Major Rights o Nike Supports Migrant Workers in Malaysia o No Violations of Labour Law in Nike factory o CRO (Corporate Responsibility Officer) Magazine Publishes CRO's 100 Best
Corporate Citizens 2008 and Names Nike No. 3
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Memos are effective at conveying fairly detailed information. To help you understand how to write a memo, read the following sample memorandum.
TO : Introduction to Business Students
FROM : Introduction to Business Instructors
DATE : August 27, 2009
RE : Writing Effective Memos
_______________________________________________________________________________
As college students, you’ll be expected to analyze real-world situations, research issues, form opinions, and provide support for the conclusions that you reach. In addition to engaging in classroom discussions of business issues, you’ll be asked to complete a number of written assignments. For these assignments, we’ll give you a business situation and ask you to analyze the issues, form conclusions, and provide support for your opinions.
In each assignment, you’ll use the memo format , which is the typical form of written communication used in business. Writing in memo format means providing a complete but concise response to the issues at hand. Good memo writing demands time and effort.
Because the business world expects you to possess this skill, we want to give you an opportunity to learn it now.
Guidelines
Here are a few helpful hints to get you started on the right track:
The format should follow the format of this memo . Note the guide headings —”TO,” “FROM,” “DATE,” and “RE.” [By the way, “RE” stands for “in regards to”.] We also include a line across the page to signal the beginning of the body of the memo.
Keep paragraphs short and to the point. The trick is being concise yet complete—summarizing effectively. Paragraphs should be single-spaced, flush against the left margin, and separated by a single blank line.
Accent or highlight major points . Use underlining, bullets, or bold type for desired effect (taking care not to overdo it).
Use short headings to distinguish and highlight vital information. Headings keep things organized, provide structure, and make for smooth reading.
Headings (and, as appropriate, subheadings) are an absolute must .
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Your title (the “Re” line) should reflect the contents of your memo: It should let the reader know why he or she should read it. Keep the title short—a phrase of a few words, not a sentence.
Be persuasive and convincing in your narrative. You have limited space in which to get your key points across. State your positions clearly. And again, be concise (a memo is not a term paper).
If you have any additional information in the form of exhibits
—charts, tables, illustrations, and so forth—put them in an attachment . Label each item
“Exhibit 1,” “Exhibit 2,” and the like. Give each one a title, and be sure to reference them in your narrative (“As shown in Exhibit 1, the annual growth rate in sales has dropped from double-digit to single-digit levels”).
Finally, staple multiple pages for submission. Needless to say, be sure to proofread for correct spelling and punctuation. Don’t scribble in changes by hand: They’re sloppy and leave a bad impression.
Final Comment
Now that you’ve read our memo, we expect you to follow the simple guidelines presented in it.
This form of communication is widely practiced in business, so take advantage of this opportunity to practice your memo-writing skills.
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Business 1 Memo Evaluation
[Note: I also have an excel version of this grading sheet]
I. Introduction and Conclusion (15 points)
Introduction: The writer says what he or she is going to say. The writer is specific about what will be accomplished in the memo. It is clear who is writing to whom and why.
Conclusion: The writer provides an overall conclusion that is clearly related to the purpose of the memo and the prior evidence in the memo. The conclusion pulls together the main points without simply repeating them.
Points earned: __________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
II.
Flow and Structure (15 points)
Flow: Writer connects points so there is a clear flow from one idea to the next.
Structure: The main idea in each section is clear and focused. Introductory sentences and/or headings are clear and precise and indicate to the reader the main point of that paragraph, section, or list of bulleted items.
Points earned: ___________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
III. Substance, Support and Application of research (25 points)
Substance: The writer does what he or she said would be done in the introduction.
Support: Opinions and conclusions are supported. Specific examples are used to support the main points. The relevance of the examples to the main points is clear.
Application of research: The research is used to support what the writer wants to say. Statements are accurate.
Points earned: _____________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
IV. Mechanics and Style (15 points)
Tone and style: The memo reflects the appropriate level of formality. The writer demonstrates clear sentence structure and word choice for the intended audience. The memo reads like a memo.
Grammar and spelling: The memo is free from errors in grammar, spelling and mechanics. Memo is proofread.
Points earned: ________________________
____________________________________________________________________________________________
V. Overall (30 points )
Reasoning: The memo makes sense. Reasoning is sound. The logic is clear. Thoughts are well organized.
Conclusions reached are valid.
Readability: The memo is interesting, engaging, informative and a pleasure to read. It provides valuable information to the reader.
