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Reporting Highlights
What Nike Says: The world’s largest sports activities attire maker says its suppliers pay staff 1.9 instances the minimal wage on common, primarily based on partial information for the workforce.
What We Discovered: A payroll sheet for one Cambodian manufacturing unit reveals few folks making that a lot, even after years on the job.
What It Means: Staff advised ProPublica their wages weren’t sufficient to make ends meet and that they wanted to work additional time simply to maintain up.
These highlights have been written by the reporters and editors who labored on this story.
They’re traces within the payroll ledger of a Cambodian child clothes manufacturing unit, invisible lives close to the underside of the worldwide economic system.
There may be Phan Oem, 53, who says she clocked as much as 76 hours every week producing clothes for Nike and different American manufacturers, generally compelled to work seven days every week. She says she feared being fired if she didn’t work by means of lunch breaks, on holidays and infrequently in a single day. After 12 years spent packaging garments, her base pay was the minimal wage: $204 a month.
There may be Vat Vannak, 40, who at six months pregnant traveled by bus to hitch tons of of staff who protested within the streets final yr after Nike pulled out and the manufacturing unit went bankrupt, leaving them unpaid. The authoritarian Cambodian authorities warned them to cease.
And there’s the medical employee who stated she noticed one or two manufacturing unit staff a month being despatched to the hospital after falling unconscious. She stated they have been amongst eight to 10 staff a month who turned too weak to work. Three different former staff stated they generally noticed two to 3 folks go to the clinic for these points in a single day. The rationale, the medical employee stated, was that they didn’t sleep a lot, didn’t eat sufficient and labored lengthy hours.
Nike’s manufacturing equipment in Southeast Asia has been shaken in current weeks by information about President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Cambodia and Vietnam, mainstays of Nike’s provide chain, have confronted import taxes of 49% and 46%, among the many highest of any nation. Nike shares have been hammered.
The tales of staff at Cambodia’s Y&W Garment illuminate the longer-term legacy of Nike’s push into the area greater than 20 years in the past, when labor abuses led co-founder Phil Knight to acknowledge that Nike merchandise had develop into synonymous with “slave wages, compelled additional time and arbitrary abuse.” The previous staff’ current experiences forged doubt on the corporate’s dedication to reform.
Except tariffs power Nike to return manufacturing to the US, labor advocates say, the corporate should offset the upper import taxes both by elevating costs on its attire or by pressuring its overseas factories for better productiveness, squeezing staff and their wages.
Vat Vannak, mom of 7-month-old Bun Kakada, stated that the $250 a month she earned at Y&W Garment, together with additional time, left her no cash for financial savings.
Phan Oem, 53, cuts mangos to organize a dish for her mom. Phan stated she struggled to search out work after Y&W Garment closed as a result of she was thought of too outdated.
Nike has prided itself on the story of its reinvention for the reason that Nineties sweatshop scandal. “We’ve gone from a goal of reformers to a dominant participant within the manufacturing unit reform motion,” Knight wrote in his 2016 memoir, “Shoe Canine.”
The corporate has labored to persuade customers that it’s bettering the lives of its manufacturing unit staff, not exploiting them. It turned the primary main attire model to reveal the names and places of its suppliers. It established a written code that requires its suppliers to create a secure, wholesome office, prohibit compelled additional time and honor staff’ proper to kind unions. The corporate reviews yearly about its progress. In Nike’s advertising and marketing supplies, contract manufacturing unit staff are sometimes smiling.
A key tentpole of Nike’s claims is that its suppliers pay aggressive wages. Nike says contract manufacturing unit staff for whom it has information now earn a mean of 1.9 instances their native minimal wage, with out counting additional time.
Scrutinizing that declare is very tough. Nike acknowledges that the evaluation omits greater than a 3rd of the 1.1 million individuals who make its sneakers and attire worldwide. Nike says its focus in gathering wage information has been on its greatest suppliers. It hasn’t stated which of its 37 producing nations are included.
