Unless properly managed the processes involved in sport shoe
production can pose very serious risks to workers' health. Potential
issues include exposure to dangerous chemicals, respiratory illnesses,
musculoskeletal hazards (such as repetitive motion injuries and
back injury from heavy lifting), acute injury hazards (such as
lacerations, amputations, crush injuries or falls), exposure to
excessive heat or noise and dangers to workers' eyes. Effective
management of health and safety requires a range of measures including
epidemiological surveillance of the workforce, careful worker
training, industrial hygiene monitoring and the involvement of
workers in management-labour safety committees. It is also desirable
that appropriate professional medical care be available at factory
clinics.
An authoritative assessment of a factory's performance in this
area requires the proper keeping of factory records and full audits
by trained specialists. Although this issue is ostensibly an important
part of these companies' monitoring programs, Nike and Adidas
very rarely allow genuinely independent specialists to investigate
conditions and then report on them in a systematic and fully transparent
manner.
On those few occasions when professional, independent and transparent
inspections have been allowed they have brought to light significant
hazards. In March 1999, Nike allowed Dara O'Rourke to inspect
the Tae Kwang Vina factory in Vietnam - a factory which had previously
received negative media coverage for allowing workers to be exposed
to toxic chemical vapours. O'Rourke was well qualified for the
task, he is a trained health and safety specialist and is now
assistant professor of environmental and labor policy at Massachussets
Institute of Technology. He found that although the factory had
reduced worker exposures to toxic solvents and other chemicals,
exposure levels to a number of those chemicals still contravened
Vietnamese government standards. He also documented a number of
other health and safety concerns in the factory, including excessive
noise and heat, poor ergonomics, misuse of protective equipment
and poor tracking of the causes of illness (O'Rourke and Brown
1999). In 2000 O'Rourke assessed the findings of a Nike audit
conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers of a factory in Indonesia
which was producing for both Nike and Reebok. He found that the
audit had failed to identify hazardous chemical use and other
serious health and safety problems (O'Rourke 2000).
Until companies like Nike and Adidas are willing to insist on
auditing of health and safety which is both professional and fully
transparent, interview and focus group research such as that conducted
for this report can at least give a broad sense of the seriousness
of the dangers which workers' face.
Exposure to dangerous chemicals:
Six of the workers who participated in the research program discussed
the problem of respiratory illness from inhaling chemical vapours.
The dangers associated with exposure to vapours from organic solvents
in sport shoe factories gained considerable international media
attention in 1997 when one of Nike's own factory monitoring reports,
conducted by accounting firm Ernst and Young, was leaked to the
New York Times (Greenhouse 1997). The report documented
extremely dangerous levels of exposure. Particularly concerning
was exposure to toluene at between 6 and 177 times the Vietnamese
legal limit (TRAC 1997). Toluene is a chemical solvent that can
cause central nervous system depression, damage to the liver and
kidneys and skin and eye irritations. There is also a body of scientific
evidence linking exposure to toluene vapours with miscarriages [7].
The leaked report noted that exposure to toluene and other chemicals
had resulted in "increasing number of employees who have disease
[sic] involving skin, heart, allergic, throat" (TRAC 1997).
Nike has introduced what it calls "water-based" chemicals, which
are now used in the process of gluing different sections of its
sneakers together. It would be more accurate to describe these
"water-based" chemicals as "reduced solvent" chemicals. They still
contain potentially dangerous organic solvents, but at a reduced
level from the "solvent-based" chemicals used previously. Workers'
exposures to vapours from these chemicals still need to be measured
by industrial hygiene monitoring, and those exposures need to
be reduced or eliminated based on the monitoring results. The
most effective forms of control involve local exhaust ventilation
and product substitution. Individual respirators should be used
only as a last resort since they are only effective when the workers
using them have been fit-tested with individually-assigned equipment,
when the cartridges are regularly changed before saturation, and
when workers have received training on their use, cleaning and
storage.
In May 1998 Nike made a commitment to ensuring that all its
factories meet US government health standards for air quality.
In April and May 2001 the author requested on a number of occasions
that the company provide test results giving evidence of whether
or not these air quality standards had been met. The company has
so far declined to provide this information. Workers interviewed
for this report said that Nike did send inspectors to measure
air quality in the factory but workers were not told the results
of the tests.
