Hitting the Wall: Nike and International Labor Practices

1. Jeffrey Ballinger’s individual research on the labor practice of Nike has very convincing content on his results of his report. It was claimed by him that the corporation was knowingly and involved in human rights violations that primarily focused on the exploitation of wage distribution among those that are working for Nike contract companies The wages reported, deemed to be way below the minimum to compensate with the workers efforts, too little in contrast to the actual final price of the good they managed to produce under strongly supervised labor and with exceeding labor hours beyond the maximum allowed by law. I personally agree that Jeff Ballinger has a strong argument with it comes to the labor practices of the corporation. Nike has responded with the “defensive justification” that wages were merely set by market forces and that multinational firms could simply do nothing to affect wage rates. Another disturbing indirect justification made by Nike is that its wages should match the cost of living of the environment the workers are inhabitants of. Generally, it is widely known that a company’s main goal is to maximize profit by finding the loopholes to exploit; therefore I do not find their response convincing enough that would result for a little justification. The corporate responded in a defensive manner when the accusations took place, with the retaliation of well-though defense for the purpose of justifying its inhumane cause.

2. A giant multinational firm such as Nike which constantly was being observed by individuals such as Jeff Ballinger for a specific amount of time would systematically be on the defensive platform of the issue from the very start of the allegations. The firm showed signs of being in the “hot seat” during the accusations that became quite public through media attention. I personally think that Nike handled the publicity around its labor practices quite in a very semi-discrete way, in a way in which it had to think and...