Nike: the Sweatshop Debate Case Study
The host country governments have played a role this global business operation. The global managers have faced strategic and operational challenges. Sweatshops are described as “work environments that violate laws and where workers are subject to extreme exploitation, Including the absence of a living wage or long work hours; poor working conditions, such as health and safety hazards; arbitrary discipline, such as verbal or physical abuse: and/or fear and intimidation when they speak out, organize, or attempt to form a union” (Radian & Calking, 2006).
According to a 1997 report y the San Francisco based Global Exchange several factories in Southern China, owned by Korean subcontractors for Nikkei, had “workers as young as 13 earning as little as 10 cents an hour who toiled up to 17 hours daily in enforced silence” (Hill, 2009). This was in violation of the Chinese labor and minimum wage requirement laws. In many of the subcontracted sweatshop factories the workers are exposed to hazardous chemicals that exceed local legal standards and they are not provided with protective gear.
These legal violations have been exposed in various factories In there countries also. Nikkei responded by requiring the subcontractors to abide by the minimum Limits for working conditions and pay, has arranged for Independent auditors to inspect the factories, and has terminated contracts with factories that do not comply with its standards (Hill, 2009).
Sweatshops continue to exist because of economic and social circumstances and have become integrated in various cultures, especially in emerging and developing countries. “Deference to cultural diversity is also to blame for the continuing presence of sweatshops.
Although Western thinking tends to censure sweatshop labor practices, Westerners are sometimes hesitant to interfere in other cultures. The imposition of Western values on non-western cultures is widely regarded as inappropriate and undesirable “(Radian & Calking, 2006). These factory workers are often displaced agricultural workers, sometimes illiterate, and possibly have no marketable skills. They may have no choice but to accept the conditions of sweatshop work or face starvation.
Governments In developing countries frequently permit and support sweatshops because the whitewash create tax revenues and other income. Sweat shops often receive the tactic approval AT isosceles attempting to Improve tenet economic standing Decease sweatshops are viewed as a way to enliven a nation’s domestic markets and export activity’ (Radian & Calking, 2006). In 2005 Christine Basics conducted a study and found that Nikkei had closed all U. S. Factories and moved production to overseas subcontracted facilities.
These facilities are located in countries that are trying to improve their global economies and do not have the same workplace standards mound in the U. S. Sweatshops are often established to lower the cost of labor in production and to bring about higher profits for managers and shareholders” (Radian & Calking, 2006). Global managers for Nikkei have had to make some strategic and operational changes in the manufacturing area without having a negative affect for the stakeholders. One example off positive change is the Ye Yen industrial complex in southern China that manufactures approximately one-third of the world’s shoes. Nikkei successfully pressed its suppliers to improve the working conditions in the factory.
