"Nike Says Its Factory Workers Earn Nearly Double the Minimum Wage. At This Cambodian Factory, 1% Made That Much", 25 April 2025

They are lines in the payroll ledger of a Cambodian baby clothing factory, invisible lives near the bottom of the global economy.

There is Phan Oem, 53, who says she clocked up to 76 hours a week producing clothing for Nike and other American brands, sometimes forced to work seven days a week... After 12 years spent packaging clothes, her base pay was the minimum wage: $204 a month…

The stories of workers at Cambodia’s Y&W Garment illuminate the longer-term legacy of Nike’s push into the region more than two decades ago, when labor abuses led co-founder Phil Knight to acknowledge that Nike products had become synonymous with “slave wages, forced overtime and arbitrary abuse.” …

… A key tentpole of Nike’s claims is that its suppliers pay competitive wages. Nike says contract factory workers for whom it has data now earn an average of 1.9 times their local minimum wage, without counting overtime…

ProPublica obtained a rare view of wages paid to the factory workers who produce Nike clothing: a highly detailed payroll list for 3,720 employees at Cambodia’s Y&W Garment. Covering earnings from longtime managers down to freshly hired 18-year-old sewing machine operators, the spreadsheet shows the workforce falling far short of the amount Nike says its factory workers typically earn.

Just 41 people, or 1% of the Y&W workforce, earned 1.9 times the local minimum wage of about $1 per hour — even when counting bonuses and incentives. These higher-paid employees included accountants, supervisors and a human resources manager.

… In a statement, Nike said its code sets clear expectations for suppliers and that it “is committed to ethical and responsible manufacturing.”

“We build long-term relationships with our contract manufacturing suppliers,” the statement said, “because we know having trust and mutual respect supports our ability to create product more responsibly, accelerate innovation and better serve consumers.”…