Nike Sweatshops- Travis Taylor

Nike is a huge company that uses child and cheap labour in developing countries in order to make their products. It has been argued since the general public first found out about what Nike was doing overseas whether it is a positive or negative situation. Most of the public views what Nike is doing to be negative and that child and cheap labour overseas should not exist. On the other hand it is argued that its a positive for those that are working for Nike overseas because they have been given a job and a paycheck where otherwise they would not have one.

When we  watched the Nike case in class my mind was made up whether it was a positive or negative situation. The negative things that the "slaves" of Nike have to go through everyday vastly outweighs the positives in my mind. In the video we saw a day in the life of a Nike worker, when they show up to the plant you see that it is very dirty and very crowded. They get paid horrible wages for what they have to go through, most employees are picking up overtime in excess of working 60 hours a week. We got to see what there "houses" look like which are pretty much a 10 by 10 steel box with nothing in them. There is no furniture, no beds, and their toilets are pretty much a hole in the floor. When it rains there is no sewage system so the sewage washes up into the houses. Nike has confirmed that they do sometimes take physical action against their slaves, whether its kicking them for not quality work or tacking them to the ground when there is a confrontation at work. The only positive outcome of this situation is that they are receiving a pay check from Nike, which will buy maybe two meals a day. If you happen to get sick then you have to choose to either buy the medication and miss your meals or go without the medication and be able to eat for the day.

All in all I think that what Nike is doing when it comes to sweatshops is wrong. I think the situation will always be argued whether it is a positive or negative issue because both sides have an opinion and everyone views values differently.

Sobey's CSR- Travis Taylor

Sobeys is one of the biggest grocery store companies in Canada. They own several other stores that are not under the Sobeys name such as Price Choppers, IGA, Foodland, FreshCo and others. Sobeys prides themselves on being a "green" and environmentally friendly company. Sobeys has a program set in place to eliminate the plastic waste that is seen in other grocery stores. The program is called Green Bag for Life and they are reusable bags that you bring with you when you go grocery shopping and then you take them home and bring out the bags when you need them again. The price is very low for these reusable bags so customers are more apt to purchase them in order to help out the environment.

I work at a Sobeys store so I have seen first hand the work that they put into being sustainable and environmentally responsible. At my store, Sobeys recently changed all the lightbulbs in the store to energy efficient light bulbs which helps with lowering using so much energy which is good for the environment. Also at my store, we have a cardboard compactor which is where all the cardboard goes to be compacted down into a big block. Sobeys has plenty of cardboard waste so recycling the cardboard has a huge impact on the environment because all that cardboard is not being sent to landfills.

Since I started working at Sobeys I also seen some things that they can improve on to further their Sustainability and Environmentally responsible business practices. At my store there are recycling bins all around the store, some that are sorted with glass and plastic and some with paper. This seems like a good thing to do but at the end of the night the recycling all gets collected and thrown in the garbage. All that recyclable material is being sent to sit in landfills when it wont break down for 50 years.

Sobeys is a company that is trying to be "green" and Environmentally friendly, but they still have some work left to do.

Ethical Children's Books - Final Blog

Reflection on Ethical Children's Books Assignment 

It occurred to me one day while reading to my cousin that the books we choose to read to the younger generations could have such an impact on who they grow up to be, and we may not even realize it. So, over the course of the semester I have been digging back in to my childhood and recovering the long lost books that I came to love so much.
I have been writing blogs every Sunday night throughout the semester and each blog focuses on a specific children's book or fable that i have brought back from my past. My parents have told me that they tried to instill good morals on to my sister and I through reading us these books that we enjoyed so much, it was easier and more efficient then trying to sit us down and teach them to us. 
By doing these blogs I wanted to explore for myself more of what the moral or lesson in the book actually was, by doing research and exploring the books once again. 

There are so many good ethical books out there for kids that it was hard for me to pick only ten, but here is a few of the books that I covered:

The Lorax - Dr Suess

The Berenstain Bears and the In Crowd - Stan and Jan Berenstain

Me First - Ellen Ruden

Aesop's Fables - The Fox and the Goat

The Gruffalo - Julia Donaldson

and others. 


The ones that I decided to post about aren't ones that I portray as being the best morally driven books, they are just the ones that I remember making an impact on my childhood and who i grew up to be. 
While writing these blogs I tried to relate every book to a Corporate Social Responsibility aspect, making it more relevant to the course, and it was much easier then i had expected. 
When we look at big corporations, it seems like some of them have forgotten the very basic principles and morals that we were all taught as young kids, and it really is quite sad. 
The prime example of that I feel is NIKE Inc. It seems to me that Phil Knight has forgotten the golden rule, that is do on to others as you would want them to do on to you. I'm sure if Knight was in the position of a worker in one of his factories, he would not be doing what he is doing right now. Fairness and equality is something that we don't really see when it comes to the Nike corporation. 

In the end, I am happy with myself for deciding to do this sort of assignment for marks, it has brought back a lot of really good childhood memories, as well helped re-instill all of the morals and lessons that were so important to be learned as a kid, and I do not regret it. 



- Jenifer A. White

Market Manipulation

Market Manipulation

The day that Enron became officially bankrupt, its stock price had fallen from a high $90 in August of 2000 to a mere $0.61 in December of 2001. At one time one of the world’s largest energy companies, employing over 20,000 people, its quick downfall and unethical practices makes you think if they’re the only company doing this today. The head honchos of the company, Kenneth Lay, Jeffery Skilling, and Andrew Fasthow were all able to manipulate and hide billions of dollars’ worth of failed projects while saying that the company was continuing to grow, making sure that investors didn’t shy away.