Points earned: _________________________
TOTAL POINTS EARNED: _________________ GRADE: ________________%
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How To Do Just About Everything
http://www.ehow.com/how_4490531_prepare-debate.html
It's not just Presidential candidates that need to know how to debate
Chances are at some time in your life you have had a debate. It may have been at school or work or even at home. Were you prepared for the debate? Here are some steps to take to prepare yourself better for your next debate.
1.
Step 1
The number one key to preparing for a debate is putting the time into researching your side of the argument. Having an opinion isn't enough to be effective in a debate. You need to be able to have strong supporting materials for your side of the debate.
2.
Step 2
Make sure you include relevant facts that many others would not have already known.
People want to hear facts that they didn't already know. The more related relevant facts you include the stronger your presentation becomes.
3.
Step 3
Learn how to effectively communicate your positions. You may have a great position on a certain subject, but if you can't effectively communicate that to an audience it won't matter in a debate. Practice in front of others and even in front of a mirror. Make sure you
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look confident because no one will buy an argument from someone who isn't confident themselves.
4.
Step 4
Train yourself to fully respect the other debater. Nothing turns someone off more than a debater who just won't allow the other person to get in a word. Even if you are completely convinced you are right, you must give the other person time to speak their mind as well.
5.
Step 5
Prepare to have a rebuttal to the arguments that the other person will make. Many times you can know what they will say ahead of time and prepare yourself with facts that contradict their argument.
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Nike Case
Jump Starting Corporate Responsibility
There was a time when Nike came under severe criticism for labor practices in the Asian factories with which it contracted to manufacture its products. Now, however, Nike is acknowledged as a leader in corporate responsibility initiatives. How did this transformation come about? How did Nike progress through the five stages of corporate responsibility?
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The Defensive Stage
In the 1990s, Nike was heavily criticized for alleged sweatshop conditions in some of the foreign-owned factories that manufactured its products. Critics charged that many workers were underage and that most were underpaid and subjected to poor working conditions. Nike was repeatedly ridiculed in the Doonesbury comic strip, and founder Phil Knight was taunted in an interview by documentary filmmaker Michael Moore in The Big One
, an exposé of irresponsible
(and sometimes unconscionable) shenanigans in corporate America. Some consumers boycotted
Nike products, activists groups condemned the company’s labor policies, and students on a number of campuses staged demonstrations to protest Nike’s labor practices.
Nike’s initial reaction was defensive. On the one hand, explained top management, Nike couldn’t control the factories because it didn’t own them. At the same time, Nike spokespeople hastened to add, Nike managers were in the factories on a daily basis to ensure that owners were complying with Nike’s labor standards and abiding by its code of conduct, which set down rules for the fair treatment of workers. Company representatives also noted that Nike routinely recruited independent inspectors to check compliance with labor practices. They pointed out the various ways in which Nike improved the lives of the factory workers and helped the countries in which it did business. Besides, they explained, Nike products were manufactured under better factory conditions than competitors’ products, so why weren’t competitors being criticized?
The one thing that Nike did not address was the fact that there were problems in the factories.
The Compliant Stage
Before long, however, Phil Knight and other top executives recognized the inadequacy of their response. Nike acknowledged that there were unacceptable incidents in a number of factories and admitted that there was a good deal of room for improvement in working conditions. Some had employed underage workers, some were poorly ventilated, and workers in others were exposed to toxic chemicals. In a 1998 speech to the National Press Club, Knight clarified Nike’s obligation to workers at the factories with which it did business. Anybody, he declared, who makes a Nike product will be considered a Nike employee; Nike will treat them as if it owned the factories at which they work. He pledged to improve working conditions and described several new initiatives designed to carry out his pledge:
 The minimum age for new workers in Nike’s shoe factories was raised to 18 and to 16 in
 apparel factories.
Air-quality controls were brought up to U.S. standards.
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

Monitoring programs were expanded to involve non-governmental organizations.
Education programs were expanded to offer government-accredited middle- or high-school education as well as vocational training.
A new Labor Practices Department was established to oversee the implementation of these initiatives and monitor the compliance of factory owners. Whenever a problem was identified,
Nike took it upon itself to find a solution. At a Korean-owned factory in Indonesia, for example,
Nike responded to management-labor conflict by requiring Korean managers to participate in cultural-diversity training. The company also increased its level of public communication regarding the treatment of factory workers.
