Opinion: Penn State must stop condoning wage theft, cut Nike contract

Last spring, my organization USAS-SWAPS wrote an op-ed about Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi’s failure to take action in returning stolen wages for workers who make our university apparel. As we start the new school year, it’s clear that our administration is no closer to standing up for the Hong Seng workers who were robbed of their livelihoods while making Nittany Lion merch.

Two years ago, an independent factory monitor organization Worker Rights Consortium, of which Penn State is a member of, exposed a massive wage theft scheme at the Hong Seng Knitting factory in Bangkok, Thailand. The factory, a supplier of collegiate goods for Nike, pressured workers to declare “voluntary leave” due to a decreased demand linked to the pandemic. The workers were cheated out of $600,000 in wages, now up to $800,000 due to the interest accrued.

Penn State was first informed about these violations in early 2021, and took no action. After more than a year of student activism — including three rallies, an online petition, and several meetings with administrators, the university still refuses to cut our contract with Nike, despite this clear violation of our Nittany Lion code of conduct.

The struggle of Hong Seng workers feels more urgent to me than ever. This summer, I traveled to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, meeting with workers who are organizing under both hostile governments and employers. These workers did not choose to organize and stand up for themselves, they were forced to. Suffering from stolen wages and cut hours after COVID, working 30-plus hours of overtime to just almost live paycheck to paycheck, the conditions that their factories put them in gave them no other choice but to stand up for themselves. And when they finally did, these workers were retaliated against with violence, with threats of being blacklisted from their industry, threats of rape, threats of their very lives being upended.

These are the conditions that overseas garment workers face, conditions not entirely unfamiliar to those at the Hong Seng Knitting Factory. And shamefully, these are the conditions that Nike condones with their suppliers, ones that Penn State and President Bendapudi implicitly encourage by ignoring their own code of conduct and continuing to support Nike and their factory partners without even a hint of condemnation.

Nike does not view these oversea workers as people, but instead as resources for revenue. But the opinions and public actions of Big Ten schools, Penn State included, weigh heavily on this company. Penn State holds great power over whether Nike continues to ignore these injustices, if roughly 1,000 workers get to put food on their tables without being burdened with ballooning debt. And until Penn State takes a public stand against this injustice, our administration is equally to blame for the conditions these garment factories have to face. The administration, our board of trustees, our president, all have a role to play in fair and legally earned wages being stolen by garment workers.

The movement to hold Nike accountable is growing. Students across the country at schools like Ohio State, University of Michigan and University of Texas at Austin are calling on their universities to reconsider whether Nike’s action (or rather, inaction) reflects their values. At Penn State, we are joining this campaign through our organization USAS-SWAPS, and will not stop our public actions of solidarity and support for garment factory workers worldwide until our administration does the right thing and pressures Nike to pay back the Hong Seng workers’ stolen wages.

If you too feel like you cannot ignore this injustice and want to join our campaign to put pressure on Penn State’s administration, please contact me at dzc99@psu.edu to be added to our mailing list and see how your voice can aid in this fight.

Declan Caviston is the president and undergraduate student coordinator of Penn State’s SWAPS organization. He is a senior studying labor & employment relations and political science.