Many people believed before this happened that Enron was one of the best run corporations in America and that’s why there was so much investment lost once they went under. Shareholders lost approximately 11 billion dollars in the collapse, and since they have barely been reimbursed any of that lost money. Those poor people, who invested their livelihoods and maybe had their retirement funds, were just taken away like that. They get nothing in return, and now have the pay the consequences of something that they had no control over.

Many other companies more recently have had the same effect on the people, the financial crisis of 2008 was because many major American companies. Companies like the Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs were both guilty of fraud and went bankrupt because of their malpractices when dealing with mortgages and accounting. Those companies were then required to take all the houses they owned, and they literally took the houses out of regular people’s hands and made them homeless. The people who owned the houses, or were working to pay them off now had nothing to show for it. These companies made thousands of regular people hard working people now barely on the cusp of homelessness.

It makes me think that the world we live in today is based way too much on the pyramid scheme. People at the top of that pyramid have way too much of a say and power over the regular, blue collard worker who make up the majority of the population. These companies had such a impact that it caused a depression In the economy, regardless of the industry. Way too many people were losing their jobs and its causing the government to put all its time and money into trying to fix a problem, and not into other more important things like research or education.

The Space Shuttle Challenger Case

The Space Shuttle Challenger – Ryan Lane

            After reading over a few of the cases we have looked at in this class the one that really stood out to me was the case about the Challenger. The shuttle exploded 73 seconds after liftoff and all 7 members of the crew were killed.  It was discovered that the reason the shuttle exploded was because of a burn through the O-ring sealing two sections of the solid rocket booster. 

            The night before the launch the engineers were very opposed to launching this shuttle because they knew the low temperatures would cause the O-ring seal to fail. Memos were written by engineers working for Thiokel stating that this O-ring is extremely unsafe and that they highly recommend not launching. Thiokel engineers brought their concern to NASA, who eventually decided to go ahead with the launch. The engineers were overruled by their managers and they signed off on the launch. Well, we all know what happens next…..

            What really bothers me about this is that NASA knew how dangerous this launch would be and still went ahead with it. The engineers also knew how much of a risk this launch was and still let NASA tell them what to do. Do the people at NASA, apparently the smartest people in the world, have no morals at all? They used the crew members lives as pawn pieces in a mission they felt they had put way too much time and money into to take a little longer into fixing the problem with the shuttle. I really wonder what the crew member families thought when the reports of this surfaced. Giving the families money does not buy their loved ones life back and it really is a shame that NASA is still a respected organization after hearing about this. Sending people into space is already dangerous enough, but sending people into space knowing that the shuttle could be faulty? Crazy if you ask me.

Starbucks, A Responsible Company

Starbucks, A Responsible Company – Ryan Lane

“So ever since we opened our first store in 1971, we dedicated ourselves to striking a balance between profitability and social conscience. We continue to believe that the ultimate way to scale the power of brand is to share the good we do so that Starbucks and everyone we touch – can endure and thrive” 

This quote is straight from the Starbucks website, and it really shows a side to Starbucks that not many people are familiar with. Starbucks knows that they go through a lot of paper cups daily and can produce a lot of waste from finished coffees, but they really do go above and beyond what is expected of them to make up for that. They are committed to minimizing their environmental footprint by recycling and reducing waste, trying to use less energy daily and by building their stores with a more ‘green’ approach.

Starbucks produces a lot of waste, especially behind the counter and in the back room. I work at Starbucks so I know firsthand the amount of cardboard comes in because of the constant supply of products we use to make drinks, or fix equipment. There are 2 separate dumpsters in the back of the parking lot, one for garbage and one for all of the cardboard. Each employee is responsible for following proper procedures on taking them out. There are also 2 separate garbage containers in the store that have 3 separate garbage slots, one for paper, one for plastic and one for glass bottles (we serve pre bottled juices and frappachinos). Starbucks has also overtime made their cups greener:

·         In 1997 Starbucks developed a recyclable paper sleeve to use instead of customers asking for a double cup

·         In 2006 Starbucks launched the industry’s first paper cup with 10% post-consumer recycled fiber

·         In 2009 Starbucks created a plastic reusable cup that has less of an environmental impact

Starbucks has recently switched to GE light bulbs which save energy and still produce enough light. These changes are just the start of a bigger picture of evolving into a very environmental friendly company. If more company’s can start to become more green like Starbucks has begun to do, the world would be a cleaner place that produces a lot less waste.  Starbucks has made great strides towards this and they vow to continue this effort.

Source: http://www.starbucks.com/responsibility

NIKE Sweatshops

NIKE Sweatshops – Ryan Lane

There has been a constant debate about whether sweatshops are a good thing or a bad thing. The majority of people have always said that it’s terrible, but there are some people that believe it helps children make some sort of money to be able to survive. I have never really looked too much into this so I was usually just on the fence with either, up until I watched the clip on the Nike sweatshops and how horrible the conditions are there.

The workers in Indonesia are all housed in a very small “metal box” with 4 people all sharing this same “box”. There are no beds, and they all share the same toilet that pretty much looks like a hole in the ground. When it rains and the sewage system overflows all of the sewage ends up flooding into their house. In the clip it stated that each worker only makes enough money to be able to buy 2 very small meals. If they got sick they had to make the tough decision of using their money they made for the day on Tylenol to try and feel better, or food for the day. I know that these sweat shops are in developing countries, but how do people allow other people to live like that? NIKE has even come out and admitted to using violence towards the workers including kicking someone for a mistake or verbally abusing them. I know that its cheap labour costs to run sweatshops, but NIKE is a company that is well known around the world, you would think that after all of these years they wouldn’t want to have that kind of bad reputation.

After watching this video and looking a little more into this problem, I have obviously changed my opinion from on the fence to completely against sweatshops. I own a lot of NIKE products and it almost makes me sick wearing those products, knowing that there are people working to make these products in such terrible conditions.