Fight The Heist

It’s been nearly three years since the pandemic, and millions of Asian garment workers – a majority of whom are women — producing for Big Fashion companies, have still not been paid the wages that they were owed during the COVID-19 pandemic after brands such as Nike, Levi’s and VF Corp canceled or drastically reduced orders en masse (as detailed in our Money Heist report). In the meantime, these companies continue to report record revenue growth and profits, making their highest profits in over a decade as of 2021 — with their investors acquiring tremendous wealth through stock buybacks. The Nike-owning Knight family (the 25th wealthiest family in the world) paid themselves $74 million in dividends. On 27th February 2023, Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA), Global Labor Justice – International Rights Forum (GLJ-ILRF) and 20 garment worker unions from Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka – released a new report detailing how the wage theft of Asian garment workers directly led to high corporate profits for global fashion brands (Source: Asia Floor Wage Alliance 2024, np link).

The groups are calling on Nike to take responsibility for the alleged human rights crisis supply chain workers faced during the pandemic as a result of the brand’s actions and to ensure workers are paid enough to avoid future crises. During the actions across eight cities from New York to Nike’s hometown of Portland, women labour activists called on Nike to make good on its claims to champion racial and gender equality by meeting workers’ demands adding Nike ‘spends billions on advertising while it reaps huge profits from the exploitation of the women who make its shoes and clothing.’ In New York City, women union members and allies rallied outside the New York Stock Exchange, calling on industry investors attending the Footwear Distributors and Retailers Association Supply Chain Summit to demand Nike come to the table with its supply chain workers and their unions to negotiate an agreement. … ‘Nike likes to talk a lot about equality. Until it pays the women who make Nike clothing and shoes a decent wage, we know it’s all talk,’ said Yolanda Pearson, leader of the Communication Workers of America’s Women’s Committee. ‘So we’re calling women and union activists across the US to take action in support of our sisters in Asia.’ In a powerful display of international solidarity, women in the labor movement held actions across the U.S. on July 16th, joining the call of Asian garment worker unions, GLJ and the @asia_floorwage Fight the Heist campaign, to demand justice in Nike’s supply chain (Source: Abdulla 2024, np link).

Nike is striving to improve its image at the Olympic Games in Paris. Meanwhile, the women who make some of the company’s fastest running shoes and other gear in Indonesia, Cambodia, India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka are demanding Nike negotiate with them and ensure living wages in its supply chain (Source: Global Labor Justice 2024a, np link).

There are so many powerful women to admire during the Olympics this year. Meet Leni, Nur, Dinar, Nisa, Nursya, Nia, Frischa, Nde, and Oshin, Indonesian union garment workers who make Nike athletic wear and who are fighting for living wages. The workers in this video come from three Indonesian unions: Serikat Pekerja Nasional (SPN), Gabungan Serikat Buruh Indonesia (GSBI) and Gartek (Source: Global Labor Justice 2024b, np link).

Nike spends billions of dollars on advertising, much of it extolling its support for women and girls in sports as it reaps huge profits from the exploitation of the women who make its shoes and clothing. ‘To meet the basic needs during COVID, my husband and I were forced to borrow money from relatives and banks, using our belongings as collateral. And until now I am still paying interest on debts,’ Said Siti Chaerunissa, a member of the labor union Serikat Pekerja Nasional (SPN) and worker at a Nike-supplier factory in Indonesia. ‘We often hear people say that Nike talks about equality. As workers who make high-quality products, we should also be treated as equals’ (Source: Global Labor Justice 2024c, np link).

‘As Nike gears up for the Olympics, today women workers linked arms from Jakarta to New York to tell Nike to do better for women and pay living wages,; said Jacob Horwitz, Field Director of Global Labor Justice. ‘Nike makes massive profits from the labor of women garment workers in Asia and by selling the image of women athletes and stars in the U.S. Today women in the labor movement called on Nike to put its money where its mouth is and pay living wages.’  A Sri Lankan worker in Nike’s supply chain would need to work for 2,000 years to make one month of Nike CEO John Donahoe’s compensation (Source: Global Labor Justice 2024c, np link).

