Nike urged to compensate 4,200 garment workers in Thailand and Cambodia

Global sportswear giant Nike is being urged non-profit groups Human Rights Watch and Clean Clothes Campaign to pay US$2.2 million in unpaid wages to pay 4,200 workers in Thailand and Cambodia.

Raising concerns about Nike’s commitment to human rights and women workers' rights in its supply chain, the groups are calling on the USA-based company, which generated income of US$22 billion in 2023, and its supplier Ramatex Group to renumerate the unpaid workers.

The controversy revolves around two key cases.

In Cambodia, 1,284 workers from the Violet Apparel factory, owned by Ramatex, were abruptly dismissed in July 2020 without receiving $1.4 million in legally owed benefits.

Despite compelling photographic and documentary evidence linking Nike to the factory's products, Nike has controversially denied any connection, even though they continue to manufacture products in three other Ramatex-owned factories in Cambodia and 14 worldwide. This has raised significant concerns regarding Nike's human rights due diligence procedures.

In the other case at the Hong Seng Knitting factory in Thailand, over 3,000 mostly Burmese migrant workers were denied legally owed pandemic furlough pay in 2020. Even a Thai court has affirmed the workers' entitlement to these payments, totalling over $800,000.

Reports indicate that some of the hardest-hit by this denial of wages were pregnant workers.

In addition to concerns by Human Rights Watch and Clean Clothes Campaign, the situation has triggered unprecedented concern from stakeholders including investors, unions and consumers. Nike's stance on this issue has cast a shadow on its commitment to human rights, particularly the rights of women workers within its supply chain, despite its own proclaimed commitments and code of conduct which it has adopted since the 1990s was the poster child of poor labour practices.

A report published in July last year by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) estimates that the Ramatex Group, which terminated the garment workers in June 2020, owes them about US$1.4 million in total on the basis of a problematic decision by Cambodia’s Arbitration Council.

In a statement to Reuters, Nike saying it has not sourced product from the Cambodian factory since 2006 and that it also found "no evidence" that it owed workers in Thailand back pay.

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