In 2009, Nike decided to pull all orders from, and subsequently force closure of, two factories in Honduras making T-shirts and sweatshirts for our universities- Vision Tex and Hugger. This move left 1,800 workers unemployed without the legally mandated severance they were owed. The independent factory monitor, the Worker Rights Consortium released a report alerting our universities that these workers were deprived of their legally mandated severance pay, while the FLA sat back and did absolutely nothing, once again proving that Nike’s position on the FLA’s Board of Directors prevents them from taking any real action in support of workers’ rights.
Because of USAS’s “Just Pay it” Campaign in solidarity with the CGT’s campaign in Honduras, Nike was forced to pay $1.5 million in legally mandated severance, a year’s worth of healthcare through the Honduran social security system, paid job training, and give priority rehiring to the laid-off workers at its other supplier plants in Honduras. This speedy resolution can actually be attributed to the FLA’s non-interference in this case, unlike past instances in which it has actively intervened to whitewash companies by releasing reports to say that companies are doing absolutely nothing wrong.
After the FLA did nothing, they had the audacity to release an official statement asserting themselves as playing a “leadership role in trying to address the systemic issue of severance” and they also congratulated Nike, stating that the settlement “goes beyond what Nike was legally or contractually required to provide.” After more than a decade of failure, at this point, it cannot be more clear that the FLA is in fact not an anti-sweatshop organization, but a smokescreen for corporations committing sweatshop abuses that our universities should not be supporting with tens of thousands of dollars.