Nike, they allege, has not only contributed to ‘severe human rights impacts’ at the factories it contracts but it also does not address and remediate them as required by guidelines. The complaint also claims that the Just Do It firm has not engaged with worker unions despite their requests for dialogue and the OECD’s own recommendations. Instead of compensating workers or investing in safety or productivity programs, it engages in buyback schemes to ‘falsely inflate’ its stock price, it adds (Source: Anon 2023d, np).

A group of 20 unions along with labor organizations filed a complaint against Nike last month with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development over treatment of workers in the brand’s supply chain.  The group said in a fact sheet that workers in Nike’s supply chain ‘experienced layoffs and terminations, arbitrary pay cuts, unpaid wages for hours worked, and gender discrimination at an unprecedented scale’ and alleged that the company contributed to negative conditions for garment workers without remedying them.  Multiple labor groups tied to the OECD complaint found that garment workers were still owed millions of dollars in wage claims going back to the early pandemic period in 2020, when brands, including Nike, canceled orders with suppliers en masse. Claims for unpaid wages by workers in Nike’s supply chain in just the small sample of factories surveyed amounted to $9.3 million, according to the report from Asia Floor Wage Alliance and Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum.  The groups said in the report that ‘the unresolved claims show that the scope of wage losses can only be addressed by the fashion companies at the top of these supply chains’ (Source: Unglesbee 2023, np link).

Unions representing workers at Nike factories today filed an OECD complaint with the US National Contact Point. It alleges that Nike has contributed to “severe human rights impacts” for garment workers in its supply chain but has not addressed and remediated the impacts according to the OECD Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct. Nike has not responded to unions’ requests for dialogue about these impacts, which the Guidelines call for. If the US NCP approves the complaint, the NCP will formally invite Nike to dialogue with the unions about their demands and facilitate a dialogue process (Source: Asia Floor Wage Alliance 2023, np link).

This fight began in 2020, when the Asia Floor Wage Alliance, with its partner unions in Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and Cambodia, surveyed thousands of garment workers about the impacts of the Covid pandemic on their incomes and lives. The next year, they published Money Heist, a report detailing the wage theft and the massive income loss facing garment workers during the Covid-19 pandemic in the supply chains of companies like Nike, Levi Strauss & Co., and North Face parent company VF Corporation. The Alliance and Global labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum have just published a new report that reveals how Big Fashion companies funneled money to investors rather than paying workers back. With their current share buybacks authorizations, Big Fashion companies could pay back the workers in the factories that AFWA surveyed on average more than a thousand times over. As a particularly extreme example, Nike could pay back workers in the surveyed factories in its supply chain almost two thousand times (Source: Unglesbee 2023, np link).

