For this assignment, review the Nike case study, located at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5uYCWVfuPQ.

Click here view the video transcript.

Once you have viewed the case scenario, respond to the following questions, with thorough explanations and well-supported rationale.

1. These workers state the “only thing they have is their work”. This statement suggests that without this work, they would have a lower standard of living. Should we inflict western values on this society? Bring in the concepts of social responsibility, integrity and other business ethics practices.
2. From Nike’s standpoint, is this a fair assessment of their ethical standards? Explain the some of the ethical issues that Nike is facing in the case.
3. Explain what Nike has done to improve this situation since this 2011 video. Include the use of codes of ethics and other ethical standards implemented within the organization.
4. Is your opinion of Nike any different now after viewing this video? Would this change your buying behavior with respect to Nike products?

Your response should be a minimum of two double-spaced pages. References should include your required reading plus one additional credible reference. All sources used must be referenced; paraphrased and quoted material must have accompanying in-text citations, and cited per APA guidelines.

Your response should be formatted in accordance with APA style. For step-by-step instructions for formatting a paper in APA style, please refer to the CSU Citation Guide. (http://www.columbiasouthern.edu/downloads/pdf/success/citation-guide).

Instructions for formatting formal documents can be found on page 17.

video transcript

0:04: (background music)
0:10: (Jim Keady) At the age of 18,
0:12: I was just on track. Go to a good college, get a decent degree, do good and
0:20: you’re going to get an entry-level job down at Wall Street.
0:22: You’re going to work real hard; you’re going to be a broker; you’re going to make tons of money; you’re going to be retired, and
0:26: by a young age, you’re going to have a house on the beach in New Jersey and a
0:29: couple of Mercedes. And a
0:30: trophy wife, and that will be the end of the game.
0:32: I’m done—multi-millionaire—that’s it!
0:38: I was playing professionally for the New Jersey Imperials;
0:41: I was playing the best soccer my life.
0:51: (background music)
1:03: I get offered
1:04: this coaching job by one of my teammates to go coach at Saint John’s University,
1:08: the NCAA Division 1 national champions; they are the best team in the country.
1:12: I was having a blast. I was loving coaching; I was loving playing.
1:16: I’m living in New York. I’m also studying stuff that I really enjoy.
1:20: I’m digging into studying theology
1:22: for the first time in my life in a formal way.
1:26: I get online, I start doing searches about Nike and
1:29: sweatshops and labor practices. And what I found was,
1:33: if you wanted to pick a company that completely violates everything
1:37: the Catholic social teaching is about, Nike would be your perfect case study.
1:41: At the same time I’m doing this research, Saint John’s University Athletic Department
1:45: starts to negotiate a $3.5 million endorsement deal with Nike
1:49: that would require me, as a coach, to wear and promote the products.
1:52: Saint John’s University is the largest Catholic institution in the country,
1:56: coupling itself with the largest sportswear company in the world,
2:01: and I said “how can we, as such a public symbol of Catholicism,
2:07: do something that runs completely counter to our mission?”
2:11: We’re saying to the world, “Look,
2:14: you should care about the poor, and we should fight against injustice, and we
2:18: should seek out the causes of poverty,
2:20: well unless you’re getting some really good athletic equipment
2:23: and $3.5 million along with it.” I mean you want to talk about just
2:27: hypocrisy manifested

2:31: in the real world—this was it! (News broadcast- “And you have the story at Saint John,”2:35: “Jim Keady has caused a massive pile up.” “He is clearly an idealist.”) I didn’t go to Saint 2:40: John’s University
2:41: to work for Nike; I went there to coach

