Ethical Issues Of Nike

Nike has responsibility for the working conditions of their employees who produce Nike products. In cases of multinational companies, the question of whose ethics and standards to follow is often disputed. Best judgement and reasoning and a combination of the countries’ standards combine to decide on appropriate treatment. In Nike’s case, as part of their strategy, they moved work overseas to save on labor costs. However, the employees still work in Nike factories making Nike products, and Nike has responsibility to protect their working conditions and workers’ rights. They should guarantee workers are being paid fairly according to the minimum wage, ensure their overseas factories comply with child labor laws, and certify the working conditions are clean and safe. In the cases of minimum wage pay and child labor laws of the country, Nike should allow itself to go above and beyond and raise their own factories’ standards if standards for pay and child labor are low in any country. Nike customers

Nike has not created and implemented an effective approach to social responsibility. When Nike published a Corporate Responsibility Report in 2005, they realized its business processes and production pressures often clashed with the code policies and led to violations and employees and managers cutting corners. Nike also designed a self-run monitoring program to rate factories on a letter scale based on the requirements in areas such as work hours, wages, grievance systems, chemical management, fire safety, and protective equipment. However, the results failed to end any of the significant problems. Reports of a factory in Bangladesh stated management punished employees for learning about labor rights, and reports of a factory in Malaysia discovered workers paying an outrageous recruitment fee and being denied their passports until it was paid off. While Nike has made attempts to improve conditions in these sweatshops, there has been little proof of any serious