Examining Ethical and Labor-Related Challenges at Nike Company

This essay examines the ethical and labor-related challenges that Nike Company faces in its global operations. It highlights issues such as fair wages, where the company has been pressured to increase worker salaries to meet daily needs, particularly in regions like Vietnam. The essay also addresses the historical problem of child labor within Nike's supply chain, detailing the company's efforts to prevent child labor through stricter age checks and risk assessments. Furthermore, it discusses Nike's initiatives to improve working conditions by promoting accountability, collaboration, and transparency in its supply chain. Lastly, the essay explores how Nike addresses freedom of association by respecting workers' rights to collective bargaining and ensuring non-interference in union activities. The company focuses on not interfering with the decisions of workers to associate. At the same time, they conduct their operations in different ways that are not disruptive to the regular activities of Nike Company.

Running head CHALLENGES FACING NIKE COMPANY 1
Ethical and labor-related challenges facing Nike Company
Name
Institution Affiliation

CHALLENGES FACING NIKE COMPANY 2
Ethical and Labor-Related Challenges Facing Nike Company
Fair Wage
The Human Resource managers within the Nike Company for long have been concerned
with the ever-increasing pressure to offer the best salaries to workers as a way of attracting,
retaining, engaging, and motivating its workers. The company has always targeted at raising the
wages of its workers following their daily needs (Falaschi, 2018). For instance, workers at
Vietnam Nike shoe manufacturing plants make the twenty-cent an hour, which was seen to be
less the daily expenditure of two-dollar. Therefore, it forced the management of Nike Inc. to
increase the wages of workers in the region to ensure that every worker can get its basic needs
without any form of distraction (Social media users call out Nike for low wages in Asia amid
Colin Kaepernick's ad promotion, 2020). The company has been able to address the issue of fair
wages by ensuring that they provide the wages to workers following the set regulations by the
government in the region they establish their operations. Such an idea of following government
directives have been essential in ensuring that the company provides adequate wage to an
individual worker without having disparities when compared to other international firms in the
same region.
Child Labor
Different protests staged by different people concerning the child labor within the Nike
Company made the management to admit cases of child labor in their operations. The protests
has make Nike Inc. to focused on improving the cases by preventing any form of engagement of
children in their operations. The company addressed this challenge by reviewing its operational
laws concerning child labor to ensure that at no point a child is allowed to engage in its activities.
It always checks the ages of workers to ensure that no worker is underage as per the guidelines

CHALLENGES FACING NIKE COMPANY 3
set in its operations (Nike is facing 3 major challenges to its business, 2020). Besides, Nike
Company often raises awareness about cases of child labor by addressing the causes, adverse
effects, and consequences among its management as a way of ensuring that at no time any
manager is employing a child in their operations. The company has been able to address the
challenge of child labor by conducting a work risk assessment as a way of knowing children
within its operations before relieving them of their duties (International Business; Nike Pledges
to End Child Labor and Apply U.S. Rules Abroad, 2020). The company has also focused on
hiring workers with national identities or birth certificates as a way of getting the right ages of
workers before they engage them in any operation.
Working Conditions
Nike Inc. has worked to improve working conditions in its supply chain for over two
decades. The company embraces accountability as well as leadership in the process of
advocating for the ideal protection and provision of respect for workers globally (Nike Shoe
Plant in Vietnam Is Called Unsafe for Workers, 2020). Being accountable and respect for
workers is seen to be the things that make Nike Inc. business to be more resilient alongside more
innovative. Other ways that the company has used to address the challenge of working
conditions is by collaborating with the competition to make its business gain sense to provide the
joint action as a way of improving working conditions. The company also focuses on creating
local capacity by addressing and identifying problems that workers often face in their operations.
Additionally, Nike Inc. work by measuring its environment performance that helps management
to identify issues and eliminate the root causes of such problems that affect the daily operations
of its workers. The company also works by exploring advanced forms of supplier auditing and

CHALLENGES FACING NIKE COMPANY 4
increasing transparency of the supply chain to provide regulatory standards and cultural norms to
be followed by every worker.
Freedom of Association
Nike Inc., as international firms have been able to address the challenge of freedom of
association in its operations by identifying the number of things to do to respect such right to
collective bargain. The company has been able to focus on not interfering with the decisions of
workers to associate (Falaschi, 2018). The company has ensured that there is no anti-union
discrimination in its operations. The idea has been vital as it provides improve policies of the
company along with its practices to be nondiscriminatory against individuals because of their
opinion on trade unions or operations of their trade unions. The company does not always
interfere with the functioning of representative of workers (Elkatawneh, 2014). At the same time,
they conduct their operations in different ways that are not disruptive to the regular activities of
Nike Company.

CHALLENGES FACING NIKE COMPANY 5
References
Elkatawneh, H. (2014). Governance and Public Policy: The Fair Labor Association (FLA) vs
Nike Inc. SSRN Electronic Journal. doi: 10.2139/ssrn.2486258
Falaschi, E. (2018). From Athena Nike to Nike Apteros: Literary and Epigraphical Sources.
Archeologia E Arte Antica, 9788879168328, 75-92. doi: 10.7359/832-2018-fal1
International Business; Nike Pledges to End Child Labor And Apply U.S. Rules Abroad. (2020).
Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1998/05/13/business/international-business-
nike-pledges-to-end-child-labor-and-apply-us-rules-abroad.html
Nike is facing 3 major challenges to its business. (2020). Retrieved from
https://www.businessinsider.com/nike-is-facing-3-major-challenges-2016-6
Nike Shoe Plant in Vietnam Is Called Unsafe for Workers. (2020). Retrieved from
https://www.nytimes.com/1997/11/08/business/nike-shoe-plant-in-vietnam-is-called-
unsafe-for-workers.html
Social media users call out Nike for low wages in Asia amid Colin Kaepernick's ad promotion.
(2020). Retrieved from https://www.newsweek.com/nike-factory-workers-still-work-
long-days-low-wages-asia-1110129