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Reporting Highlights
- What Nike Says: The world’s largest sports activities attire maker says its suppliers pay staff 1.9 occasions the minimal wage on common, based mostly on partial information for the workforce.
- What We Discovered: A payroll sheet for one Cambodian manufacturing facility reveals few individuals making that a lot, even after years on the job.
- What It Means: Employees informed ProPublica their wages weren’t sufficient to make ends meet and that they wanted to work extra time simply to maintain up.
These highlights have been written by the reporters and editors who labored on this story.
They’re traces within the payroll ledger of a Cambodian child clothes manufacturing facility, invisible lives close to the underside of the worldwide financial system.
There may be Phan Oem, 53, who says she clocked as much as 76 hours per week producing clothes for Nike and different American manufacturers, generally pressured to work seven days per week. She says she feared being fired if she didn’t work by way of lunch breaks, on holidays and sometimes in a single day. After 12 years spent packaging garments, her base pay was the minimal wage: $204 a month.
There may be Vat Vannak, 40, who at six months pregnant traveled by bus to affix tons of of staff who protested within the streets final 12 months after Nike pulled out and the manufacturing facility went bankrupt, leaving them unpaid. The authoritarian Cambodian authorities warned them to cease.
And there may be the medical employee who stated she noticed one or two manufacturing facility staff a month being despatched to the hospital after falling unconscious. She stated they have been amongst eight to 10 staff a month who grew to become too weak to work. Three different former staff stated they often noticed two to 3 individuals go to the clinic for these points in a single day. The explanation, the medical employee stated, was that they didn’t sleep a lot, didn’t eat sufficient and labored lengthy hours.
Nike’s manufacturing equipment in Southeast Asia has been shaken in current weeks by information about President Donald Trump’s tariffs. Cambodia and Vietnam, mainstays of Nike’s provide chain, have confronted import taxes of 49% and 46%, among the many highest of any nation. Nike shares have been hammered.
The tales of staff at Cambodia’s Y&W Garment illuminate the longer-term legacy of Nike’s push into the area greater than 20 years in the past, when labor abuses led co-founder Phil Knight to acknowledge that Nike merchandise had turn into synonymous with “slave wages, pressured extra time and arbitrary abuse.” The previous staff’ current experiences forged doubt on the corporate’s dedication to reform.
Until tariffs power Nike to return manufacturing to the US, labor advocates say, the corporate should offset the upper import taxes both by elevating costs on its attire or by pressuring its overseas factories for higher productiveness, squeezing staff and their wages.
Nike has prided itself on the story of its reinvention for the reason that Nineteen Nineties sweatshop scandal. “We’ve gone from a goal of reformers to a dominant participant within the manufacturing facility reform motion,” Knight wrote in his 2016 memoir, “Shoe Canine.”
The corporate has labored to persuade customers that it’s bettering the lives of its manufacturing facility staff, not exploiting them. It grew to become the primary main attire model to reveal the names and areas of its suppliers. It established a written code that requires its suppliers to create a secure, wholesome office, prohibit pressured extra time and honor staff’ proper to kind unions. The corporate experiences yearly about its progress. In Nike’s advertising and marketing supplies, contract manufacturing facility staff are sometimes smiling.
A key tentpole of Nike’s claims is that its suppliers pay aggressive wages. Nike says contract manufacturing facility staff for whom it has information now earn a median of 1.9 occasions their native minimal wage, with out counting extra time.
Scrutinizing that declare is awfully tough. Nike acknowledges that the evaluation omits greater than a 3rd of the 1.1 million individuals who make its sneakers and attire worldwide. Nike says its focus in gathering wage information has been on its largest suppliers. It hasn’t stated which of its 37 producing nations are included.
ProPublica obtained a uncommon view of wages paid to the manufacturing facility staff who produce Nike clothes: a extremely detailed payroll listing for 3,720 staff at Cambodia’s Y&W Garment. Protecting earnings from longtime managers right down to freshly employed 18-year-old stitching machine operators, the spreadsheet exhibits the workforce falling far in need of the quantity Nike says its manufacturing facility staff usually earn.
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Simply 41 individuals, or 1% of the Y&W workforce, earned 1.9 occasions the native minimal wage of about $1 per hour — even when counting bonuses and incentives. These higher-paid staff included accountants, supervisors and a human sources supervisor.
Nike didn’t reply particular questions on ProPublica’s findings, together with whether or not it dropped Y&W as a provider due to any violations of its code of conduct.
