Members of Students for International Labor Solidarity reiterated that NYU leadership cut the university’s contract with Nike, following almost four-year-old allegations of wage theft at a Thailand factory that supplies the NYU Bookstore with Nike-branded merchandise.
The group delivered a Valentine’s Day-themed letter — and a poem — to Associate Vice President of Campus Services Owen Moore on Tuesday. A few days prior, the group sent another letter along with a football to Jake Olkkola, the director of NYU’s athletics department. LS first-year Jamie Hesseltine told WSN that every week, SILS delivers letters and small treats such as candy and tea to Moore and Olkkola to criticize NYU’s partnership with Nike.
“These are just cute little reminders that we’re not going to go away,” Hesseltine said in an interview with WSN. “They’re still going to have to answer to the students at some point.”
CAS junior and SILS member Sheniah Carroll told WSN that Moore and Jason Pina — the senior vice president for university life — had sent a letter to Nike directors seeking a “factual rebuttal” from the company by May 1, 2024, in response to an alleged “scheme to avoid paying workers legally required wages” at the Thailand factory. Moore told students in a May email that Nike’s response conveyed that “based on its own and third party investigations, it has not violated any agreements or laws” at the factory.
This academic year, SILS has also organized other actions, including a demonstration where students signed paper chains for a national Week of Action in October, and a rally outside of the Kimmel Center for University Life in December. On Tuesday, the organization also held a teach-in on campus to discuss incidents of wage theft at the Thailand factory and two factories in Honduras.
In 2021, the NYU-affiliated Worker Rights Consortium published a report accusing Nike of withholding employees’ wages — now amounting to over $900,000 — and ignoring “evidence of worker coercion” at Hong Seng Knitting, a factory in Bangkok that makes Nike garments. According to Thai law, temporary workers should have still received reduced wages, but they allegedly got no compensation after the factory shut down in 2020. Nike stated in 2021 that “most workers volunteered to take unpaid leave.”
Students have been demanding that NYU cut its ties with Nike since last October as the group Pay Your Workers NYU, before expanding their initiatives under SILS in the fall. Last academic year, students organized several demonstrations outside the NYU Bookstore and delivered a letter to President Linda Mills in February 2024.
“As consumers, we do have a lot of power,” Hesseltine said. “By creating solidarity with workers at the bottom of the supply chain and consumers who are at the top, we can create pressure on companies like Nike or institutions like NYU to adopt better labor conditions.”
Contact Amanda Chen at [email protected].
