Nike to pay $1 million to Indonesian factory workers for unpaid hours

[News_Editor]

Nike to pay $1 million to Indonesian factory workers for unpaid hours

2012-01-12 09:45:27 GMT+7 (ICT)

JAKARTA (BNO NEWS) -- A group of Indonesian Nike factory workers have won a settlement against the sportswear company in which they will be awarded $1 million for unpaid overtime work hours, non-governmental organization (NGO) Educating for Justice said Wednesday.

The group of 4,437 workers from Nike's PT Nikomas sneaker factory located in Serang, the capital of Banten province, will be receiving the funds and are meant to cover almost 600,000 hours of overtime work during the past two years.

The settlement between the Serikat Pekerja Nasional (National Workers Union) and the factory management comes after a nearly year-long investigation and negotiation process. The workers will receive their payments in two installments, on January 20 and February 5.

However, despite the settlement victory, the NGO noted that years of forced and unpaid labor remains unsettled.

"While workers are pleased with the result, in reality they are owed millions of dollars more," Educating for Justice director Jim Keady stated. "The practice of forcing workers to do overtime without pay was actually happening for 18 years, but Indonesian law only allows redress for the past two years."

Nonetheless, both Keady and Serikat Pekerja Nasional Chairman Bambang Wirahyoso agreed that the significance of the settlement victory has "the potential to send shockwaves through the Indonesian labor movement." 

"Now that a precedent has been established, Bambang and the leadership at SPN are gearing up to take on the fight for any other workers who have been subjected to forced overtime without pay," Keady added.

"This is justice served," Keady underlined, although he noted that "we have just begun."

-- © BNO News All rights reserved 2012-01-12

[MrMuddle]

It's a shame that under Indonesian law, workers can only be compensated for two years, not the full 18. Yet another case of an evil multinational company mistreating it's workforce, the award of 1 million dollars for 600,000 hours of enforced overtime, is unfortunately a mere pittance, for a company with the turnover Nike has. Unpaid, enforced working, used to be called slavery, as far as I can tell, this is exactly what has been going on here.

Why are the likes of the Olympic Committee, FIFA, and major football teams who use Nike products, all silent, when this sort of thing comes to light ? Shame on them all.

[mrdome]

That's all of $1.666 per hour. I guess though if the factory had been owned by a sub-contractor they might not have received anything at all.