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The problem was simple. Nike is an athletic apparel brand that has been campaigning over 20 years ago with sweatshop claims, and has it really become a beacon of environmental management and fair labor practices?
As an editor and longtime Oregonian at Propublica, I wanted to know the answers just like Rob Davis, a Portland-based reporter who raised the question.
Nike is woven into Oregon fabric. It is one of the largest employers in the Portland area and one of the few Fortune 500 companies in the state. Nike’s headquarters, located on the outskirts of Portland, is a 400-acre building, roadways and sports fields where fashion design meets athletics. At the University of Oregon, the alma mater of Nike co-founder Phil Knight, the campus building has his name or relative.
The problem was that the answer to Davis’s question was primarily across the Pacific Ocean. Propublica is ecstatic about the time-consuming story of spending money, but see, for example, a recent report by Gambian reporters Josh Kaplan and Brett Murphy. Davis had to prove to his editor that overseas travel would bring us a story that broke new ground.
One of the most important decisions early on was to partner with Oregonia/Oregon Live reporter Matthew Quiche and his editor, who Davis and I previously worked for. Kish has covered Nike for over a decade and probably knows the company just like his country’s reporters.
Kish and Davis have begun reviewing public reports Nike has released over the past 20 years, as well as all the news stories they can find about the company’s efforts in the realm of social responsibility. Davis spoke on the phone with labor advocates around the world. He even discovered that several factory workers in Asia are willing to talk about their working conditions on a late-night video call (for them).
The nuts that Davis and Quiche couldn’t crack were Nike itself. Reporters spoke to Nike’s public relations team about their interests. Could Nike staff share what they found in factory audits or how they are ensuring compliance with Nike Code of Conduct? People in PR at various points provided some background information, including excerpts from past company reports, but the company chose not to be available to anyone for record-breaking interviews at that stage.
(Last week I asked Nike to consider an interaction between his company with Kish and Davis and the stories he wrote for the series. A Nike spokesman refused to comment on the record.)
With last year’s layoffs hit Nike, Quiche and Davis opened up to talk to insiders about certain aspects of the company’s social responsibility efforts. In pursuit of tips, the two teamed up with research reporter Alex Mielesky to compile a list of employees who worked in the role of sustainability. The reporter began knocking on the virtual door. Of these, there are about 100 people. They established that Nike’s restructuring had hit the workforce hard, including efforts that included reducing the company’s carbon footprint.
This time, Nike responded by allowing interviews with the best sustainability officers. It lasted for 17 minutes. She said the company is still committed to sustainability and described its strategy as “embedded” work throughout the company.
We have published stories that lay out departures and other developments that appear to violate the intentions declared to help the Nike planet. Increased emissions from private jets.
But something remained missing from our report. The former sustainability worker spoke English. Many were based in Oregon. They had an online presence. Understanding working conditions at Nike’s factory required us to gain a closer perspective to the company’s distant foreign supply chain.
Davis focused on one particular claim from Nike. The company says factories that have data pay workers on an average of 1.9 times the local minimum wage. The breakdown of factories included in the calculations was not provided, and it was not clear how widely wages differed from the average. So Davis began asking workers around the world to pay Stubs. I hope even scattered data will help you test Nike’s maths.
PayStubs dripped. A small number of workers in factories in Central America. Details from Indonesia. Scattered from Cambodia.
Next, a breakthrough.
Davis received an Excel spreadsheet in Cambodia’s most widely spoken languages, English and Khmer. This was the salary ledger for Y&W Garment, which made Nike baby clothes from 2022 to 2023. Davis was able to see all employees’ positions, ages, employment dates, gender and wages.
This was one factory in the supply chain consisting of hundreds and 3,720 workers out of the over 1.1 million people adopted globally by Nike suppliers. But it was a unique and comprehensive window. A quick calculation showed that a small share of Y&W’s workforce (only 1%) was 1.9 times the minimum wage.
