One supervisor went as far as to say it was common for men in his country to greet women by grabbing their buttocks (48 Hours).
Workers are subject to inhumane conditions. They are not allowed to use the bathroom more than once every eight hours per shift, and workers can't drink water on any more than two occasions (48 Hours). Though workers often faint from exhaustion, heat, and lack of nutrition, at one Nike factory, only one doctor is on-site two hours a day. This particular plant operates twenty hours a day, while it employs six thousand Vietnamese. Those who work shifts at night are without emergency medical care (48 Hours).
The daily quota is usually unattainable, forcing workers to work overtime. Most workers work well above the two hundred hours of legal overtime per year; some work more than six hundred hours. If they choose not to work overtime, they receive a warning, and after three warnings, they are fired. Nike factory workers, including overtime, are working between six hundred and one thousand hours each month. A Vietnamese labor law states, "The labor user and the laborer may agree to work overtime, but not for more than four hours a day, two hundred hours a year." (48 Hours). Nike is clearly violating this article.
The most disturbing fact is that Nike can change this and has chosen not to do so. Nike controls the price of its products and the cost of operation. Subcontractors are forced to pay low wages even though workers are meeting high quotas. The labor cost of making one pair of shoes is estimated to be just three dollars, but these shoes are often sold for one hundred dollars or more. With ninety-seven percent of the profits going to Nike, they can afford to increase workers" pay. It is ridiculous that Michael Jordan is paid as much (upwards of twenty-five million dollars) every year to promote Nike's basketball sneakers as 35, 000 Vietnamese workers receive to make them (Beder 5).