AMY GOODMAN: You’re listening to Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.

Well, sportswear giant Nike has been embarrassed again. It has come under repeated attack by human rights and labor groups for the atrocious and exploitative conditions they say characterize the company’s 150 factories that employ close to half a million workers across Asia. Nike has denied that it mistreats its workforce, even going so far as to hire former U.N. ambassador and civil rights leader Andrew Young to inspect the factories. After completing a two-week tour of 15 Asian factories, Young said earlier this year Nike was doing a good job.

Nike also has hired an accounting firm, Ernst & Young, to look at charges of unsafe conditions at its factories. But Ernst & Young’s confidential report, completed 10 months ago, actually did find some serious abuses, though the public didn’t know about that, because when an accounting firm does a report for a client, that becomes the property of that client, Nike.

Well, Transnational Resource and Action Center, known as TRAC, a nonprofit research and advocacy group based in San Francisco, got a hold of one of those Ernst & Young reports. And we’re joined by Dara O’Rourke, who is a research associate with TRAC. He’s also a U.N. consultant, has lived in Vietnam for a number of years and is the one who got a hold of this released report, this on the eve of tomorrow’s White House meeting of the panel of both human rights groups and representatives of the apparel industry, who are hammering out some kind of deal around the issue of sweatshops and labeling of apparel that comes from sweatshops around the world.

Dara O’Rourke, let’s just begin with what it is that you found in this Ernst & Young report.

DARA O’ROURKE: Yeah, basically, the document shows that dangerous and unacceptable working conditions are endangering the lives of Nike workers in Vietnam. And Nike’s own internal report, which the Transnational Resource and Action Center is releasing to the public for the first time today, shows that hazardous and unjust conditions exist inside this, the most technologically advanced Nike factory in Vietnam. But then my own research, what I saw from three visits to this factory, as well as what I learned from interviewing workers away from the factory, without a Nike translator, shows that the conditions are actually much worse than Ernst & Young report in this internal document.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you get the document?

DARA O’ROURKE: I had the opportunity to visit this factory three times to do my own walkthrough of the factory, looking at environmental conditions, to talk to managers, to talk to Nike employees in Vietnam, and to interview workers away from the factory. And during one of those meetings on a recent visit to Vietnam, a person leaked this to me.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us what it says.

DARA O’ROURKE: Basically, what the Ernst & Young document is, although I will criticize it extensively for a number of key omissions and poor work that they did, it’s still — although a very poor document, it’s very indicting of the conditions inside this Nike factory in Vietnam. It shows, first of all, that there are very dangerous working conditions. Of a sample of 165 workers — there’s 9,000 workers in this factory, but of a sample of 165, 77%, more than three out of four of the workers, had respiratory illnesses. It showed, for instance, high chemical overexposures. One solvent, toluene, which is a solvent used in hand cleaning of the shoes, was 177 times the legal limit, was the level of exposure. And this chemical causes respiratory ailments, central nervous system disorders, liver and kidney damage, skin and eye irritation. It’s a serious, problematic chemical. No workers in the factories, essentially, had protective equipment, which the Ernst & Young audit reports that there’s basically no personal protective equipment. There’s a high rate of accidents. There’s no safety training in this factory. And the list goes on and on.

The problem, however, is much worse than this. In my interviews and what I saw, I found that this audit had ignored many of the key issues going on inside this factory, and many of the key issues of concern that have been raised about Nike factories around Asia, issues that workers reported to me: violations of Vietnamese labor laws on overtime, forced overtime by workers, violations of Vietnamese labor laws on pay, violations of other Vietnamese environmental laws, reports of physical and verbal abuse by the managers of Vietnamese workers.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain some of these.

DARA O’ROURKE: OK.

AMY GOODMAN: Explain the abuse. Talk about what the minimum wage is and what they’re getting paid.

DARA O’ROURKE: OK, so, I’ll start with pay, for instance. The minimum wage, the legal minimum wage, in this province of Vietnam is $40 per month. And what that is, the standard workweek in Vietnam is six days a week for eight hours per day. However, some of the workers that I interviewed, their standard workweek is actually 10-and-a-half hours per day, six days per week. That’s kind of the standard that the stitching section, for instance, does. The night shift of the stitching section every night is basically 11 hours per night, six nights per week. And then, in addition to that, they have what they call overtime, which they’re told about one day in advance and they’re essentially forced to do. But for your basic workweek, which is, say, 208 hours per month, you get paid $40. So they’re getting about 19 cents per hour for working on producing these shoes.

AMY GOODMAN: So, they’re getting the pay of 40 hours, but they’re working much more than that.