The new goal was informing the public about the positive efforts that the company was making, and Nike expected the public to respond favorably to this public-relations blitz. Company executives were surprised, however, to discover that the strategy wasn’t working. The public, it seems, was not buying Nike’s story.
The Managerial Stage
Thus, despite its conscientious efforts to respond to public criticism, Nike’s reputation in the labor-practice arena didn’t get much better. Top managers, especially Knight, were frustrated, and after British TV aired a highly critical documentary about the company, Knight put together a team composed of both senior managers and outsiders to find out why the company was having so much trouble complying with its own labor standards.
Rather than the actions of factory owners, however, the labor-compliance team was charged with examining the firm’s own behavior. What they found was that the company’s pay-incentive system for procurement managers—those responsible for getting Nike products manufactured and into inventory—actually worked against Nike’s labor-conditions policies: When they needed shoes in a hurry, managers were willing to look the other way when factory owners took questionable measures—such as requiring excessive overtime—to deliver products on time. So
Nike altered the incentive system to reward managers when the factories under their authority complied with the company’s code of conduct. Relieved of external pressure to meet unrealistic production quotas, factory owners pushed their workers less vigorously, and conditions at the factories improved. Obviously, Nike had learned two important lessons from this experience:
(1) Labor-compliance issues can’t be addressed in a vacuum, and (2) managers and workers at all levels must be held accountable for meeting corporate responsibility goals.
Nike also realized that its hard-earned reputation could be easily damaged by any further failure to ensure that working conditions adhered to company directives. As a result, it instituted an intensive program for monitoring working conditions in its factories. Headed by the then VP of
Compliance, Dusty Kidd, the compliance team consists of more than 90 people based in 21 countries. The team’s goal is to inspect 25 percent to 33 percent of all active Nike contract factories each year.
Nike also relies on the Fair Labor Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting international labor standards and improving working conditions worldwide, to provide it with an external perspective on working conditions in its contract factories. The organization, which includes Nike and other leading footwear and apparel companies, as well as some 200 colleges
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and universities, has established an industry-wide code of conduct and monitoring system, and works to ensure that products bearing member names are not made with sweatshop labor.
The Strategic Stage
Over time, as Nike recognized the long-term value of treating workers fairly, fair-labor practices have become an important component of the company’s business model. As working conditions in its factories improved, it became increasingly clear that the company had turned an important corner. Back in 1998, Knight had been forced to acknowledge that “the Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitrary abuse.” Seven years later, the company was named one of the top-100 corporate citizens by Business Ethics magazine. By
2007, the company had moved up the list to number 3.
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The Civil Stage
The story could have ended there: Nike could have taken its bows and enjoyed its newly won status as a model corporate citizen. It could have directed its efforts inward and focused its energies on its own business initiatives. Instead, however, it elected to take a leadership role in driving changes in working conditions in the footwear and apparel industries. The industry still faces a number of labor issues, including excessive hours and low wages that can best be addressed through collaborative efforts by various stakeholders groups: multinational corporations, factory owners, nongovernmental organizations, and governments.
Unfortunately, collaboration among stakeholder groups, many of which have broad stakes that cut across company boundaries, isn’t feasible unless companies are willing to share information about the conditions under which their products are manufactured. Most firms, however, are reluctant to take this step. Some, in fact, have declined to disclose the names of the factories with which they do business. Nike, however, was willing to take a first bold step: In the spring of
2005, it posted a Workers & Factories page on its Web site, listing the names of its 700-plus contract factories. As part of the same comprehensive Responsibility Report, it provided a summary of information on the working conditions at its contract factories, suggesting that other firms in the industry follow suit.
So how will these initiatives help the industry and the people around the world who work in it?
To answer this question, we first need to know how things work now. Let’s say that a factory in
Vietnam makes shoes for three different athletic-footwear companies. Each product is made in a separate, designated part of the factory. Why? So that proprietary information, such as product styles and quantities produced, remains confidential. Because they’re under contract to different companies, workers in different parts of the factory are subject to different codes of conduct.
Thus, behavior that’s tolerable in one section of the factory might be unacceptable in another.
Each of the three footwear companies will send monitors to the factory (usually at different times), but they don’t share the information with each other. Obviously, much of the monitoring work will be redundant, with duplication of effort inflating costs for both footwear companies and factory owners. Perhaps more important, if a problem does exist, the three companies can’t join forces in getting the factory owner to take action.
But what happens if other firms follow Nike’s lead in publicizing factory names and locations.