One of the Nike workers interviewed in July 2001 worked with
the "water-based" chemicals and reported that two or three times
a week she was having bouts when it was painful for her to breathe.
These usually lasted for up to two hours at a time. She estimated
that five of the eight workers in her section were having similar
problems.
By January 2002 that worker had left the factory. Union organisers
from her factory interviewed at that time said that although respiratory
problems amongst workers in the factory were now less common,
they do still occur. One of the workers from the Nikomas Gemilang
factory who participated in a focus group discussion described
how a friend of his had resigned in June 2001 because he had started
to cough up blood as a result of an illness that he believed was
related to his work with chemicals in the factory.
Further research is urgently needed to give a more comprehensive
sense of the extent to which respiratory illness associated with
inhaling vapours from toxic chemicals remains an issue in sport
shoe factories producing for Nike and Adidas and other brands.
Acute injury hazards:
Workers in the hot press section of sport shoe factories work with
heavy, solid metal moulds and if one falls on an unprotected foot
it has the potential to cause amputation or severe crushing. Strong
steel-toed shoes are required to protect workers from this injury.
One of the workers from PT Nikomas Gemilang interviewed in July
2001 reported that workers in the hot press section had frequently
requested that they be provided with stronger and safer shoes, but
the company had refused on the basis that they are too expensive.
Nikomas Gemilang workers who participated in the focus group discussion
in January 2002 reported that safe shoes had still not been provided
in that section.
In some sections of the factories workers have to be extremely
careful that their fingers are not caught in the machines and
cut off, and the danger is particularly high when they are under
pressure to work quickly. Workers from the Nikomas Gemilang factory
who participated in interviews in July 2001 and the focus group
discussion in January 2002 independently estimated that accidents
involving loss of fingers occurred on average five or six times
a year amongst the 23,000 workers at the factory. Workers who
participated in the focus group in January 2002 reported that
a worker at the factory had lost part of his fingers in an accident
just the week before. Workers interviewed for the Like Cutting
Bamboo report in 2000 estimated that accidents of this nature
were occurring much more frequently than this, so it may be that
the factory is taking greater precautions to prevent this kind
of injury. Standard health and safety procedures require that
factories keep careful records of the number of injuries of this
nature, in order to help identify their causes and assist in preventing
them. Until Nike and Adidas and their suppliers are willing to
open up their health and safety practices to public investigation
it is not possible to know whether these companies are taking
adequate steps to prevent these injuries.
Appropriate medical care in factory clinics:
Workers interviewed in 2000 for the Like Cutting Bamboo
report claimed that the much-touted free factory clinics in these
factories were operating more as instruments of control than as
a means of promoting workers' health. Obstacles placed in the way
of workers who wanted to claim menstrual leave were illustrative.
Under Indonesian law women are entitled to take a certain amount
of unpaid leave when they have their monthly period. When they have
a particularly bad period it is sometimes necessary for factory
workers to claim this leave, particularly since they cannot afford
medication that would help ease their pain. Workers from two factories
reported that before they could take this leave they were required
to go to the factory clinic and be physically examined by factory
doctors in order to prove that they were menstruating. The humiliating
nature of this procedure meant that very few workers took this leave.
By January 2002 one of those factories had stopped that practice
and in most of the others investigated it is now possible to claim
menstrual leave relatively easily. At the Nikomas Gemilang factory,
however, all women who participated in interviews or focus group
discussions said that although officially the company policy has
changed, in practice those who want to claim menstrual leave are
still required to prove they are menstruating by pulling down
their underpants in front of female factory doctors. Very few
workers are willing to suffer this humiliation and so forgo that
leave.
One area in which all workers agreed there had been improvements
was in getting permission to take sick leave. In the past it has
been extremely difficult for workers to claim such leave and a
great deal of pressure has been put on them to work even when
they are extremely sick. Workers interviewed for this report described
a situation that has improved significantly. Although in some
factories workers are still required to continue working unless
their illness is relatively serious, provided they have genuine
doctor's certificates the factories have been much more willing
to allow them to take time off to recover.
Exposure to heat and noise:
In focus groups a number of workers raised heat and noise as issues
which made working in their section of the factory extremely unpleasant.
On site audits are necessary to assess whether the levels of heat
and noise involved are such that they are posing a danger to workers'
health.
Next: Verbal
Abuse