2:44: and to study theology. (News broadcast: “Keady, a devout Catholic
2:48: protested, ‘How does he reach the point where he thinks it’s immoral to wear the swoosh?’2:51: ‘Because he’s coming at it from a background of faith and religion;
2:55: this isn’t about
2:56: just money or power or a job or anything. Think about this,
2:59: how many of us on a job that we really want
3:02: are prepared to get a memo from the boss saying stop doing this or you’re out,
3:06: and you keep doing it?’”) I was given an ultimatum by my head coach,
3:09: wear Nike and drop this issue or resign,
3:13: end of story. So, in June of 1998, I was constructively fired.
3:24: People were telling me, “you don’t know what you’re talking about;” “you know, those are great 3:27: jobs, and you can live like a king or queen on those wages, and those people are
3:30: really happy to have those jobs.”
3:32: I want to go find out.
3:35: Doesn’t everybody just want to know the truth? So I wanted to know the truth
3:39: first hand. I wanted to see it. I wanted to smell it. I wanted to hold it in my hand.
3:49: I knew I was going to need other people,
3:50: Leslie was a natural match.
3:54: (Leslie Kretzu) Jim and I went to college together; we came together ultimately because
3:58: we share an interest in labor rights issues.
4:01: (Jim) I eventually met back up there a few years after school
4:05: through an email about sweatshops.
4:08: (Leslie) I really wanted to be working with these issues.
4:11: (Jim) I wrote to my buddy, and said “who is this woman that’s writing you about this stuff?”4:15: And he said, “she’s nuts like you; you should email her.” She was actually in route
4:19: to go work with Mother Teresa’s sisters in India, and I sent her off this email.
4:23: “Hey, I’ve got this great idea; let’s go starve on Nike’s wages in Indonesia.”
4:26: (Leslie) And so he’s like, “I really need to go.” (Jim) And she wrote me back,
4:29: “sounds great.” (Leslie) Let’s go!
4:37: (Jim) We plopped down in Tangerang, Indonesia, this industrial suburb outside of the
4:42: capital of Jakarta,
4:43: with the plans that, for the next month, we were going to live
4:46: as Nike’s factory workers lived, which

4:49: meant that we were going to go live in a worker’s slum outside of the capital, 4:53: and we were going to live on the workers’ wages, a $1.25 a day,
4:57: for the next month. To try and come to a better understanding
5:01: of what it’s like for Nike factory workers

5:04: to make this kind of money and live under these conditions.
5:11: We lived in a 9 by 9 cement box.
5:15: It was over 100 degrees, 100% percent humidity, a small window, and certainly no air 5:20: conditioning.
5:21: (Leslie) No furniture, you slept on a very thin mat
5:24: on an uneven cement floor covered in shelf paper.
5:28: (Jim) The streets outside of your home
5:31: are lined by open sewers,
5:34: and what that means in the rainy season is you would have all that feces just
5:38: float up into the streets and into your house.
5:40: (Leslie) And every time that you go to the bathroom, it comes back out into the sewer for 5:44: everybody else to see and smell.
5:46: (Jim) You would have football size rats that would stampede over the ceiling at night 5:51: and come up through the toilet and look for stuff to eat in the house.
5:55: Or the fish size cock roaches that would crawl over you at night.
6:03: I’m Jim. Just like anyone
6:09: around the world, you can’t just drop into someone’s life and be like,
6:12: “hi we’re here; we want to live in your life, and tell us how much it sucks.”
6:16: You had to build bonds of trust.
6:19: Jim, nice to meet you.
6:26: (Leslie) They treated us very politely, and it wasn’t until they saw
6:30: that we were committed in
6:33: the capacity of living on the wages that they’re forced to live on,
6:37: in the conditions that they are living, that they felt that they could
6:41: start to begin to trust us. You get to know them, and you hold their children, and you 6:46: eat with them, and you share stories with them; they become part of your family.
6:51: (Jim) We would go to different workers homes,
6:53: you’ve got like four women sleeping in like an 8 by 8 cement box and
6:59: all of their possessions are in there.
7:00: Like, everything is in this small area.
7:03: (Leslie) The workers would have to share a bathroom with five to ten
7:09: other families. The workers would have to share living
7:13: quarters, actually like a row