Companies could then work together to establish a common code of conduct. Monitoring responsibilities and findings could be shared, and every company using a particular factory could
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exert joint pressure on the owner to correct unfavorable working conditions. In the long run, such collaborative effort would improve the lives of workers around the globe. They would also be valuable to two other groups: compliant factories, who could gain a competitive advantage from the combination of beneficial publicity and improved operations, and nongovernmental organizations, who could verify data provided by multinationals concerning the labor and environmental situations at factories making their products.
Many companies will continue to resist following Nike’s lead, but they’ll undoubtedly come in for public scrutiny. Because Nike has seen fit to disclose so much information, other firms will have a harder time claiming that secrecy is essential to competitive success. In fact, Nike’s move toward greater transparency could have profound implications not only for the athletic-shoe and
-apparel industries, but for global manufacturing overall.
Phil Knight tells the story of Nike’s path to leadership in the realm of global working conditions in an introductory letter to Nike’s 2004 Responsibility Report. The first step is taken behind closed doors, where Nike works to upgrade conditions in its own factories. Among other things, executives draft a code of conduct and require factories to switch from toxic to water-based solvents. In the next chapter, however, Nike finds itself on the blunt end of criticism for sweatshop conditions in its contract factories, and its first response is a defensive misstep. Before long, however, it shifts its approach and actively addresses the issue of working conditions in contract factories.
Chapter 3 focuses on the development of monitoring programs, and in Chapter 4 (which is still in progress), Nike publishes its Workers & Factories list, and we find the company mapping out a plan to engage industry stakeholders in collaborative efforts to improve factory conditions around the world. “To write that next chapter,” says Knight, “we and others involved in this discussion are going to need to see common standards emerge.
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Endnotes:
1.
On the stages of corporate responsibility and Nike’s progression through them, see Simon
Zadek, “The Path to Corporate Responsibility,”
Harvard Business Review , December
2004, 1-9.
2.
“100 Best Corporate Citizens 2007,”
Business Ethics Online , Spring 2008, at http://www.business-ethics.com/BE100_all (August 7, 2009).
3.
“A Message from Phil Knight,”
FY04 Nike Corporate Responsibility Report ,
Nikebiz.com
, 2005 (September 22, 2005), at www.nike.com/nikebiz/nikebiz.jhtml?page=29&item=fy04.
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Nike Press Release: August 1, 2008
NIKE, Inc. Statement Regarding Hytex Contract Factory
(From the media section of the Nikebiz.com Web site)
01 August, 2008 Beaverton, OR (01 August , 2008) - Nike has completed its initial investigation into claims of unacceptable living conditions, withholding of worker passports and garnishing of wages at Hytex, a Malaysian contract factory. Our investigation confirms serious breaches of
Nike’s Code of Conduct at the Hytex Factory.
Nike takes these issues very seriously and is taking immediate action to protect the rights of workers in its Malaysian supply chain. We are committed to comprehensively addressing the issues identified at Hytex and to continued follow-up to help ensure changes are lasting.
Nike has taken decisive action and has required Hytex to make the following non-negotiable and immediate changes:
1. All current migrant workers will be reimbursed for fees associated with employment including but not limited to recruiting fees paid to agents and worker permit fees.
2. Going forward, any and all fees associated with employment will be paid by the factory as a cost of doing business.
3. Any worker who wishes to return home will be provided with return airfare, irrespective of their contract requirements.
4. The majority of housing has been found to be unacceptable. All workers will be transitioned into new Nike-inspected and approved housing within 30 days. This transition has already begun.
5. All workers will have immediate and total free access to their passports. No restrictions.
6. Workers will have access to a 24-hour Nike hotline should they be denied access to their passports by factory management. All claims will be promptly investigated.
Communication to the workers of these changes will be delivered verbally as well as posted in all communal areas in all appropriate languages.
In the next 10 days, Nike will review its entire Malaysian contract factory base and require factories to institute these same policies.
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MSNBC.com
Nike: Malaysian factory violates major rights
Workers forced to live in filthy conditions; company plans to take action
The Associated Press updated 2:56 p.m. ET, Fri., Aug 1, 2008
PORTLAND, Ore. - Nike Inc. said Friday that it has found major worker rights violations at one of its Malaysian contract factories, including squalid living conditions, garnished wages and withheld passports of foreign workers.
The investigation began more than a week ago following a report of "human trafficking on a major scale" of foreign workers at the factory by Australia's Channel 7.
Nike said its investigation confirms there are serious breaches of its code of conduct and has taken numerous steps to immediately protect the workers.