In an announcement, Nike stated its code units clear expectations for suppliers and that it “is dedicated to moral and accountable manufacturing.”
“We construct long-term relationships with our contract manufacturing suppliers,” the assertion stated, “as a result of we all know having belief and mutual respect helps our means to create product extra responsibly, speed up innovation and higher serve customers.”
Nike added that it expects its suppliers “to proceed making progress on truthful compensation for a daily work week.”
Representatives of Y&W Garment and its Hong-Kong-based mother or father, Wing Luen Knitting Manufacturing facility Ltd., didn’t reply to emails, textual content messages or telephone calls searching for remark, and Wing Luen’s web site is defunct. New York-based Haddad Manufacturers, which Y&W staff stated was an middleman for Nike on the manufacturing facility, didn’t reply to emailed questions on situations on the manufacturing facility and hung up on a reporter who known as. Its web site says it makes kids’s clothes for Nike and that it enforces Nike’s code of conduct.
ProPublica interviewed 13 former Y&W staff within the Cambodian capital and surrounding villages, plus one other one by telephone, throughout two weeks in January.
In spare concrete properties and earthen courtyards that smelled of burbling fish sauce, they described office abuses that Nike promised to eradicate way back. Along with low wages, fainting staff and compelled extra time, they spoke of bosses who mocked them in the event that they underperformed and a lifetime of money owed that stored piling up.
They informed ProPublica that what they made in Cambodia’s commonplace 48-hour, six-day week wasn’t sufficient to make ends meet. Some feared being fired or angering their supervisors in the event that they refused further hours. Others stated they wanted to work extra time merely to maintain up. Nonetheless, many stated they wished the manufacturing facility hadn’t shut down.
Khun Tharo, program supervisor on the Middle for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights, a Cambodian authorized help group also called CENTRAL, stated his nation’s garment staff — together with these at Y&W — do what circumstances require.
“While you ask them, ‘Do you wish to have the weekend off with your loved ones, your youngsters?’ sure, they do,” he stated. “However how can they afford that? They’re caught. There’s no alternative.”
Nike’s arrival contained in the corrugated metallic partitions at Y&W Garment was a giant deal.
It was December 2021, staff stated, when the corporate started trial manufacturing runs contained in the expansive manufacturing facility complicated in southern Phnom Penh, about two miles from one of many infamous killing fields of the Khmer Rouge’s Seventies genocide.
Supervisors informed ProPublica that the proprietor, a person they known as “thaw kae” — the large boss — gave them a message to ship to line staff: Nike was coming. Cash and advantages would observe. And so they wouldn’t should work further hours.
Employees have been pleased. Incomes extra would allow them to save, repay money owed and cease borrowing from mates to make it to the subsequent month. They stated they felt safe figuring out that it was Nike, an organization that they had heard revered labor legal guidelines.
However the promise of the large American model was by no means realized, in accordance with the employees who spoke to ProPublica. “After Nike got here, nothing has modified,” one employee stated.
The previous Y&W staff stated neither their working situations nor their pay improved whereas Nike items have been made on the manufacturing facility. They as an alternative described issues that might violate Nike’s code of conduct, which prohibits pressured extra time and verbal abuse.
Three staff stated they confronted intense strain to fulfill manufacturing targets. Two stated staff have been blamed in the event that they missed their objectives. Managers would yell at group leaders when that occurred, certainly one of them stated; “In the event you can’t do it, simply return dwelling,” the previous employee recalled staff being informed. If staff hit their targets, he stated, managers set increased ones. If staff refused to work the additional hours wanted to get there, two staff stated, then managers would inform them their contracts wouldn’t be renewed or that they need to resign.
Y&W’s payroll sheet covers March 2024, when the manufacturing facility’s whole employment was down from a earlier excessive of about 4,500 individuals. The spreadsheet exhibits that even with bonuses and incentives, greater than three-quarters of staff made near Cambodia’s minimal wage — at most, 15% above it.
Employees with seniority earned solely slightly extra. Of the 183 staff who’d been at Y&W a decade or longer, greater than three-quarters had base pay, bonuses and incentives that put them, at most, 25% forward of minimal wage.
It’s arduous to know if wages at Y&W are an outlier or emblematic of Nike’s Southeast Asia provide chain; complete pay data aren’t available for different factories. However 18 paystubs ProPublica collected at three of Nike’s different 25 Cambodian suppliers additionally present staff at or barely above the minimal wage. Individually, a 2023 survey by labor advocates discovered comparable outcomes at two factories that provided Nike.