7:16: of shacks with hard-hit tin roofs.
7:19: All those families would share a laundry
7:23: corner and a kitchen facility.
7:26: And they would all share the same well to take the water out of.
7:35: (Jim) A $1.25 a day after you’ve paid for your rent, water, electricity, and any major transportation costs,
7:41: you’re going to be left on average
7:42: with roughly 7,000 Rupiah per day. What the hell does that mean?
7:49: That’s going to buy you two simple meals of rice and vegetables,
7:52: a bag of peanuts, a bottle of iced tea, and some dish detergent.
7:58: And that’s all you can get.
7:59: And that your reward?
8:02: (Leslie) Without a doubt, we found that out the first week that we were there, there’s no way that you can live,
8:07: on a $1.25 a day and maintain your human dignity.
8:11: It’s just not possible.
8:18: (Jim) I lost 25 pounds living on Nike’s wages in Indonesia.
8:22: I spent the month painfully hungry and
8:25: tired, like near the point of exhaustion most days.
8:28: (Leslie) I just felt my energy storage was just
8:31: depleted, and I just started going downhill fast, and I just started getting sick every day.
8:38: (Jim) And she got very sick one day; she had like
8:40: a fever of 104, and she’s got to deal with “well,
8:44: I have a fever of 104; I can buy aspirin and like a little
8:47: drink box to get some vitamin C, but if I buy those two things
8:51: I don’t eat for the rest of the day.”
8:59: (Leslie) I don’t know what this is going to do, because we’re going to go home, and we’re going to say
9:07: this is not enough money, and no one is going to do a damn thing different.
9:15: (Jim) How do you feel like a human being?
9:18: How do you feel about your work or your gifts?
9:23: You know, for them, the workers that I’ve talked to the last couple of days,
9:26: a number of them have said the only thing we have is our physical labor.
9:33: Because I just bought the smallest thing of shaving cream
9:36: and one razor that I might be able to use two or three times,
9:42: I have to cut out three meals this week.
10:08: (Leslie) They will be working overtime hours just to get by,

10:12: because they can’t possibly get by on the wage that they’re paid
10:16: without working incredible amounts of overtime.
10:21: And when you’re working up to 15 hours a day, six to seven days a week
10:25: your 2-year-old child just
10:28: doesn’t see you, you know. They don’t get to see their children.
10:32: (Jim) The kids can’t even go to school.
10:35: How are you going to break a cycle of poverty and have real economic development
10:39: if you have a whole lost generation of children that aren’t even
10:42: educated?
10:53: I’m walking down this dirt path into this village,
10:55: and I see this massive pile of scrap shoe rubber that I later learned came
11:00: from one of Nike’s factories.
11:02: And piles like that get dumped there all the time, and the end result of these
11:06: piles is that they get burned
11:08: in that village in the big open space where kids play.
11:11: And the burning fumes, I learned from the company that designs Nike shoe
11:16: rubber,
11:16: will give off toxins and carcinogens.
11:20: Kids are paying the price, and they’re the ones with chest infections, and
11:23: they’re the ones that are going to develop cancer.
11:32: When we were in Indonesia, we made attempts
11:34: to get into a Nike factory because Nike claims on their website, “we have nothing
11:39: to hide.”
11:40: (Male voice) I’m Mike.
11:41: (Nike employee) Hi, Mike.
11:42: (Male voice) How are you doing?
11:43: (Nike employee) Good,
11:44: We went over to Nike’s corporate offices,
11:45: and Nike denied us that.
11:49: (Nike employee) We’re unable to accommodate that request.
11:53: (Leslie) Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon had faxed an info sheet out to all the
11:56: factories to be placed on the wall for all workers to see
12:00: that read, “if you are approached by Jim Keady, Leslie Kretzu, or Mike Pierantozzi,
12:03: do not speak to them. (Jim) They’re only to speak to management; there will
12:07: be severe consequences if you’re found talking to them.’
12:11: (Leslie) And they know from their management how they’re supposed to act, and if they don’t, 12:14: there are some severe ramifications.