[The campaign’s endorsers were]: 1. Garments Workers’ Unity League (GSUL), Bangladesh; 2. Bangladesh Nari Progati Sangha (BNPS), Bangladesh; 3. Textile Garments Workers Federation (TGWF), Bangladesh; 4.Bangladesh Garment & Sweaters Workers Trade Union Center (GSWTUC), Bangladesh; 5. Green Bangla Garments Workers Federation (GBGWF), Bangladesh; 6. Bangladesh Garments and Industrial Workers’ Federation (BGSSF), Bangladesh; 7. Cambodian Alliance of Trade Unions (CATU), Cambodia; 8. Centre for Alliance of Labour and Human Rights (CENTRAL), Cambodia; 9. Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union (C.CAWDU), Cambodia; 10. Federation of Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia (FTUWKC), Cambodia; 11. Federation Union of Free and Independent (FUFI), Cambodia; 12. Independent Trade Union Federation (INTUFE), Cambodia; 13. Collective Union of Movement of Workers (CUMW), Cambodia; 14. Independent Labor Union Coalition (ILUC), Cambodia; 15. Confederation of Cambodian Worker-Movement (CCW), Cambodia; 16. Cambodia Independent Trade Union Federation (CITUFED), Cambodia; 17. Cividep, India; 18. Foundation for Educational Innovation in Asia (FEDINA), India; 19. Garment Labour Union (GLU), India; 20. Garment and Allied Workers Union (GAWU), India; 21. Hosiery Workers Unity Centre (HWUC), India; 22. Karnataka Garment Workers Union (KOOGU), India; 23. Mill Mazdoor Panchayat (MMP), India; 24. Munnade, India; 25. Society for Labour and Development (SLD), India; 26. Tamil Nadu Textile and Common Labour Union (TTCU), India; 27. Federasi Serikat Buruh Garmen, Kerajinan, Tekstil, Kulit dan SentraIndustri (FSB Garteks), Indonesia; 28. Federasi Serikat Buruh Indonesia (FSBI), Indonesia; 29. Gabungan Serikat Buruh Indonesia (GSBI), Indonesia; 30. Lembaga Informasi Perburuhan Sedane (LIPS), Indonesia; 31. Serikat Buruh Sejahtera Indonesia (SBSI) 1992, Indonesia; 32. Serikat Pekerja Nasional (SPN), Indonesia; 33. Trade Union Rights Center (TURC), Indonesia; 34. Muttahida Labor Federation (MLF), Pakistan; 35. Pakistan Textile Workers Federation, Pakistan; 36. Textile Power Loom and Garment Workers’ Federation, Pakistan; 37. Labour Education Foundation (LEF), Pakistan; 38. Pakistan Institute for Labour Education & Research (PILER), Pakistan; 39. Pakistan Textile Garment Leather Workers’ Federation, Pakistan; 40. HomeNet Pakistan; 41. Ceylon Merchantile Union (CMU), Sri Lanka; 42. Dabindu Collective Union, Sri Lanka; 43. National Union of Seafarers Sri Lanka (NUSS), Sri Lanka; 44. Revolutionary Existence for Human Development (RED), Sri Lanka; 45. Stand Up Movement Lanka, Sri Lanka; 46. Textile Garment and Clothing Workers Union (TGCWU), Sri Lanka; 47. United Labour Federation (ULF), Sri Lanka; 48. Shramabhimani Kendraya, Sri Lanka; 49. SAFE organization, Sri Lanka; 50. Save a Life organization, Sri Lanka; 51. Labour Justice and Research Limited, Sri Lanka; 52. Red Flag Movement, Sri Lanka; 53. Commercial Industrial Workers Union (CIWU), Sri Lanka; 54. Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD), Thailand; 55. International Women’s Rights Action Watch Asia Pacific (IWRAW Asia Pacific), Malaysia; 56. Focus on the Global South (Source: Asia Floor Wage Alliance 2024, np link).

Noah Dobin-Bernstein, lead campaign organizer of the Americas at the Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum (GLJ-ILRF), remembers an activity that the advocacy group did alongside garment workers who stitched Nike products in Sri Lanka earlier this year. ‘We took a kilo of rice and looked at how the wealth is distributed across the Nike supply chain,’ he said in a recent webinar organized by the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA), a global South-led consortium of garment trade unions. ‘One worker gets a single grain of rice, which is the equivalent of about $100 a month. A supervisor gets about three grains of rice, and an upper manager gets something like eight to 10 grains of rice. The CEO of the factory that supplies to Nike maybe gets a little more than 1,000.’ John Donahoe, the sportswear juggernaut’s president and CEO, meanwhile, earns so much that they didn’t have enough rice to illustrate it. They ended up just placing the entire rest of the bag on the designated spot on the table. Donhoe, who was appointed to the post in 2020, raked in nearly $32.8 million in 2023, according to Nike’s statement to the Securities and Exchange Commission. That’s about 24,000 times the salary of the average worker who is ‘generating the wealth’ in its Sri Lankan supply chain, Dubin-Bernstein said. ‘To put it in another way, a worker in a Sri Lankan factory that makes Nike clothing has to work 1,000 years to make a single CEO’s compensation,’ he said. ‘So while Nike talks a lot about equality, it’s one of the leaders of the most unequal supply chain systems that exists in the world’ (Source: Chua 2024, np).

