Just did it

Nike gives up on 'U'

Nike's withdrawal from contract extension negotiations with the University last week was a disappointing reaction to the University's recent signing of the Workers' Rights Consortium. The University is now the third school, along with Brown University and the University of Oregon, to face retribution from Nike after joining the WRC. The vindictive nature of Nike's reaction to the WRC was made clear by Nike founder and CEO Philip Knight's decision to cease his personal contributions to the University of Oregon, his alma mater, which he has given more than $50 million to in the past. Knight has said that Oregon's signing of the WRC shredded "the bonds of trust, which allowed me to give at a high level."

The working conditions, wages and treatment of Nike's manufacturing employees has long been a top concern of workers' rights advocates. While Nike ceaselessly claims to have the utmost respect for human rights and to provide the best working conditions in its industry, the immediate competition that has emerged among athletic apparel makers to replace Nike as the University's official outfitter demonstrates that other companies do not share Nike's fear of having to conform to WRC provisions.

Nike's decision to end its relationship with the University, its top-selling school, is difficult to understand. While it disliked the University's positions on workers' rights, those positions were not mandates. Rather than working to negotiate an agreement acceptable to both sides, Nike merely decided to surrender its largest college contract to a competitor. If Nike's actions were meant to scare other schools away from signing the WRC, the clamoring of other shoemakers for a contract with the University make it clear that Nike is replaceable. And by being the only one of the major athletic shoe and apparel makers to so stridently oppose the WRC, Nike is only worsening its already tarnished public image in regards to the treatment of its workers. Nike's voluntary ending of its relationship with the University deprives it of a valuable contract and does little or nothing to harm the University.

The University's signing of the WRC set an important example for other schools and made clear its commitment to workers' rights. It is unfortunate and hard to understand why Nike is taking such a hard line against the WRC. By doing so, it will only lose business to more socially responsible companies and reinforce its image as an exploiter of third-world workers.

The University will get along fine with another athletic outfitter and should be glad to be rid of a partner which so intensely opposes negotiating on issues of workers' rights. Whether through the WRC or some other method, universities across the country should be active in making sure that their licensed products are not produced in sweatshops. The growing number of schools taking on this responsibility foretells serious problems for Nike's business in the future if it does not begin to address the complaints of those concerned with workers' rights.