12:16: Anywhere from significant harassment to
12:19: death, and I mean this in a very literal sense.
12:27: Certainly, management of the factory didn’t
12:30: want us to be there, and it was kinda frightening because several times we tried
12:34: to get into the factory.
12:35: (Jim) We weren’t out of the van for more than three minutes,
12:39: and there was security like surrounding us, and then the factory managers came out. “What’s 12:44: going on?”
12:45: We’re outside a Nike shoe factory right now; security is kind of surrounding us.
12:50: (Leslie) They’re like, “What are you doing here?
12:53: Why are you here?” It was frightening, you know,
12:56: because—who knows?
13:02: (Mike) Security guy here was tracking us down.
13:05: (Jim) From that moment, we were tailed by factory security
13:09: the prey men for the local mafia.
13:13: The local mafia certainly works in conjunction with these factory bosses.
13:18: The factory bosses—some of them—are just brutal, ruthless,
13:22: hired muscle to keep workers in line. We met with one worker, Julianto.
13:26: He told us because he was union organizing, he was trying to form an
13:30: independent union.
13:31: (Leslie) He was threatened at gunpoint; he had his house ransacked,
13:36: he was given death threats, and he had to flee back to his home village
13:40: because he feared for his life.
13:46: This is literally a life and death issue, and this happens at all the factories.
13:50: (Jim) Every worker that we talk to,
13:54: there’s this struggle with this fear—
13:57: this culture of fear that just permeates the air
14:01: that, yeah, they want to tell you the truth and try and fight for their rights,
14:06: but they also want the kids to have a father or a mother.
14:10: They’re dealing everyday with the threat of losing their lives for doing this kind
14:14: of work.
14:15: I mean, they showed tremendous courage in light of that.
14:20: We were able to meet with a woman by the name of Dita Sari who had been
14:24: organizing Nike and Reebok factory workers at the age of 23 and was illegally
14:29: jailed and put in prison and tortured.
14:31: (Dita Sari) On the 8th of July 1996, I was arrested by the army,
14:35: the local army, in East Jawa.

Commented [MS1]: Check word

14:39: They kicked me and they used their fists and their sticks.
14:43: And they were told to hurt me and to torture me in front of the workers
14:46: to show them an example.
14:51: (Leslie) I think the majority of workers were saying “look, we don’t want
14:55: you to pull out the jobs; we want to work.
14:59: We’d like to work; we want to make the shoes. We were proud of what
15:04: we do,
15:04: but we don’t want to be exploited.
15:07: Why can’t you just let us meet our basic needs?”
15:11: (Jim) We’re talking about food, clothing, housing, health care, education,
15:15: being able to take care of your kids, and some modest savings.
15:19: That’s not a tall order.
15:22: Excuse me, do you guys know where the Nike campus is?
15:26: (Jogger) Yeah, you make a right on Walker, and you’ll see it on your southwest corner.
15:30: (Jim) Okay, thanks.
15:34: Okay, so we’re on Nike’s campus right now; it’s a little bit different than the factories in Indonesia—15:38: just a tiny bit.
15:41: (Leslie) Hi, how are you?
15:42: (Phil Knight) Hi, good to see you.
15:44: (Jim) Listen, umm, I was hoping to set some time where we could talk.
15:50: I’m really concerned about the workforce in Indonesia.
15:53: You know, I spent the summer living there, living with them, and living on the wages that are paid to factory workers.
15:57: (Phil Knight) You’re worried about that?
15:58: (Jim) Yeah.
16:00: (Phil Knight) Ok, why don’t you call my secretary, and see what happens.
16:01: (Jim) I did. I called Lisa last week. I called Vada. I called Dusty. I called Brad Figel.
16:06: I called Amanda.
16:08: (Phil Knight) You’re going to have to talk to someone else; maybe you need to talk to Dusty Kidd. 16:10: (Jim) I mean, you’re the guy the buck stops with, right?
16:13: (Phil Knight) yeah, it doesn’t start with me though.
16:14: (Jim) No, but I mean, I don’t know who else to talk to.
16:15: (Phil Knight) Try Dusty Kidd.
16:17: (Jim) He doesn’t want to talk to me.
16:18: (Phil Knight) Well then, I guess you don’t get through then.
16:20: (Jim) But, you’re the man, I mean.
16:22: (Phil Knight) Thank you.

