Nike Case Study Analysis Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Nike Case Study Analysis - Essay Example According to Jeff Ballinger, a key Nike critic, he argued that Nike’s policy of competing on the basis of cost reduction by outsourcing manufacturing to countries where production cost were low encouraged contractors to mistreat their workers. He believed that, Nike contractors flouted labor laws by paying below subsistence wages that did not enable the workers meet daily needs. The contractors bribed their way out. Ballinger also found Nike’s attitude at the height of these labor practices galling. In 1992, August issue of Harper’s magazine, Ballinger published an annotated pay-stub, comparing workers’ wages with Michael Jordan’s endorsement contract. He noted that it would take an Indonesian worker 44,492 years to make an equivalent of Michael Jordan’s endorsement contract. Other critics, Newspapers (The Portland Oregonian), Protestors, ran critical articles and were vocal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics where they charged Nike with exploitation of factory workers. On July 1996, Life magazine, ran a story of a Pakistan boy stitching a Nike ball a concern about child labor, this prompted calls to endorsers such as Michael Jordan to investigate the source of the products before endorsing them. Critics, such as Ballinger, goals were to draw worldwide attention to the exploitation of third world factory workers by using Nike as the ideal target. Nike responded to the allegations through several ways, through the intervention of President Clinton, Nike was the first company to join the Apparel Industry Partnership (AIP), a taskforce of leaders of apparel and footwear industries whose role was to develop acceptable labor standards for US firms in foreign countries. This committee also included members of activist, labor and religious groups. It was meant to be collaboration between the industry and its most outspoken critics. Nike also set up a labor practices department; this was meant to promoting fair