Amidst multiple challenges, 2024 hasn’t been favourable for Nike – staff layoffs, a sales downturn and a direct-to-consumer shift leading to a pending securities fraud class action lawsuit.
In a parallel vein, the world’s most renowned footwear brand has faced unprecedented scrutiny regarding labour compliance, reminiscent of the 1990s.
For over a decade, Nike epitomised sweatshops. However, when the company unveiled its inaugural CSR report in 2001, it seemed to pivot, and the criticisms waned.
In a reminiscent echo, critics have once again turned their attention to issues from two decades ago.
Most notably, a range of stakeholders has levelled accusations against 2023’s most valuable apparel brand citing wage theft, unacceptable human rights risks and a failure to address its environmental footprint.
In 2023, Tulipshare, an investment activist, submitted a shareholder resolution after claiming its call for Nike to embrace more robust supply chain environmental and social commitments remained unheeded.
In July 2024, the supply chain rights organisation Global Labor Justice aligned with the Asia Floor Wage Alliance’s Fight the Heist campaign. Their joint effort aimed to hold the sneaker and clothing giant accountable for the hardships faced by manufacturing workers during the COVID crisis.
In the same month, activist organisations Clean Clothes Campaign and the Worker-Driven Social Responsibility Network unveiled ‘Nike Lies’, a report alleging Nike was engaged in “new tactics to do the same old thing: make money off the backs of garment workers around the world”.
Simultaneously, Nike investors submitted a resolution ahead of the company’s AGM in September urging, as in 2023, a review of its approach to overseeing human rights and labour standards within its supply chain.
Similarly, the outlook for environmental concerns appears grim. In July, Pro Publica exposed what a former Nike employee referred to as “the sustainability bloodbath,” revealing that the company had downsized its sustainability team by 20%.
Eight years ago, in 2016, Hannah Jones, Nike’s then chief sustainability officer, boldly declared that the company had established a vision for a low-carbon, closed-loop future as an integral part of its growth strategy – the so-called “moonshot challenge”.
Questions are mounting over whether Nike’s backpedalling is an isolated incident or if the increased activist pressure and Nike’s apparent retreat indicate a broader shift in the sustainability landscape.
This story was provided by Stephen Frost, the editor of Kyna Intel.
Ecotextile News approached Nike on 12th August to give the company the opportunity to comment on all of the issues raised but has received no response. If any is forthcoming, it will be added.