16:24: (Jim) You’re the man that needs to.
16:26: (Phil Knight) I appreciate your concern, but I’m having lunch with a friend,
16:29: and we’ve talked about it, and you’re..
16:30: (Jim) I apologize for interrupting your lunch. I mean, I’ve come all the way from New Jersey to talk16:33: to you about this.
16:34: (Phil Knight) I’m not talking to you.
16:35: (Jim) I’ve gotten stonewalled at every turn; you know, the workers have asked for me
16:40: that I try bringing you back to Indonesia to meet them in their homes not, not in the office in Jakarta.
16:49: (Phil Knight) Do you understand no? You just got a no. I’m not going to talk to you about it.
16:56: (Jim) Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike,
16:58: or Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods or Mia Hamm or any of the other people that are
17:02: really making a lot of money because of the way that Nike does things
17:06: should care about these workers because they’re human beings.
17:16: (Leslie) When I see
17:17: people like Tiger Woods get a $100 million just for wearing the clothes,
17:21: we’re saying as a society, “like this one individual because [he or she] plays golf well and
17:26: is worth more than 700,000 people.”
17:41: (Jim) We made up these
17:42: wage charts and have them look down at it, and they look up and say,
17:47: “Tiger Woods makes enough in a second
17:50: to buy me a house. Why?
17:54: I work hard for the company too.”
18:00: What do you say to them?
18:01: “Well, hey, that’s the system. Deal with it.
18:05: Suck it up; it’s capitalism—survival of the fittest. I guess you’re not the fittest.”
18:13: Nike is in Indonesia for one reason—cheap labor.
18:17: (Leslie) It’s an ideology of maximizing profit at all costs—
18:21: to humanity and nature. And it’s this entire
18:24: vicious cycle that starts with the heads of
18:28: the corporations that want to make a great return on shareholders’ investment.
18:34: (Jim) Some people say, “well, hey, that’s the way things are; that’s the American way.
18:38: It’s capitalism; that’s the American way.” No, the American way is
18:41: democracy; that’s what our country was founded on.
18:44: A belief that all people are equal—that there should be a respect for
18:48: for democracy, for human rights, and for the protection of human life—that’s what we’re about asAmericans.

18:53: We spent the last year and a half traveling around the country, visiting 18:59: over a hundred schools, high schools, and universities—
19:01: 15,000 students. So, how are you feeling about the turnout?
19:04: (Student 1) I’m feeling pretty good about the turnout.

19:05: (Jim) What were you thinking about the turnout here?19:10: (Student 2) It’s great; this is the best possible turnout. 19:12: (Jim) And we try as best we can to
19:14: introduce them to these human beings.

19:17: And say, as students, as
19:20: high school athletes, college athletes, as consumers, you’ve got tremendous power. 19:25: And because we can’t fly them over to Indonesia, we can bring Indonesia to them. 19:30: And if we can give them that spark, even if it’s one or two
19:34: on that day, that’s going to multiply. And eventually,
19:38: we’ll reach this critical mass, and we’ll have a great harvest. And the harvest will 19:42: be truth,
19:43: and justice, and fairness for all people.
19:50: Something’s wrong here, and we can fix it; it’s a necessity.
19:55: (Leslie) The tipping point is now.
19:59: (Jim) At this point in our history, we need
20:00: a story like this to be told.
20:05: (background music)