It didn’t go so far as to remove the “swoosh” altogether, but Penn State officials did ask Nike to help some of its laid-off workers — and they’re pleased the company listened.
Pressured by workers’ rights organizations, student activists and universities who distribute its merchandise, Nike agreed on July 26 to create a $1.54 million “worker relief fund” for employees at two closed Honduran factories.
The company also said it would provide vocational training and health coverage for those former employees.
Nearly 1,800 workers were left without severance pay when the two Nike factories, run by subcontractors Hugger de Honduras and Vision Tex, closed in January 2009. The Workers Rights Consortium (WRC), an independent labor rights organization, soon investigated the situation and exposed both the subcontractors’ and Nike’s failure to follow Honduran law by not compensating the unemployed workers.
Penn State is one of 186 colleges affiliated with WRC, according to the organization’s website.
One affiliate school, the University of Wisconsin, Madison cut licensing ties completely with Nike, and several other schools including Cornell University were threatening to do the same if the matter in Honduras was left unresolved.
WRC Executive Director Scott Nova said the outcry from students across the country was instrumental in bringing about Nike’s decision to pay up.
“It took a great deal of pressing by students and universities,” Nova said. “But the result is an extremely good one for workers and for the future of labor rights enforcement.”
Under the university’s current agreement, all Penn State athletes wear the Nike brand and the company manufactures a large chunk of fan apparel.
While Penn State didn’t follow Cornell and the University of Wisconsin’s suit to cut ties altogether, university spokesman Geoff Rushton said the school has been talking with Nike about the situation since last year and recently urged the company to “play a positive role” in helping the laid-off workers.
“The decision [to pay the workers] is a positive step not only for this particular situation, but moving forward for apparel manufacturing,” Rushton said. “What we just want to look at now is how it’s implemented and continue to receive updates from various organizations and from Nike on its progress.”
United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) spearheaded the campaign to get Nike to pay up, and USAS National Organizer Jack Mahoney said this case sets an important precedent for the impact of students’ voices when it comes to fighting for workers’ rights in the future.
“Clearly the cuts at Cornell and Wisconsin were serious landmarks in the campaign, and students at universities like Penn State were already engaged in trying to get their universities to follow suit,” Mahoney said. “And that ultimately drove [Nike] to make this agreement was that there were students on many other campuses organizing to do the same thing.”