Hannah Jones, Nike's vice president for social responsibility, said she would not qualify the violations as human trafficking but said the investigation is ongoing.
"This isn't about definitions, this [is] about action on the ground to help these workers," Jones said.
About 1,200 employees work at the Hytex factory, which has produced T-shirts for Nike for 14 years.
Because of a shortage of labor in Malaysia and poor employment opportunities in their home countries, a recent influx of workers have come from Bangladesh and other areas into Malaysia.
Nike confirmed many of the recent migrant laborers paid a fee in their home country to agents to get the jobs. And once in Malaysia, the factory held their passports.
Their wages were also withheld until a $375 foreign worker fee the Malaysian government requires from the factory is repaid. Nike says the fee is less than a quarter of their average annual income.
The workers were also forced to live in cramped, filthy factory-provided housing.
Nike said all workers are being transferred to Nike-inspected and approved housing, roughly 100 have already been moved and the transition will be complete within a month.
All workers will be reimbursed for any fees and going forward, the fees will be paid by the factory. All workers will have immediate access to their passports and any worker who wishes to return home will be provided return airfare.
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Nike said it last investigated the factory in February and found poor record-keeping and management issues but said the influx of workers had not occurred yet and the housing was not identified as an issue.
Nike said it is reviewing its entire Malaysian contract factory base within the next 10 days and requires its factories there to institute the same policies.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25970840/wid/17621070/
© 2009 MSNBC.com
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http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=13766 By WILLIAM BOOT
Thursday, August 7, 2008
BANGKOK — American sportswear manufacturer Nike says it is carrying out an urgent reassessment of more than 30 factories in Malaysia to which it contracts production after it found one of them had mistreated foreign workers and withheld wages.
The company said it had found “serious breaches of Nike’s code of conduct” at a factory run by Malaysia’s Hytex Group.
Nike investigated the factory, in a northern suburb of Kuala Lumpur, after disclosures broadcast by the Australian TV station Channel 7.
It confirmed that 1,150 workers—from Burma, Bangladesh and Vietnam— were housed in bad conditions, had their passports confiscated and the equivalent of at least US $30 a month docked from their wages. It some cases, this was more than 10 percent.
The Hytex Group, which describes itself as the leading garment manufacturer in Kuala
Lumpur, has declined to comment, but the Malaysian government via the human resources ministry denied the allegations.
The ministry insisted that passports were kept legally by the company for “safety,” and said the company had broken no labor laws and legally deducted money from the workers pay as an immigration “levy.”
But Nike said these policies were not acceptable.
“Nike has required Hytex to make the following non-negotiable and immediate changes: All current migrant workers will be reimbursed for fees associated with employment, including but not limited to recruiting fees paid to agents and worker permit fees,” said a company statement.
“Any and all fees associated with employment will be paid by the factory as a cost of doing business. The majority of housing has been found to be unacceptable. All workers will be transitioned into new Nike-inspected and approved housing within 30 days.”
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The government ministry said it “needed to conduct further investigations” into the accommodation issue, but stressed that companies were not obliged by Malaysian labor law to provide lodgings for foreign workers.
Nike has also said that any worker at the Hytex factory who wishes to return home will be provided with return airfare “irrespective of their contract requirements.”
The Hytex Group consists of nine companies, including at least one overseas, in Cambodia.
The Kuala Lumpur factory makes T-shirts for Nike.
The allegations are not the first concerning foreign workers in Malaysia.
According to several international NGOs, Malaysia has as many as 2 million migrant workers—both legal and illegal—from several countries of Asean, the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations, plus Bangladesh, Pakistan and southern India.
The human rights organization Amnesty International says of Malaysia in its 2008 global report: “Mass arrests of migrant workers, refugees and asylum-seekers by the People’s
Volunteer Corps [a government recruited civilian armed corps known as Rela from its Malay acronym] continued.
“According to a government news agency, 24,770 migrants had been detained by Rela as of
August 2007.
“Migrant workers were also subjected to psychological and physical abuse by agencies and employers. They were often denied equal access to benefits and protections guaranteed to
Malaysian workers, including maternity provisions, limits on working hours and holidays.”
There have been reports that the Malaysian authorities plan a major deportation push this month against illegal workers, but a local NGO, Malaysian Migrant Care, has urged the government to legalize migrant labor instead because many large domestic companies— especially in the palm oil and rubber plantations industry—are short of workers.
"These companies depend heavily on migrant workers because few Malaysians are willing to work on plantations,” said MMC’s coordinator Alex Ong in a recent statement to media.
