Watchdog Group Kept Out Of Nike Supplier's Factory After Worker Strike

Nike insists it can’t help, but labor group says it’s a troubling sign.

A prominent labor rights group that monitors working conditions in overseas factories says apparel giant Nike refused to let it inspect a plant in Vietnam roiled by employee strikes.

Workers at the Hansae Vietnam factory who produce university-branded Nike clothes held a pair of walkouts over working conditions late last year. The Worker Rights Consortium, an independent monitor affiliated with nearly 200 U.S. colleges, says it wanted to inspect the factory on behalf of its member schools to find out what the problem was.

What Nike and the WRC can agree on is that Nike didn't help facilitate any access for the group. Nike says that it can't control who inspects a supplier's factory, and that it wouldn't normally assist an outside group like the WRC. "These are not our factories to control," Hannah Jones, Nike's chief sustainability officer, told The Huffington Post.

More