‘When I lost my job without notice, and my husband, a taxi driver, couldn’t find work during the lockdown, our family went hungry,’ said Kanakaraj Pathmapriya, a garment worker and member of Stand Up Movement in Sri Lanka. ‘It’s not fair that Nike’s CEO makes 31,316 times more than a regular worker in Sri Lanka who makes their clothes. That’s why I’m standing up to fight for what’s right.’ Last year Nike CEO John Donahoe received compensation equivalent to the total income of 31,316 of the women who make Nike clothes in Sri Lanka. Nike authorized $18 billion in buybacks as it emerged from the pandemic, at a time when many of its 1.2 million supply chain workers had suffered massive income loss. ‘I gave birth at the beginning of the pandemic. When I got back to work, the factory cut my wages in half for six months,’ said Siti Nursyafitri, a garment worker and SPN member from a Nike-sourcing factory in Indonesia. ‘Three years later, I still haven’t been able to pay off my debts. Meanwhile, Nike made more profits than ever before. That’s why I’m fighting for Nike to pay us what we deserve’. The garment workers are part of the Fight the Heist Campaign (Source: Anon 2023a, np).

‘Until we all win’ is one of [Nike’s] oft-used taglines. Nike spends billions of dollars on advertising every year. Among its more recent campaigns is a partnership with Dove to build body confidence in girls. It’s a worthy cause, one that attracted tennis champ Venus Williams and Olympic gymnast Laurie Hernandez: According to the companies’ research, 45 percent of teenage girls globally drop out of sports-or twice the rate of boys-because of low body confidence.But a question Nike’s supply chain workers find themselves increasingly wrestling with is equality for whom? Confidence for whom (Source: Chua 2024, np)?

‘Nike talks about equality and empowering women and girls,’ Sari, who has worked at a Nike shoe supplier for more than a decade, said through a translator. ‘Is Nike doing that by taking our money and investing in equality? We are not even able to get equal rights within their supply chain. So how can Nike promote themselves as a champion of equality?’ Brands don’t usually own their own factories, not even multinational Goliaths like Nike. Neither do they pay workers their wages. A central tension of the fashion industry is how much responsibility lies with the buyer. Even though workers may make clothing or shoes for Nike, they’re not employed by Nike. At the same time, the women who spoke out see no such distinction. As far as they’re concerned, they’re Nike workers. It was the Just Do It company that ‘turned a blind eye and deaf ears’ to the plight of thousands of workers as they struggled on the knife edge of destitution during the pandemic, as Sari said. It’s Nike that isn’t compensating workers for the estimated $9.3 million that was collectively taken from them through reduced hours and pay, as Nilany said. And it was Nike that Akter was thinking about when she and her family struggled to afford food, forcing her to take out loans. ‘I think I will not be able to save up even one taka till the last day of working in garment factories like a machine,’ Akter, who has spent the past 14 years as a garment worker, said through a translator. ‘I will work for as long as I can and I will return from this industry as a burden to my family and the society’ (Source: Chua 2024, np).

Anannya Bhattacharjee, international coordinator of AFWA told Just Style that after their organisation surveyed 2,000+ garment workers in 189 factories across six countries, it was found garment workers lost about three months’ pay in 2020. She explained: ‘Workers, already barely surviving on pre-pandemic poverty level wages, were plunged into severe debt, hunger and homelessness. We revisited some of these factories with GLJ-ILRF in 2022 and found that nine in ten factories have not been compensated for the Covid wage claims. This included the one in five factories which were not paying minimum wages or benefits. The current recessionary trend in the global economy is a harsh reminder of the pandemic as workers in some factories are reporting wages at pandemic rates.’ Bhattacharjee explained the ‘Fight the Heist’ campaign demands that brands sit down with garment workers and their unions for a systematic investigation of Covid wage claims, and develop systems to ensure this tragedy is not repeated. She added: ‘Going forward, we need to build sustainable supply chains that protect workers and provide a dignified living wage. We have filed an OECD complaint against Nike, because it has been completely unresponsive. We prefer the method of co-investigation and dialogue; however, we will be forced to file complaints against brands which refuse to negotiate and resolve these human rights violations in their supply chain’ (Source: Safaya 2023, np link).