DARA O’ROURKE: Well, this is a problem with this report, that the report only used management information on hours and on pay. And so, from their own recording, which they present in this report, it would, if you calculate it, would show violations of Vietnamese wage laws. Either they’re not working as much as they say they’re working, or they’re paying them below what they’re supposed to be paying them.

And then, in my discussions with workers, they told me also that there’s a number of different things going on in this factory. One is that some factories can get away with paying subminimum wage if they call it a training period for workers. That apparently is a violation of Vietnamese laws. But some of these factors, they’re getting away with it. Another thing is that they’re supposed to pay increasing wages for each overtime hour, for instance, time and a half for overtime hours, or to pay increasing wages as workers improve their skills. The more senior workers should get paid higher wages. Those are things that workers reported were not happening. So, there’s a number of things going on with this pay.

Unfortunately, the Ernst & Young audit, which was specifically supposed to be looking at these issues, didn’t do a good job. They didn’t talk to any workers offsite, away from the factory. They didn’t look for pay stubs. They didn’t find out actual working hours and actual pay. That’s one of the major omissions of this report. But even what they do show shows that there’s problems.

AMY GOODMAN: When you say they didn’t talk to workers away from the factory, what difference would that make?

DARA O’ROURKE: Well, what they did was an interview with 50 workers that they say were randomly sampled, and they interviewed them in the factory. They had the list of the workers. And I believe that that’s problematic for a number of reasons. One is that the workers are going to be afraid of repercussions for what they say, because these are sensitive issues. Are you being worked over the legal limit? Are you being paid under the minimum wage? These are things that the workers obviously are going to be concerned about being open and honest and critical. I mean, even myself, I wouldn’t be open and honest and critical about my boss if he was sitting there taking notes on it. It’s something that just…

And this Ernst & Young team, which was hired by Nike, and which they say in the start of their audit is what they did was what they were specifically instructed to do by Nike. We believe this wasn’t an independent group coming from the outside, and they weren’t trusted by the workers. And so, I think that there’s good reason to call into question some of their findings.

But even from their interviews, there’s some interesting things. For instance, only just a little bit over half of the 50 workers they interviewed had any savings at all, reported that they could save any money from their salary. So, Nike has claimed that these are great jobs with high salaries and that are wanted by workers all over Asia. But that would indicate to me that these are jobs that people aren’t getting rich off of, if only 27 of the 50 have any savings at all.

AMY GOODMAN: What about harassment and abuse?

DARA O’ROURKE: So, those were things that, unfortunately, Ernst & Young completely ignored. And those are — those are key issues that have been raised all over Asia inside these Nike factories. And they don’t look into it all. But in my discussions with workers, they told me about several cases of physical abuse, for instance, one where a manager hit women with a broom to force them into a single-file line to do something, another where a factory manager beat up a Vietnamese guard for some transgression. Verbal abuse is continuous, they say, disrespect of workers. There’s just a long list of problems in treatment. This factory also, there was a case last year where a factory manager reportedly attempted to rape two women. He was, I guess, accused of this, and he fled the country and left, and no charges were ever pressed against them, so he left the country. But according to the workers that I talked to, that happened.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Dara O’Rourke, research associate at the Transnational Resource and Action Center, known as TRAC, and a consultant with the United Nations in Vietnam. He got a hold of an Ernst & Young report, an internal report that was done by the accounting firm Ernst & Young for Nike, and leaked to him when he was in Vietnam.

I thought I’d play for you the comments of a Nike spokesperson just a few weeks ago. Listeners who listen regularly to Democracy Now! may remember this conversation. It was a debate between the Nike spokesperson and Ellie Smeal, who is the head of the Feminist Majority. And the Nike spokesperson was talking about how reputable accounting firms like Ernst & Young have really vindicated them.

VIZHIER CORPUS: Well, in fact, we’ve had an independent monitoring group, the accounting firm of Ernst & Young, and actually now Pricewaterhouse, monitoring our overseas practices for the last three or four years, including we’ve also had a well-renowned civil rights leader, Andrew Young, visit our factories just recently and come back with a report that, basically, these jobs exist in good working conditions.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Nike spokesperson Vizhier Corpus. What’s your response, Dara O’Rourke?

DARA O’ROURKE: I think this really is a critical issue, that this Ernst & Young report, which is the first one that has ever been made public, really sheds some light on the ability of these firms to do independent audits. And the first thing is it shows that Ernst & Young did not do a good job, and may not be able to do a good job for a number of the reasons you mentioned, that they’re not truly independent, that they’re not trained to do labor and environmental auditing, and that they’re not trusted by workers to do this thing.

But then, the second thing is that this audit, which Andrew Young claimed to have had access to, certainly calls into question his findings about Nike’s performance, at least in Vietnam. So, that would indicate to me that either he did not have access to all of the internal audits and he did not see what’s reported in this audit, that Ernst & Young reports respiratory illnesses at these rates and these kind of dangerous working conditions and these kind of treatment of workers. Either he didn’t see those things, he wasn’t shown those things, or he has a very different view of what a good job is than would most occupational safety and health experts around the world.