ProPublica obtained a uncommon view of wages paid to the manufacturing unit staff who produce Nike clothes: a extremely detailed payroll record for 3,720 staff at Cambodia’s Y&W Garment. Overlaying earnings from longtime managers right down to freshly employed 18-year-old stitching machine operators, the spreadsheet exhibits the workforce falling far wanting the quantity Nike says its manufacturing unit staff sometimes earn.
Whereas Nike says contract manufacturing unit staff for which it has information earn 1.9 instances their native minimal wage, a Y&W Garment manufacturing unit payroll ledger exhibits many staff incomes a base pay of $204 a month, Cambodia’s minimal wage final yr. Even together with bonuses and incentives, greater than three-quarters of the manufacturing unit’s staff earned near the minimal wage.
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Simply 41 folks, or 1% of the Y&W workforce, earned 1.9 instances the native minimal wage of about $1 per hour — even when counting bonuses and incentives. These higher-paid staff included accountants, supervisors and a human sources supervisor.
Nike didn’t reply particular questions on ProPublica’s findings, together with whether or not it dropped Y&W as a provider due to any violations of its code of conduct.
In an announcement, Nike stated its code units clear expectations for suppliers and that it “is dedicated to moral and accountable manufacturing.”
“We construct long-term relationships with our contract manufacturing suppliers,” the assertion stated, “as a result of we all know having belief and mutual respect helps our potential to create product extra responsibly, speed up innovation and higher serve customers.”
Nike added that it expects its suppliers “to proceed making progress on truthful compensation for a daily work week.”
Representatives of Y&W Garment and its Hong-Kong-based father or mother, Wing Luen Knitting Manufacturing unit Ltd., didn’t reply to emails, textual content messages or telephone calls in search of remark, and Wing Luen’s web site is defunct. New York-based Haddad Manufacturers, which Y&W staff stated was an middleman for Nike on the manufacturing unit, didn’t reply to emailed questions on situations on the manufacturing unit and hung up on a reporter who referred to as. Its web site says it makes kids’s clothes for Nike and that it enforces Nike’s code of conduct.
ProPublica interviewed 13 former Y&W staff within the Cambodian capital and surrounding villages, plus one other one by telephone, throughout two weeks in January.
In spare concrete houses and earthen courtyards that smelled of burbling fish sauce, they described office abuses that Nike promised to eradicate way back. Along with low wages, fainting staff and compelled additional time, they spoke of bosses who mocked them in the event that they underperformed and a lifetime of money owed that saved piling up.
They advised ProPublica that what they made in Cambodia’s customary 48-hour, six-day week wasn’t sufficient to make ends meet. Some feared being fired or angering their supervisors in the event that they refused additional hours. Others stated they wanted to work additional time merely to maintain up. Nonetheless, many stated they wished the manufacturing unit hadn’t shut down.
Khun Tharo, program supervisor on the Heart for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights, a Cambodian authorized assist group also called CENTRAL, stated his nation’s garment staff — together with these at Y&W — do what circumstances require.
“Whenever you ask them, ‘Do you wish to have the weekend off with your loved ones, your children?’ sure, they do,” he stated. “However how can they afford that? They’re caught. There’s no alternative.”
Khun Tharo, program supervisor for a Cambodian authorized assist group, says staff really feel compelled to work lengthy hours to get by.
Nike’s arrival contained in the corrugated steel partitions at Y&W Garment was a giant deal.
It was December 2021, staff stated, when the corporate started trial manufacturing runs contained in the expansive manufacturing unit complicated in southern Phnom Penh, about two miles from one of many infamous killing fields of the Khmer Rouge’s Nineteen Seventies genocide.
Supervisors advised ProPublica that the proprietor, a person they referred to as “thaw kae” — the massive boss — gave them a message to ship to line staff: Nike was coming. Cash and advantages would observe. And so they wouldn’t must work additional hours.
Staff have been pleased. Incomes extra would allow them to save, repay money owed and cease borrowing from mates to make it to the following month. They stated they felt safe realizing that it was Nike, an organization that they had heard revered labor legal guidelines.
However the promise of the massive American model was by no means realized, in response to the employees who spoke to ProPublica. “After Nike got here, nothing has modified,” one employee stated.