When the health crisis first broke out, the average monthly wages for Bangladeshi garment workers fell from around $110 to only $37 by the end of 2020, according to a report from Asia Floor Wage Group. These changes were worsened by fashion brands canceling orders after manufacturers had already ordered supplies and refusing to pay for orders that had already been fulfilled, the report found. The next year brought further financial challenges for garment workers in the form of rising gasoline, electricity and rice costs. ‘We strongly support the trade unions’ demand for this minimum wage increase as it is an important step toward ensuring that garment workers and their families have the basic resources to survive and endure crises, including the impending economic recession,’ the group said in the statement.  In [their] [‘Money Heist’] report, the Asia Floor Wage Alliance called out major fashion companies – including Adidas, Gap, H&M Group, Nike and Zara parent Inditex – for causing wages to decline among garment workers in Asian countries.  Although these workers are employed by suppliers, they craft garments according to designs and specifications that fashion companies provide. The group argues this puts these companies on the hook for ensuring workers are paid fairly. Although these workers are employed by suppliers, they craft garments according to designs and specifications that fashion companies provide. The group argues this puts these companies on the hook for ensuring workers are paid fairly (Source: Schwartz 2023, np link).

Covid-19, Bhattacharjee said, gave nameplates like Nike, Levi’s and VF Corp. a ‘new opportunity’ to ‘experiment with how far they could go for extreme greed and extractivism,’ such as profiting from the wage theft of workers who have already been ‘reeling for decades from poverty-level wages and mounting debts.’ It’s almost as if brands thought they could get a ‘personal “get out of jail free” card,’ despite the fact that violating minimum-wage laws in many countries is a crime, she added (Source: Anon 2023d, np).

It’s true that brands usually don’t own their own factories; neither are they in charge of payroll at their suppliers. That doesn’t make them less culpable, however, Gill said, particularly in light of the OECD guidelines, which direct companies to avoid contributing to human rights impacts, particularly when they involve the people who make their products. ‘In those five countries alone, Nike has almost half a million garment workers,’ she said, referring to the complaint. ‘That’s almost five times the number of formal Nike employees and that really does create obligations and expectations on Nike. And if there is to be really real, inclusive, sustainable development, then workers have to be involved in making key decisions about these companies’ supply chains, including how they responded to a crisis like Covid’ (Source: Anon 2023d, np).

[T]he coalition made [Nike] the target of its first OECD complaint because it has proven the ‘most unresponsive,’ Bhattacharjee said. While the OECD’s guidelines have no legal heft, its U.S. National Contact Point (NCP) could mediate a discussion between Nike and the unions to discuss their grievances. If the Air Jordan maker refuses to engage in dialogue, the NCP could issue recommendations about Nike’s treatment of garment workers in its supply chain. ‘We always prefer dialogue over litigation but if we have to litigate, we will,’ she added (Source: Anon 2023d, np).

Nike … did not respond to a request for comment (Source: Anon 2023d, np).

Buybacks, according to Sahiba Gill, a GLJ-ILRF senior staff attorney who spoke at the same briefing, are a ‘legal [means of] stock manipulation that enriches company investors at the cost of investing in workers. Our complaint aims to create a process where unions can directly discuss with Nike the harm to workers that Nike helps cause in its supply chain, discuss the remedy that is required and discuss a path forward to transform Nike’s supply chain,’ Gill said. ‘So that its garment workers have decent work and living wages, which is particularly critical to creating substantive equality for the women workers who make up 70 percent of Nike’s supply chain’ (Source: Anon 2023d, np).