AMY GOODMAN: When Robert Reich was secretary of labor, he held what some called a sweatshop summit, others called the fashion industry summit. And there it became very clear what was going on in response to abuses by the fashion industry. There’s this whole new area of business growing up, and that is the monitoring business. That is companies like Ernst & Young and others that are seeing a real market here, that corporations are being forced to say they have monitors, as opposed to independent human rights organizations already there on the ground. What are your thoughts on that?

DARA O’ROURKE: Well, that’s been the — the first page of the Ernst & Young audit says, “We look forward to doing many more audits with you in Nike factories around Vietnam.” So, certainly, it would indicate that there’s potential conflict of interest for these firms who are interested in trying to get more business and to do more of these audits, and particularly firms that are being paid to do a specific task. They’re being paid, in this case, to evaluate performance related to Nike’s code of conduct. And in this case, although they note all these violations of Vietnamese laws, they say that this factory is, in fact, in compliance with Nike’s code of conduct. That, for me, raises a red flag about conflict of interest or independence of this organization.

But then, the second point, I think, really, is right, of what you said, that we believe that only truly independent organizations — and the best case would be local organizations on the ground that speak the language, that can read the local press, that can follow up on issues in their region — would be the best organizations to do this. And we would recommend human rights organizations, labor or religious groups that are accredited, trained and accredited to do this kind of auditing, would be the best auditors and the most independent, true independent auditors of these factories.

AMY GOODMAN: And yet, which direction do you see the wind blowing?

DARA O’ROURKE: Well, on this White House Apparel Industry Partnership, Nike, who’s a member of this partnership, is arguing very forcefully that their own accounting firm should be able to do the auditing. And that issue is going to be debated tomorrow, November 11th. And it’s really, I think, a critical time for this debate in the U.S. about independent monitoring. Definitely, Nike and the other industry members of that commission are pushing for their own accounting firms to do the audits. There are several members of the commission that are arguing otherwise, that we need truly independent auditors of U.S. manufacturers around the world, if we’re ever going to begin to get a handle on this global outsourcing, global production of garments and other products.

AMY GOODMAN: Who is arguing for independent monitors in this White House Apparel Industry Partnership? Who’s on it?

DARA O’ROURKE: There’s at least three groups that I think are arguing for independent monitoring. The first is the International Labor Rights Fund, who is a prominent member of that and who’s working on those issues. UNITE is also on that commission. And —

AMY GOODMAN: The labor union?

DARA O’ROURKE: Right. And there are two other groups that are also — I’m not sure exactly what their position is right now, but that are arguing that these accounting firms should be at least questioned about their ability to do these.

AMY GOODMAN: So, they’re outnumbered?

DARA O’ROURKE: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think people can do? This is happening tomorrow. The White House Apparel Industry Partnership is meeting. Can people around this country have an effect?

DARA O’ROURKE: Well, I think that there’s definitely two things people can do that. The first is, I think people can call on Nike specifically and demand that they improve the conditions inside their factories. We believe that every Nike worker deserves safe working conditions, decent wages and basic human dignity on the job. And it really is Nike’s responsibility to guarantee that their own factories are treating workers in a fair and just way. And that right now is just not happening, and Nike needs to take responsibility for that, first off.

But secondly, we believe that without independent monitoring and public accountability, these problems will not be solved. So, we think that there needs to be some public pressure on this White House Apparel Industry Partnership and on other debates in the U.S. right now, because there are a number of things going on in Congress also about questions of sweatshop manufacturing. For instance, Bernie Sanders just passed a bill on child labor having to do with rugs. And there is an emerging debate in the U.S. —

AMY GOODMAN: Saying that they would be banned from the United States.

DARA O’ROURKE: Right, to block imports of —

AMY GOODMAN: Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont.

DARA O’ROURKE: So, there are a number of things going on, and I think that there absolutely is increasing awareness among American consumers about these issues, about sweatshop conditions around the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Dara O’Rourke, research associate at Transnational Resource Action Center. If you’d like to get the report on Nike from Ernst & Young, www.CorpWatch.org. That’s www, on the web, dot CorpWatch, C-O-R-P-W-A-T-C-H dot org. And if you’d like a copy of today’s show, you can order a cassette copy by calling 1-800-735-0230. That’s 1-800-735-0230. Democracy Now! is produced by Dan Coughlin. Leslie George is our director. Joe Gill and Errol Maitland engineered today’s show. Julie Drizin is our executive producer. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks for listening to another edition of Pacifica Radio’s Democracy Now!