The typical pay at Y&W, with out extra time however with bonuses and incentives included, is barely under the $250 to $260 a month that Ken Lavatory, secretary common of the Textile, Attire, Footwear and Journey Items Affiliation in Cambodia, estimated is commonplace for the trade.
Lavatory stated wage will increase have to be balanced towards productiveness “as a result of it is going to impression our competitiveness” with different garment-producing nations.
In December 2023, two years after Nike arrived at Y&W, staff stated Nike pulled out. They stated they have been informed to destroy any remaining Nike labels, a regular demand to stop counterfeit or unauthorized merchandise from being created. Lots of of staff have been let go.
In early 2024, across the time of the Lunar New Yr, staff stated, the manufacturing facility proprietor left Phnom Penh for what many thought was a brand new 12 months’s journey dwelling to China. He didn’t return. Manufacturing facility suppliers started calling of their money owed, hauling away tons of of rented stitching machines. The manufacturing facility fell silent.
Employees slept in entrance of the manufacturing facility’s locked gates to stop the buildings from being cleared out. Lots of marched within the streets, hoping to get the eye of the federal government and the manufacturers for whom they’d produced.
Nike, in its assertion, didn’t clarify why it left Y&W. It stated its suppliers have an obligation to pay severance, social safety or different separation advantages. “Within the occasion of any closure or divest, Nike works intently with the provider to conduct a accountable exit,” the assertion stated.
A California-based model that transport data present additionally did enterprise with Y&W earlier than its closure, True Basic, didn’t reply to written questions.
Employees stated they by no means heard from the manufacturers. They stated they did hear from the federal government, which was sad about their protests. Labor ministry officers known as and informed them to cease inciting their co-workers, threatening arrest. In March 2024, Cambodian information experiences stated the federal government seized the manufacturing facility’s belongings and distributed the proceeds to staff. However staff informed ProPublica they acquired far lower than they have been owed.
The garment staff stated they took what they might get.
It may be arduous to grasp how far a greenback stretches in Cambodia’s financial system. The nation’s present $208 month-to-month minimal wage — a $4 improve from final 12 months — doesn’t sound like a lot to People. ProPublica heard from staff about why it isn’t sufficient for Cambodians, both.
Two girls who labored at Y&W Garment and not too long ago gave delivery stated they every spend $120 a month on powdered toddler system — 4 cans a month at $30 apiece.
Sar Kunthea, 34, who packaged clothes at Y&W, pays $282.70 a month on $12,000 she borrowed to make drainage enhancements that might maintain out floodwaters, which rose midway up her dwelling’s doorways in the course of the wet season.
Vat Vannak, who added metallic buttons to clothes, stated she usually earned about $250 a month by tacking on two hours on the finish of her common, six-day-a-week 7 a.m.-to-4 p.m. shifts. The extra time pushed her workweek near 60 hours. Her husband additionally brings dwelling a paycheck from building. However their month-to-month family prices included $109 for a motorcycle, $50 for a room close to the manufacturing facility, $60 for meals and about $40 for varsity bills. She stated she’d saved nothing.
Labor advocates have lengthy pushed manufacturers like Nike to pay what’s referred to as a dwelling wage, calling it a fundamental human proper. Though strategies for estimating it fluctuate, a dwelling wage often consists of sufficient for meals, water, housing, schooling, transportation, well being care, power, clothes, a telephone and unexpected bills.
Nike doesn’t explicitly require its factories to pay a dwelling wage, nevertheless it says that each employee “has a proper to compensation for a daily work week that’s ample to fulfill staff’ fundamental wants and supply some discretionary revenue.” Nike experiences that two-thirds of its key suppliers for which it was capable of accumulate information paid above dwelling wage benchmarks for his or her nations.
Estimates from the Asia Ground Wage Alliance, which represents labor unions based mostly in Asia, put that benchmark for Cambodia at $659 a month. The WageIndicator Basis, an impartial Dutch nonprofit, places it at $276 to $360 a month.
However Nike’s most popular estimate is simply $232, based mostly on analysis by the Anker Analysis Institute, which is a part of the World Residing Wage Coalition. Nike has sponsored the institute’s work.
In an announcement, the institute’s founders and one member of the wage coalition informed ProPublica: “Our estimates are all the time absolutely impartial. Firms don’t have any affect over the methodology or estimates.”
No matter what researchers say, Ngin Nearadei says what she earned at Y&W was not sufficient.