A former Y&W Garment employee who requested to not be recognized offered this photograph taken contained in the manufacturing unit that produced child clothes for Nike and different manufacturers.
The previous Y&W staff stated neither their working situations nor their pay improved whereas Nike items have been made on the manufacturing unit. They as a substitute described issues that will violate Nike’s code of conduct, which prohibits compelled additional time and verbal abuse.
Three staff stated they confronted intense stress to fulfill manufacturing targets. Two stated staff have been blamed in the event that they missed their objectives. Managers would yell at workforce leaders when that occurred, one in all them stated; “If you happen to can’t do it, simply return dwelling,” the previous employee recalled staff being advised. If staff hit their targets, he stated, managers set greater ones. If staff refused to work the additional hours wanted to get there, two staff stated, then managers would inform them their contracts wouldn’t be renewed or that they need to resign.
Y&W’s payroll sheet covers March 2024, when the manufacturing unit’s complete employment was down from a earlier excessive of about 4,500 folks. The spreadsheet exhibits that even with bonuses and incentives, greater than three-quarters of staff made near Cambodia’s minimal wage — at most, 15% above it.
Staff with seniority earned solely a bit of extra. Of the 183 staff who’d been at Y&W a decade or longer, greater than three-quarters had base pay, bonuses and incentives that put them, at most, 25% forward of minimal wage.
It’s exhausting to know if wages at Y&W are an outlier or emblematic of Nike’s Southeast Asia provide chain; complete pay information aren’t available for different factories. However 18 paystubs ProPublica collected at three of Nike’s different 25 Cambodian suppliers additionally present staff at or barely above the minimal wage. Individually, a 2023 survey by labor advocates discovered related outcomes at two factories that provided Nike.
The typical pay at Y&W, with out additional time however with bonuses and incentives included, is barely under the $250 to $260 a month that Ken Bathroom, secretary normal of the Textile, Attire, Footwear and Journey Items Affiliation in Cambodia, estimated is customary for the trade.
Bathroom stated wage will increase have to be balanced towards productiveness “as a result of it’ll affect our competitiveness” with different garment-producing nations.
In December 2023, two years after Nike arrived at Y&W, staff stated Nike pulled out. They stated they have been advised to destroy any remaining Nike labels, an ordinary demand to forestall counterfeit or unauthorized merchandise from being created. A whole bunch of staff have been let go.
In early 2024, across the time of the Lunar New 12 months, staff stated, the manufacturing unit proprietor left Phnom Penh for what many thought was a brand new yr’s journey dwelling to China. He didn’t return. Manufacturing unit suppliers started calling of their money owed, hauling away tons of of rented stitching machines. The manufacturing unit fell silent.
Staff slept in entrance of the manufacturing unit’s locked gates to forestall the buildings from being cleared out. A whole bunch marched within the streets, hoping to get the eye of the federal government and the manufacturers for whom they’d produced.
Nike, in its assertion, didn’t clarify why it left Y&W. It stated its suppliers have an obligation to pay severance, social safety or different separation advantages. “Within the occasion of any closure or divest, Nike works carefully with the provider to conduct a accountable exit,” the assertion stated.
A piece of the previous Y&W Garment manufacturing unit now bears a for-rent signal.
A California-based model that transport information present additionally did enterprise with Y&W earlier than its closure, True Basic, didn’t reply to written questions.
Staff stated they by no means heard from the manufacturers. They stated they did hear from the federal government, which was sad about their protests. Labor ministry officers referred to as and advised them to cease inciting their co-workers, threatening arrest. In March 2024, Cambodian information reviews stated the federal government seized the manufacturing unit’s property and distributed the proceeds to staff. However staff advised ProPublica they acquired far lower than they have been owed.
The garment staff stated they took what they may get.
It may be exhausting to grasp how far a greenback stretches in Cambodia’s economic system. The nation’s present $208 month-to-month minimal wage — a $4 enhance from final yr — doesn’t sound like a lot to Individuals. ProPublica heard from staff about why it isn’t sufficient for Cambodians, both.
Two ladies who labored at Y&W Garment and just lately gave start stated they every spend $120 a month on powdered toddler method — 4 cans a month at $30 apiece.
