When was the first campaign against Nike? When did they first discover how Nike was treating its workers?

When was the first campaign against Nike use of sweatshop/exploiting workers? I'm doing an essay so if you have any useful links as well that would be great.


Thanks.|||The largest indirect employer of Vietnamese workers is the Nike brand. Last December, the company told producers of a U.S. television documentary that there had recently been 10 strikes in its 35 supplier factories; since that time, 31,000 more contract-workers have launched strikes--one over forced overtime and the other for higher pay. Indeed, fully 85% of strikes in Vietnam have taken place in foreign-investment factories producing for export, according to government figures.





The documentary aired by CNBC went on to quote observers averring that Nike was the corporate-responsibility "gold standard" amongst shoe and apparel companies. How to explain this paradox? A good bit of the problem is related to how the "sweatshop" story has been (mis)reported over the last decade.


The documentary team left the real story on the cutting-room floor--brave workers standing up to brutal bosses in a system with no tolerance for independent unions. They had interviewed workers sacked--and jailed overnight - for leading the forced overtime strike but did not use it in the nine-minute segment on Nike's Vietnam suppliers.


A few months ago on the day before I arrived in Vietnam to talk with workers, four leaders of the banned "United Workers %26amp; Farmers Organisation" were convicted of "posting to a reactionary web-site, abusing democracy and spreading distorted information to undermine the state"--the UFWO founder, Doan Van Dien, received a 4-year sentence.





At the factory which had a strike in April, twenty were forced to resign (meaning that they do not receive severance pay) and four were detained by security forces for passing out leaflets urging workers to hold out for the 20% raise they demanded instead of accepting a Party-run union agreement with management providing only 10%.





There could be many more disciplined for leading the resistance; the only information that I have comes from these two factories. Hopefully, the more courageous bloggers in that part of the world will soon begin to act as a conduit for information about fired activists and we can begin some cross-border solidarity efforts.|||Never heard of it. I guess it was not too popular. NIKE still abounds.