Asking the students of the United States to take a stand against improper practices in factories owned by big brands in overseas countries, a former employee of a garment manufacturing factory from Bangkok, Thailand, spoke to a group of students and shared her experience as an employee at a Thai factory where she produced Nike apparel.
The former factory workers, Noi Supalai, was addressing the students at a speak-out organised by the campus chapter of United Students Against Sweatshops to raise awareness among the people in the Western countries about the oversight of apparel factories overseas.
Nike had, back in November 2015, announced that it would no longer allow independent inspectors, like Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), to intervene in any matter relating to work conditions at its apparel factories. The company would self-monitor its own activities instead, a step that groups like USAS fear will lead to potential worker abuse.
During an interactive session at the speak-out, USAS International Campaigns Coordinator Morgan Currier asked the students to think of ways in which students could play a role in stopping abuse of foreign laborers and ways in which they can improve worker conditions. According to her, when institutions like the University of Michigan sign contracts with brands like Nike, it indirectly allows such practices to continue. The University’s Athletic Department signed an apparel deal with Nike in 2015 that does not expire until 2027.
“We believe that we should only be doing business with brands who respect the rights of their workers,” Currier said. “What we do in USAS is we support the organizing efforts of workers around the world. We don’t believe in charity; we believe in solidarity.”
Her speech led the students to turn and look at the tags of the clothes they were wearing, and was surprised to see tags that read Made in Honduras, or Indonesia, or Cambodia, China or Vietnam. Currier pointed to an example of the positive impact that students have made on monitoring in countries such as Honduras to inspire student activism on campus and around the country.
Citing the instance, Currier said that in 2008, Russell Athletic had a factory in Honduras, but chose to source elsewhere after native workers formed a union. As a consequence, she said, the workers there were blacklisted, uncompensated and rendered unemployable. Following this, USAS led a delegation of students to help workers protest, with the aim of having campus groups pressure their universities to hold Russell accountable. Finally, these students led to contracts being cut at 110 universities over a two-year period, costing the brand over $50 million.
“The workers won because our campaign was so effective,” Currier said. “Student pressure is so important, they not only reopened the factory and allowed workers to have their union, but they signed a binding union agreement to allow seven other factories in Honduras to form unions.”
Sharing her personal experience of worker abuse and unsafe working conditions at the Thai factory Eagle Speed, Supalai said she served as the president of the labor union that was formed when the factory exploited its employees. She accused the factory owners of subjecting the workers to dangerous conditions and poor working hours (from 8 am to midnight) after Nike threatened to pull its business from Eagle Speed if they failed to meet a stricter deadline at a lesser cost.
She also said that when the employees were failed to fulfil these expectations, Nike refused to pay the factory and, in turn, workers did not get their wages for more than two months. So much so, all any sign of protest was met with threats of termination.
Emphasizing the need for independent monitoring organizations, she said that she was concerned about Nike’s current policy that allows the company to monitor its own operations. “I would like to call for you to put effort in this campaign to call for the possibility of WRC to be able to monitor Nike,” Supalai said. “There’s need for a middle organization like WRC to monitor Nike, because Nike doesn’t care about the working conditions. In my opinion, they’re forming their own organization to do this job just because they want to hide behind this organization.”