Sar Kunthea, 34, who packaged clothes at Y&W, pays $282.70 a month on $12,000 she borrowed to make drainage enhancements that will maintain out floodwaters, which rose midway up her dwelling’s doorways through the wet season.
Sar Kunthea stated she generally labored two Sundays a month however nonetheless needed to borrow cash from mates just a few instances a yr to remain afloat.Sar pulls leftovers out of her fridge for dinner. She buys the household’s groceries each day, she says, as a result of she doesn’t manage to pay for to maintain the fridge full.
Sar pulls leftovers out of her fridge for dinner. She buys the household’s groceries each day, she says, as a result of she doesn’t manage to pay for to maintain the fridge full.
Vat Vannak, who added steel buttons to clothes, stated she sometimes earned about $250 a month by tacking on two hours on the finish of her common, six-day-a-week 7 a.m.-to-4 p.m. shifts. The additional time pushed her workweek near 60 hours. Her husband additionally brings dwelling a paycheck from development. However their month-to-month family prices included $109 for a motorcycle, $50 for a room close to the manufacturing unit, $60 for meals and about $40 for college bills. She stated she’d saved nothing.
Labor advocates have lengthy pushed manufacturers like Nike to pay what’s often called a dwelling wage, calling it a primary human proper. Though strategies for estimating it differ, a dwelling wage normally consists of sufficient for meals, water, housing, training, transportation, well being care, vitality, clothes, a telephone and unexpected bills.
Vat places her nephew’s hair in a ponytail (first picture) and hangs laundry to dry.
Vat and her husband, Bun Sokha, dry off their son after a shower.
Nike doesn’t explicitly require its factories to pay a dwelling wage, nevertheless it says that each employee “has a proper to compensation for a daily work week that’s enough to fulfill staff’ primary wants and supply some discretionary revenue.” Nike reviews that two-thirds of its key suppliers for which it was capable of accumulate information paid above dwelling wage benchmarks for his or her nations.
Estimates from the Asia Ground Wage Alliance, which represents labor unions primarily based in Asia, put that benchmark for Cambodia at $659 a month. The WageIndicator Basis, an unbiased Dutch nonprofit, places it at $276 to $360 a month.
However Nike’s most popular estimate is simply $232, primarily based on analysis by the Anker Analysis Institute, which is a part of the World Dwelling Wage Coalition. Nike has sponsored the institute’s work.
In an announcement, the institute’s founders and one member of the wage coalition advised ProPublica: “Our estimates are all the time absolutely unbiased. Corporations don’t have any affect over the methodology or estimates.”
No matter what researchers say, Ngin Nearadei says what she earned at Y&W was not sufficient.
Ngin feeds her son rice porridge.
Ngin, 26, labored in high quality management and located herself with hefty debt funds as a result of, like different staff, current flooding required her to lift the ground of her home. How a lot would she have to earn month-to-month to forgo additional time? About $400, she stated, possibly $500. That’s as much as 30% greater than what Nike says its contract workforce earns, on common, in comparison with the minimal wage.
Talking in her dwelling, Ngin disappeared for a second and returned with two creased paystubs. One, masking roughly two weeks, confirmed simply how a lot she needed to work to get near what she stated she wants.
She was scheduled to work 104 hours as a part of a daily schedule that runs eight hours a day, Monday by means of Saturday. On prime of that, she added 64 hours of additional time, together with eight hours on Sunday, the paystub exhibits.
Her complete work time for the interval was 168 hours, a mean of roughly 11 to 12 hours a day if she labored on daily basis. (Paychecks got here twice a month; the precise pay interval coated was not printed on Ngin’s doc.)
When mixed together with her different paycheck for the month, she earned $341.65.
Considered one of Ngin’s paystubs exhibits she labored 56 additional time hours and eight further hours on Sunday in a roughly two-week interval.
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The employees who make Nike’s merchandise have helped Knight, the cofounder, develop into one of many richest folks on earth. Nike’s market capitalization was $13 billion in 1998, when Knight delivered his mea culpa about “slave wages.” Though its inventory has been buying and selling far under its 2021 peak, Nike was nonetheless value about $80 billion as of April 21, 2025.