Nike says contract factory workers with data earn 1.9 times the local minimum wage, but the Y&W Clothing Factory Payroll Register shows many workers earning a base salary of $204 a month, the minimum wage in Cambodia last year. More than three-quarters of factory employees earned near the minimum wage, even with bonuses and incentives. Credit: Obtained by Propublica. Highlights and edited by Propublica.
Davis connected with a bilingual freelance journalist in Phnom Penh, Keat Solis Havi, who tracked down some of the workers named in his pay ledger. Now we had a factory source on the ground. There was someone who helped Davis translate what they had to say. And we had a spreadsheet. I told Davis to book a ticket for January.
On Sunday morning, less than a day after his plane landed in the Cambodian capital, Davis met a group of workers on his only holiday. After referrals via a hired translator, Davis pulled the iPad out of the travel bag and handed it over, asking if the details of the digital pay ledger were accurate.
One by one, each worker studied the entries under their own name. “Is it right?” asked Davis. Translation pause.
“yes.”
Around the table they went: right. yes. correct.
Neighbor Hwang Ohm came while Davis interviewed clothing workers at his home outside Phnom Penh. She has been working at Y&W Garment since it opened in 2012 and was happy to answer any questions. She said she worked 76 hours a week and was sometimes forced to work overtime. Credit: Rob Davis/Propobrica
Davis spent the rest of his 12-day visit traveling Tuk-Tuk, a small three-wheel taxi named after Pattern Engine, to meet workers in a small village around Phnom Penh. Cambodian clothing workers are usually on their watches at least six days a week, leaving limited free time to spend with their families and visiting journalists. However, with Keate’s help, Davis managed to talk to a total of 14. Some are identified by name. They told him that the money he earned from his 48-hour work week was not enough to live and he needed to work overtime to communicate.
First picture: Davis stopped for lunch along the highway outside Phnom Penh. Second image: Davis’s business card is located within Tuk-Tuk. Credit: First Image: Keat Soriththeavy. Second image: Rob Davis/Propublica
When the workers told Davis that people had been stunned in a hot factory and needed to get medical treatment at that clinic, he sent a message to me to measure my response. I asked: Can he find the doctor who treated them? Very quickly, Davis spoke to me and got a phone number for the clinic staff. Health workers helped quantify the scale of the problem, telling Davis that as many as 15 people a month are too weak to work in the hot months of May and June. (The term “spinning” can explain that work becomes too weak, as used in Cambodia.
Propojournalist Sarabeth Manny continued on the Davis trail a month later. In her intimate portrait, she recorded the family life of factories, where base pay began at about $1 per hour.
Sar Kunthea, who wrapped her clothes in Y&W Garment, said that she worked two or two days a month on normal hours, but still had to borrow money from a friend several times a year. Credit: Sarahbeth Maney/Propublica
Nike did not answer detailed questions from Davis about wages or stunning, and instead issued a written statement. The company said it is “committed to ethical and responsible manufacturing,” and it expects its suppliers to “continue to fair compensation during normal Labor Week.”
Representatives of Y&W Garment and its Hong Kong parent, Wing Luen Knitting Factory Ltd., did not respond to Davis’ emails, text messages or calls. The Haddad brand, a Y&W worker told Davis, served as Nike’s intermediary at the Phnom Penh facility, but did not respond to an email asking about the conditions there.
As Davis was drafting his story, President Donald Trump’s plan to raise tariffs on goods manufactured overseas sent Nike’s stock price fall. One of the declared goals is to drive Nike and others to make products in places like Cambodia, and honestly, it seems that the US has lost its relevance in Nike’s track record in this region.
Nike has repeatedly raised concerns about Cambodia’s suppression. Anyway, we expanded the factory workforce.
But the experts told Oregonian’s reporting partners, Davis and Quiche, in the exact opposite. Rather than bringing work home, brands may simply narrow down foreign suppliers to improve productivity.
It created the problem that pushed Davis in the same way as before from the start. Has Nike been meeting its promises in Southeast Asia?
At one Cambodian factory, Davis’ tenacity gave us a simple answer: No.
Street vendors sell products in front of the former Y&W Garment Factory in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Credit: Sarahbeth Maney/Propublica
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