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The query was a easy one: Had Nike, the athletic attire model dogged by sweatshop allegations greater than 20 years in the past, really turn into a beacon of environmental stewardship and honest labor practices, because it claimed?
As editor for ProPublica’s Northwest group and a longtime Oregonian, I used to be as desirous to know the reply because the Portland-based reporter who posed the query, Rob Davis.
Nike is woven into Oregon’s cloth. It’s one of many Portland space’s largest employers and one of many state’s few Fortune 500 corporations. Nike’s headquarters within the Portland suburbs is a 400-acre advanced of buildings, operating paths and sports activities fields the place style design and athleticism meet. On the College of Oregon, alma mater of Nike co-founder Phil Knight, buildings throughout the campus bear his identify or the names of his relations.
The difficulty was that the reply to Davis’ query primarily lay throughout the Pacific Ocean. Though ProPublica is undaunted by tales that take time and, sure, cash — see latest reporting by reporters Josh Kaplan and Brett Murphy from Gambia, for instance — Davis first wanted to show to editors that an abroad journey would deliver us a narrative that broke new floor.
Certainly one of our most essential selections early on was to associate with reporter Matthew Kish and his editors at The Oregonian/OregonLive, the place Davis and I labored beforehand. Kish has coated Nike for greater than a decade and is aware of the corporate in addition to maybe any reporter within the nation.
Kish and Davis began reviewing public experiences that Nike had put out over the previous 20 years and each information article they may discover in regards to the firm’s efforts within the realm of social accountability. Davis spoke by cellphone with labor advocates across the globe. He even discovered a number of manufacturing unit employees in Asia prepared to speak in late-night (for them) video calls about their working circumstances.
The nut that Davis and Kish couldn’t crack was Nike itself. The reporters instructed Nike’s public relations group about their curiosity. May Nike staffers share what they had been discovering in manufacturing unit audits or how they had been making certain compliance with Nike’s code of conduct? The PR folks at varied factors supplied some background data, together with excerpts of previous company experiences, however the firm selected to not make anybody accessible for on-the-record interviews at that stage.
(I additionally requested Nike final week to weigh in on the corporate’s interactions with Kish and Davis or in regards to the tales they’ve written for this sequence; a Nike spokesperson declined to remark to me on the document.)
With layoffs hitting Nike final yr, Kish and Davis had a gap to speak with insiders about one explicit side of the corporate’s social accountability efforts. Pursuing a tip, the 2 labored with analysis reporter Alex Mierjeski to compile a listing of workers who had labored in sustainability roles. The reporters began knocking on digital doorways: about 100 of them. They established that Nike’s reorganization had taken a heavy toll on the workforce whose efforts included lowering the corporate’s carbon footprint.
This time, Nike responded by granting an interview with its chief sustainability officer, the one interview the corporate has given for this mission up to now throughout greater than a yr of reporting. It lasted 17 minutes. She stated the corporate remained dedicated to sustainability and described its technique as “embedding” the work all through the corporate.
We printed tales laying out the departures and one different improvement that appeared to go towards Nike’s declared intent to assist the planet: rising emissions from its personal jets.
But one thing remained lacking from our reporting. The previous sustainability employees spoke English. Many had been based mostly in Oregon. That they had on-line presences. Understanding working circumstances in Nike’s factories referred to as for gaining a better vantage level on the corporate’s far-flung international provide chain.
Davis zeroed in on one particular declare from Nike. The corporate has stated that the factories for which it has knowledge pay their employees, on common, 1.9 instances the native minimal wage. It supplied no breakdown of factories included within the calculation, and it wasn’t clear how broadly pay would possibly range from the typical. So Davis began requesting paystubs for employees throughout the globe. We hoped that even scattered knowledge would assist us check Nike’s math.
Paystubs trickled in. A handful of employees from a manufacturing unit in Central America. Extra from Indonesia. A smattering from Cambodia.
Then, a breakthrough.
Davis acquired an Excel spreadsheet in English and Khmer, the language most generally spoken in Cambodia. It was a payroll ledger for Y&W Garment, which made child clothes for Nike from 2022 to 2023. Davis may see each worker’s job title, age, hiring date, gender and pay quantities.
This was one manufacturing unit in a provide chain made up of lots of, 3,720 employees out of greater than 1.1 million that Nike’s suppliers make use of globally. Nevertheless it was a uniquely complete window. Fast calculations confirmed that solely a tiny share of Y&W’s workforce — simply 1% — made 1.9 instances the minimal wage, the quantity that Nike stated was typical.