Still, Lalitha Dedduwakumara, chief organizer of the Textile Garment and Clothing Workers’ Union in Sri Lanka, said that complaining to the OECD is really a last resort. Speaking at the conference through a translator, she said that national laws and remedies have not made ‘any impact’ over the past three years. Brands, she added, have failed to put into place measures to protect workers from unemployment risks. When discussions are held, those in charge seem to talk around workers-women, especially-rather than with them. Even now, employers and brands continue to use the economic crisis to ‘undermine the freedom of association rights of workers’, Dedduwakumara said. …’We speak here with facts,’ she said. ‘Regardless of making quality products, these workers are denied basic rights like healthcare and food. Their children’s education was threatened. [But] brands are enriching themselves.’ Workers lost months’ worth of wages during the pandemic, regardless of whether they worked or not, Bhattacharjee added. ‘We are not talking about a little bit shaved off here and there,’ she said. ‘We are talking about the massive ill-treatment of workers which goes well beyond the regular violations that took place [before Covid-19]’ (Source: Anon 2023d, np).

Sakinah – Indonesia, 24 years old: I was born in Palembang, a city in Sumatra known for its bright, distinctive clothing. I moved to the island of Java during high school. I went to an Islamic school and entered speech competitions, giving speeches to big groups. After I graduated, I taught kindergarten and primary school, but couldn’t earn enough to pay for university courses. I began working in a shoe factory making Nike shoes while continuing my studies. I was happy at first; seeing so many other young coworkers, it felt like working with friends. Soon I understood the problems at the factory. I got sick with typhoid and missed three days of work. When I returned, the manager scolded me, claiming I had ‘just made an excuse’ for missing work. I joined my union, Garteks, and learned a lot. The pay isn’t nearly enough in the factory. Together with friends in the union we held demonstrations and won a small raise – 6.5%. Last year I graduated university, and I had my daughter, who’s now 18 months old. She stays with my in-laws while I work. She had seizures as a baby and our expenses are always more than my salary. A few months ago, I made a video with some of my union sisters in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, challenging Nike to put us in their advertisements. Nike makes so many ads about strong women, why not us too? What could be stronger than the women who work hard making their shoes and fight to survive on such low wages? When we were filming, I was a little scared of retaliation from the factory, but my husband and my union leaders supported me. Afterwards my coworkers saw the video and they said now I’m famous, an advertising star (Source: Hardy 2025, np link).

[February 2025:] The Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA) has brought together unions across our region. We are organizing across borders in a transformative fight for living wages and human rights protections. The “Fight the Heist” campaign — coordinated by AFWA and Global Labor Justice (GLJ) — has focused its demands on Nike, with its supply chain of over 1 million garment workers. Support in the US labor movement has grown. In July 2024, the Coalition of Labor Union Women and the Communications Workers of America Women’s Committee joined GLJ to organize actions in eight cities across the US. In Asia, we’re excited to see allies in the US relate to our fight against corporate greed and for the value of women’s work. At the end of 2024, the Fight the Heist worker activists coordinated across the region to run hundreds of organizing meetings with their coworkers. They discussed the gross inequalities of Nike’s supply chain – Nike’s CEO received more than 24,000 times as much compensation as a worker in Sri Lanka making Nike’s clothing in 2023. At the end of those conversations, activists challenged their coworkers to join a public photo petition. Through the petition, workers are demanding that Nike recognize their essential work and provide the pay they deserve. Now, over 1,000 workers across the region have decided to stand up together. On March 21, their photos will go public as allies across the world share the petition and demand that Nike’s executives look them in the eye. Will you join us (Source: Sivalogananthan 2025, np link)?

Welcome to capitalism. Unfortunately, Nike is not thinking about them, unless Americans and others feel compelled to stop purchasing Nike’s as a result of this infomercial (Source: @BeverlyChandran-h5f 2024, np link).

I wonder if they keep their jobs after this (Source: @michellelowe7082 2024, np link).