In Cambodia, Our Journalists Put Nike’s Claims About Factory Conditions to the Test

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Recently, the focus was on Nike – the athletic brand previously criticized for sweatshop allegations. The question arose: had Nike truly transformed into an advocate for environmental stewardship and fair labor practices? As an editor for ProPublica’s Northwest team and a resident of Oregon, I, along with reporter Rob Davis, was eager to find out.

Nike’s influence is deeply ingrained in Oregon, being one of the region’s major employers and a prominent Fortune 500 company. Despite the company’s significance, the answers to our questions lay overseas. While ProPublica is known for pursuing in-depth stories with dedication and resources, Davis had to convince editors that an international trip would yield groundbreaking insights.

To gather facts, we partnered with Matthew Kish and editors at The Oregonian/OregonLive, leveraging Kish’s extensive coverage of Nike. The investigation involved analyzing Nike’s public reports, engaging with labor advocates globally, and even interviewing factory workers in Asia about their working conditions.

However, accessing information directly from Nike proved challenging. Despite attempts to collaborate, Nike declined on-the-record interviews. After layoffs at Nike, an opportunity arose to converse with insiders about the company’s social responsibility efforts, shedding light on issues like increased emissions from private jets.

A pivotal moment came when Davis received a payroll ledger from a factory in Cambodia, providing detailed insights into workers’ wages. Through collaboration with local journalists and face-to-face interviews, we uncovered that many workers were earning far below what Nike claimed they paid in relation to the local minimum wage.

This eye-opening revelation underscored the importance of scrutinizing multinational corporations’ practices in their overseas supply chains. Through diligence and perseverance, we were able to reveal the disparity between Nike’s claims and the reality faced by workers in Cambodia, reaffirming the need for accountability in corporate social responsibility.