Whereas Nike says contract manufacturing unit employees for whom it has knowledge earn 1.9 instances their native minimal wage, a Y&W Garment manufacturing unit payroll ledger reveals many employees 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 workers earned near the minimal wage.
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Obtained by ProPublica. Highlights and redactions by ProPublica.
Davis related with a bilingual freelance journalist in Phnom Penh, Keat Soriththeavy, who tracked down a few of the employees named within the payroll ledger. Now we had manufacturing unit sources on the bottom. We had somebody to assist Davis translate what they needed to say. And we had our spreadsheet. I instructed Davis to e book a ticket for January.
On a Sunday morning, lower than a day after his aircraft landed in Cambodia’s capital, Davis met a personnel on their solely time off. After introductions by means of our employed translator, Davis pulled an iPad out of his journey bag and handed it round, asking whether or not the small print of the digital payroll ledger had been correct.
One after the other, every employee studied the entry by their identify. “Right?” Davis requested. Pause for translation.
“Sure.”
Across the desk they went: Right. Sure. Right.
Whereas Davis interviewed a garment employee in her house outdoors Phnom Penh, her neighbor, Phan Oem, got here by. She had labored at Y&W Garment since 2012, the yr it opened, and was glad to reply questions. She stated she labored as many as 76 hours per week and typically was pressured to work additional time.
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Rob Davis/ProPublica
Davis spent the remainder of his 12-day go to touring by tuk-tuk — a tiny three-wheeled taxi named for its puttering engine — to fulfill employees in small villages round Phnom Penh. Cambodian garment employees are sometimes on the clock no less than six days every week, leaving restricted free time to spend with household or a visiting journalist. But with Keat’s assist, Davis managed to speak with a complete of 14, some prepared to be recognized by identify. They instructed him the cash they made in a 48-hour work week wasn’t sufficient to dwell on and that they wanted additional time to make ends meet.
First picture: Davis whereas stopped for lunch alongside a freeway outdoors Phnom Penh. Second picture: Davis’ enterprise card sits inside a tuk-tuk.
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First picture: Keat Soriththeavy. Second picture: Rob Davis/ProPublica
When employees started telling Davis that folks fainted within the scorching manufacturing unit and wanted to be handled at its clinic, he messaged me to gauge my response. I requested: May he discover a health care provider who handled them? In a short time, Davis obtained a cellphone quantity for a clinic staffer prepared to speak. The medical employee helped us quantify the dimensions of the issue, telling Davis as many as 15 folks a month turned too weak to work within the scorching months of Could and June. (As utilized in Cambodia, the time period “fainted” can describe changing into too weak to work.)
ProPublica photojournalist Sarahbeth Maney adopted on Davis’ path a month later. She documented, with intimate portraiture, the house life of individuals from a manufacturing unit the place base pay began at about $1 per hour.
Sar Kunthea, who packaged clothes at Y&W Garment, stated she generally labored two Sundays a month on prime of her common hours however nonetheless needed to borrow cash from buddies a number of instances a yr to remain afloat.
Credit score:
Sarahbeth Maney/ProPublica
Nike didn’t reply detailed questions from Davis about wages or faintings, as a substitute issuing a written assertion. The corporate stated it’s “dedicated to moral and accountable manufacturing” and that it expects suppliers “to proceed making progress on honest compensation for an everyday work week.”
Representatives of Y&W Garment and its Hong Kong mum or dad, Wing Luen Knitting Manufacturing facility Ltd., didn’t reply to Davis’ emails, textual content messages or cellphone calls. Haddad Manufacturers, which Y&W employees instructed Davis served as an middleman for Nike on the Phnom Penh facility, didn’t reply to emails asking about circumstances there.
As Davis was drafting his story, President Donald Trump’s plan to boost tariffs on items manufactured abroad despatched Nike’s inventory costs tumbling. One declared objective was to reverse the financial forces that drove Nike and others to make their merchandise in locations like Cambodia and never the U.S. It appeared, truthfully, like Nike’s monitor document within the area may be dropping relevance.
Nike Repeatedly Raised Issues About Repression in Cambodia. It Expanded Its Manufacturing facility Workforce There Anyway.
However specialists instructed Davis and Kish, our reporting associate at The Oregonian, fairly the other. Quite than deliver jobs house, manufacturers would possibly merely squeeze their international suppliers for higher productiveness.
It made the problems that drove Davis from the start as urgent as they’ve ever been. Had Nike lived as much as its guarantees in Southeast Asia?
At one Cambodian manufacturing unit, Davis’ tenacity introduced us a easy reply: No.
Avenue distributors promote items in entrance of the previous Y&W Garment manufacturing unit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
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Sarahbeth Maney/ProPublica
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