The corporate has been a money machine. In simply its final two fiscal years, Nike has returned $13.9 billion to shareholders by means of inventory buybacks and dividends.
In response to Dennis Arnold, an affiliate professor of human geography on the College of Amsterdam who’s studied the Cambodian garment trade, except Nike and others select decrease revenue margins for the sake of upper pay, little is more likely to change for manufacturing unit staff.
Governments like Cambodia’s concern that elevating the minimal wage dramatically will drive away manufacturing, he stated, as a result of corporations that profit from Cambodia’s low wages should additionally wait longer and pay extra to get clothes to Western markets on account of transport prices and the nation’s poor infrastructure.
“All stated, it’s not essentially the most interesting place on this planet, and the federal government isn’t taking a lot initiative to attempt to change the state of affairs for the higher,” Arnold stated.
Up to now, no model has assured its manufacturing unit staff a dwelling wage, in response to the Clear Garments Marketing campaign, a Dutch advocacy group. H&M, the Swedish retailer, was quoted by quite a few information retailers in 2013 promising that its prime suppliers would pay a “truthful dwelling wage” by 2018. An evaluation by the Clear Garments Marketing campaign in 2019 concluded that the promise was not fulfilled. (H&M didn’t reply to questions from ProPublica.)
Just lately, H&M and 11 different manufacturers made a smaller dedication in an settlement with a worldwide labor union, IndustriALL: to ensure manufacturing volumes when Cambodian unions signal bargaining agreements that embrace greater wages, and to pay for the ensuing greater labor prices.
Nike isn’t a signatory.
European and U.S. regulators may take measures to extend accountability for wages. Jason Judd, government director of the World Labor Institute at Cornell College, stated they may require publicly traded corporations like Nike to persistently disclose what manufacturing unit staff earn when producing their items.
H&M at the moment reviews what its overseas suppliers pay staff on a country-by-country foundation, for instance. Puma did too, till stopping this yr. Nike did it as soon as — in 2001.
“Corporations have huge leeway in what they report,” Judd stated. “It’s enormously tough to match inside companies throughout years. Between companies, not possible. Corporations are capable of decide and select how they inform their story.”
Knight, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, wrote in his 2016 memoir that the query of wages for Nike’s manufacturing unit staff would all the time stay.
“The wage of a Third World manufacturing unit employee appears impossibly low to Individuals, and I perceive,” wrote Knight, whose web value Forbes put at $28.5 billion as of April 21. “Nonetheless, we’ve to function inside the limits and buildings of every nation, every economic system; we are able to’t merely pay no matter we want to pay.”
We Reported on Nike’s In depth Use of Non-public Jets. The Firm Simply Made It Tougher to Monitor Them.
Knight recounted a narrative, one which’s exhausting to confirm. When Nike tried to lift wages in an unnamed nation, “we discovered ourselves referred to as on the carpet, summoned to the workplace of a prime authorities official and ordered to cease. We have been disrupting the nation’s total financial system, he stated. It’s merely not proper, he insisted, or possible, {that a} shoe employee makes greater than a medical physician.”
At Y&W Garment, payroll information exhibits, line staff have been nowhere shut to creating that a lot.
On common, they earned $236.25 a month with incentives.
The manufacturing unit physician made $581.
Concerning the Numbers
The Y&W Garment payroll ledger that ProPublica obtained was for March 2024, across the time the manufacturing unit shut down. The information exhibits staff’ month-to-month base pay and the way a lot they earned from bonuses and incentives, that are additionally paid on a month-to-month foundation. Greater than a dozen former staff verified particulars about their very own pay proven within the spreadsheet. To estimate complete earnings for every employee, we included base wage, incentives and bonuses for transportation, seniority and attendance, however we excluded additional time pay — as Nike does in its calculations of common wages — and a meal incentive associated to additional time. We assumed each employee acquired a $10 attendance bonus that Cambodian regulation requires. Though the spreadsheet didn’t point out that $10 transportation bonuses have been common, we assigned this quantity to each employee.