Ngin, 26, labored in high quality management and located herself with hefty debt funds as a result of, like different staff, current flooding required her to boost the ground of her home. How a lot would she must earn month-to-month to forgo extra time? About $400, she stated, perhaps $500. That’s as much as 30% greater than what Nike says its contract workforce earns, on common, in comparison with the minimal wage.
Talking in her dwelling, Ngin disappeared for a second and returned with two creased paystubs. One, overlaying roughly two weeks, confirmed simply how a lot she needed to work to get near what she stated she wants.
She was scheduled to work 104 hours as a part of a daily schedule that runs eight hours a day, Monday by way of Saturday. On high of that, she added 64 hours of extra time, together with eight hours on Sunday, the paystub exhibits.
Her whole work time for the interval was 168 hours, a median of roughly 11 to 12 hours a day if she labored on daily basis. (Paychecks got here twice a month; the precise pay interval coated was not printed on Ngin’s doc.)
When mixed along with her different paycheck for the month, she earned $341.65.
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The employees who make Nike’s merchandise have helped Knight, the cofounder, turn into one of many richest individuals on earth. Nike’s market capitalization was $13 billion in 1998, when Knight delivered his mea culpa about “slave wages.” Though its inventory has been buying and selling far under its 2021 peak, Nike was nonetheless value about $80 billion as of April 21, 2025.
The corporate has been a money machine. In simply its final two fiscal years, Nike has returned $13.9 billion to shareholders by way of inventory buybacks and dividends.
In line with Dennis Arnold, an affiliate professor of human geography on the College of Amsterdam who’s studied the Cambodian garment trade, except Nike and others select decrease revenue margins for the sake of upper pay, little is more likely to change for manufacturing facility staff.
Governments like Cambodia’s concern that elevating the minimal wage dramatically will drive away manufacturing, he stated, as a result of firms that profit from Cambodia’s low wages should additionally wait longer and pay extra to get clothes to Western markets as a consequence of transport prices and the nation’s poor infrastructure.
“All stated, it’s not essentially the most interesting place on the earth, and the federal government is just not taking a lot initiative to attempt to change the scenario for the higher,” Arnold stated.
To date, no model has assured its manufacturing facility staff a dwelling wage, in accordance with the Clear Garments Marketing campaign, a Dutch advocacy group. H&M, the Swedish retailer, was quoted by quite a few information retailers in 2013 promising that its high suppliers would pay a “truthful dwelling wage” by 2018. An evaluation by the Clear Garments Marketing campaign in 2019 concluded that the promise was not fulfilled. (H&M didn’t reply to questions from ProPublica.)
Not too long ago, H&M and 11 different manufacturers made a smaller dedication in an settlement with a worldwide labor union, IndustriALL: to ensure manufacturing volumes when Cambodian unions signal bargaining agreements that embody increased wages, and to pay for the ensuing increased labor prices.
Nike is just not a signatory.
European and U.S. regulators might take measures to extend accountability for wages. Jason Judd, government director of the World Labor Institute at Cornell College, stated they might require publicly traded firms like Nike to constantly disclose what manufacturing facility staff earn when producing their items.
H&M at the moment experiences what its overseas suppliers pay staff on a country-by-country foundation, for instance. Puma did too, till stopping this 12 months. Nike did it as soon as — in 2001.
“Firms have monumental leeway in what they report,” Judd stated. “It’s enormously tough to check inside companies throughout years. Between companies, not possible. Firms are capable of choose and select how they inform their story.”
Knight, who didn’t reply to requests for remark, wrote in his 2016 memoir that the query of wages for Nike’s manufacturing facility staff would all the time stay.
“The wage of a Third World manufacturing facility employee appears impossibly low to People, and I perceive,” wrote Knight, whose internet value Forbes put at $28.5 billion as of April 21. “Nonetheless, we now have to function inside the limits and buildings of every nation, every financial system; we will’t merely pay no matter we want to pay.”
Knight recounted a narrative, one which’s arduous to confirm. When Nike tried to boost wages in an unnamed nation, “we discovered ourselves known as on the carpet, summoned to the workplace of a high authorities official and ordered to cease. We have been disrupting the nation’s total financial system, he stated. It’s merely not proper, he insisted, or possible, {that a} shoe employee makes greater than a medical physician.”
At Y&W Garment, payroll information exhibits, line staff have been nowhere shut to creating that a lot.
On common, they earned $236.25 a month with incentives.
The manufacturing facility physician made $581.
