20 Asian worker unions and a pair of non-profit groups are trying to hold Nike to account — through an unusual route. They’ve seized upon the guidelines for responsible business conduct laid down by the OECD group of developed economies, which call on companies to carefully monitor for any adverse impacts of their operations and take action where these arise. The complaint filed this week with the US “point of contact” for the OECD, which sits in the state department, accuses Nike of breaching those guidelines by abruptly cancelling a huge volume of orders in 2020, and failing to assist the workers whose incomes evaporated as a result.
Anannya Bhattacharjee, AFWA’s international co-ordinator, told me that the groups were targeting Nike because of its size — the company’s market valuation is $185bn — and because it had been especially “unresponsive” to complaints from workers’ representatives. She said this was part of a long-term push to establish that multinational companies hold responsibility for the workers that their business depends on, whether or not they have direct contractual relationships with them.
Write Ananya in WA..👇🏾this news article published today in The Financial Times. It breaks the news of our organisation representing 20 unions across 6 countries in Asia — filing what is like an international litigation (complaint) in the USA against Nike. Nike is made an example but our target has several MNCs.
It has twin objectives of forcing dialogue between workers unions and MNCs and in exposing an egregious financial tool practised in USA by MNCs called stock buybacks that falsely inflate corporate value causing global recessions while workers are not paid. Just yesterday Biden passed legislation trying to control this quite despicable corporate practise.
With the falsely inflated tactic the Nike family made many billions — they could have paid the workers is Asia who did not get paid — 2000 times.