Human rights agencies have expressed pleasant surprise at Nike’s firm statements of support for the Hytex migrant workers given that the US company itself has come under international criticism in the past for condoning poor conditions in many contract factories in Asia.
Nike contracts production of clothes and sports shoes to factories in Vietnam, China,
Thailand, the Philippines, Pakistan and India, as well as Malaysia, employing a total of about 30,000 people.
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WEDNESDAY, 06 AUGUST 2008 10:09 ZEN
According to Datuk Dr S Subramaniam, the Minister of Human Resources, there has been no violation of labour laws in the ministry’s investigation into the Hytex apparel factory, which Nike Inc alleged that its foreign workers in Kepong were being oppressed. Subramaniam said "The salaries given to the foreign workers are broken down into basic pay, overtime and attendance allowances. A worker can earn between RM840 and RM1,500 a month depending on their seniority, performance and overtime. Employers will deduct RM100 monthly to pay for levy charges imposed by the
Immigration Department for foreign workers in the production sector, which is RM1,200 year per worker,"
He added that "It has been a policy in this country for quite a number of employers to keep the passports for safety reasons. If the workers ask for it for any reason, they are supposed to give them back. Any employer who withholds the passport is committing an offence. They (foreign workers) are given free accommodation, which are threebedroom flats where each room has facilities for four people. Each flat can house 12 workers. I have asked the Public
Works Department to conduct further investigations whether or not the facilities provided were unfit to live in,"
-Zen, Malaysia Today
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21 February, 2008 BEAVERTON, Ore ( February 21, 2008) – Nike has ranked number 3 in
CRO’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens 2008, the ninth annual ranking of top corporate citizens among U.S.-headquartered public companies.
Hannah Jones, Nike VP Corporate Responsibility said: “This is terrific recognition of the work we are doing in Corporate Responsibility and the transparency of that effort. In particular I was pleased to see that we were rated highly in the area of Climate Change where scores are based on climate change disclosure and policy.”
CRO Publisher Jay Whitehead said: “For 9 straight years, the 100 Best Corporate Citizens has stirred controversy and spurred companies to improve their governance, compliance and sustainability performance. The 2008 list, focused on the Russell 1000, shows that contrary to the adage about elephants dancing, big companies can act quickly when their competitive position is at stake.”
In compiling 100 Best, CRO – in partnership with IW Financial – a Portland, Maine, research and consulting firm in environment, social and governance issues – ranked the corporate responsibility efforts of large-cap companies from the Russell 1000 index in eight categories:
Climate Change, Employee Relations, Environment, Financial, Governance, Human Rights,
Lobbying and Philanthropy. CRO determined the final ranking as a weighted average of these eight categories.
With transparency being such an important component of corporate responsibility, IW Financial relies on publicly-available data from company financial disclosures, sustainability/environment/citizenship reports, Web sites, EPA databases, and a number of other sources as part of its standardized research processes.
“Some companies have good environmental policies,” says Mark Bateman, IW Financial’s
Director of Research. “Some companies have great employee relations. Some companies have exemplary human rights records. CRO's 100 Best Corporate Citizens list answers the question:
Which companies do best across a wide variety of citizenship issues? Companies can’t make it onto the list if they do poorly in too many categories.”
The 2008 list marks the 100 Best Corporate Citizens’ ninth year in publication. Business Ethics magazine, which CRO acquired in 2006, published the list for the first seven years and CRO continued the tradition in 2007 and 2008. The list’s methodology for 2008 includes two significant updates. First, CRO changed rating agencies, switching from KLD Analytics to IW
Financial. In contrast with KLD’s interview-and-questionnaire-based method, IW Financial bases rankings solely on publicly-available data and uses its set of patented technologies to do the analysis. Second, the 2008 100 Best Corporate Citizens rankings are limited to the Russell
1000—companies that represent the largest impact on B2B and consumer markets. In previous
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years, the rankings also included the Domini 400 companies, which include many mid-cap and small-cap firms, and resulted in a perceived bias in favor of the lower-cap enterprises.
Three companies – Intel, Cisco and Starbucks – have been on the list for all nine years, despite changes in the lists’ methodology.
The 100 Best companies will be honored in a special reception at the conclusion of the Spring
CRO Conference March 27, 2008 at the Union League Club in NYC. For more information on the CRO Conferences, please go to http://www.thecro.com/conferences.
For more details about CRO’s 100 best corporate citizens 2008, the methodology and CRO magazine, visit www.thecro.com.
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