Nike has been praised by its critics after revelations that workers in more than half of its south Asian factories are denied a day off a week.
Yes, you read that right. Praised. Because Nike fronted up with the information itself, rather than let activists do it for them.
The
company has also admitted in its second Corporate Responsibility Report that in more than a quarter of its south Asian factories, workers' access to drinking water and toilets is restricted.
The same percentage of factories dish out verbal or physical abuse to employees and insist that women have pregnancy tests before they are employed.
The report's origins can be traced not to an epiphany in the boardroom but to a 13-year-old boy from the Bronx who protested in 1997 against sweatshops.
He stared into a television camera and delivered a message to Nike founder Philip Knight: "Nike, we made you. We can break you."
The company had been under fire from activists and non-governmental organisations since the early 1990s, but Knight had stonewalled: denying responsibility, attacking journalists, blaming rogue contractors.
It wasn't until its young customers wised up that it started monitoring its factories and took steps to improve conditions.
Today, Knight is more contrite.
"After a bumpy original response, an error for which yours truly was responsible, we focused on making working conditions better," he said in the report.
The report said Nike still had concerns about conditions in some of the more than 800 factories worldwide that it contracts its manufacturing to. The factories employ more than 650,000 people, mostly young women.
"Despite our concerted efforts, improving working conditions in our supply chain is still a major challenge."
The company has taken the unprecedented step of naming on its website all the factories that produce Nike-branded products.
Kate Kearins a professor of management at Auckland University of Technology, said Nike's disclosure was unusual in that it was reporting so far up its supply chain.
