NIKE and its Public Image

The Issue
NIKE is a leader company in its market and will keep the same level and standard in its work and products in the future. Our attention has always been on delivering good products and building up a good reputation and public image. A new challenge is confronting our company and that is its public image. Lately we have been put in the center of media attention regards to our ethics with our employees and practices used in our factories. We have been classified as an unethical company, bad treatment of our employees, bad payment rates and bad working conditions. Their research marks us with poor working conditions, below-subsistence wages and worker abuse, that we have problems in our policy behaviors and that our supervisors exceed with their punishments. They have raised this issue to a high importance and brought it to the public eye. It seems that it already has affected our customers view towards our company image and our reputation has been affected. We have to take all possible measures to put an end to this bad advertisement and prevent from developing to another higher and more damaging stage. We set our rules and make necessary changes before outsiders oblige us to so. International institutions, human rights organizations and employee unions has started to pay attention and take it as a very serious matter. Strikes has been organized by our employees in countries where our factories are based, legal interventions has been taken in some cases and all this is getting more and more constructive and organized.

Brief History of what our company has done related to the issue.
In our contracts with our suppliers and factories we have been very strict on the matter of these problems and issues. We have our own audits that check the obedience of these specific clauses by our partners. Several incidents and complaints has been reported during our controls and straight decisions has been made by our part. In one case, a worker had to run laps around the factory because the shoes she assembled had defects, in Vietnam a forewoman lined up 15 female workers and beat them with an unfinished shoe because she was angered by the quality of their work. We have insisted that managers who were found to be abusive be transferred or removed. A massive strike and protest was staged at PT HASI, demanding to be paid the new minimum monthly wage of $71,37 excluding allowances. The company agreed to pay the minimum including allowances, overtime, transport, holiday pay and meals. We always have tried to be comprehensive and cooperative, we always paid attention to these issues and tried to implement the best possible. But still it looks that it is much more to be done and further intervention is needed.

Impact to us and strategies

Yesterday we were in the position of achieving and putting a standard on shoes quality and today we have made it reality, we have put that standard. In my opinion we should not become greedy in this point we are. Now our job is to protect our company’s image and reputation and develop it to higher stage of performance. That is the strategy I suggest for a safe and successful future. This will have an increasing effect in our product cost and may have an effect at overall capital due to investment needed in our suppliers facilities. But it will affect only temporarily into our finances. We will invest on helping our partners on fixing those major problems that has been detected and pointed out but the payback that the company will receive will be multiplied. Things that I suggest to be focused more and will give the effect we are looking for in eyes of our customers will be the following.
Implement working conditions standards
Find and improve all factories with poor working conditions. That is of a major importance for our change. We cooperate with our partners for the expenses and we make reality that our