Nike to help Honduran workers

Facing pressure from universities and student groups, the apparel maker Nike says it will pay $1.54 million to help 1,800 workers in Honduras who lost their jobs when two subcontractors closed their factories.

Nike agreed to the payment after several universities and a nationwide group, United Students Against Sweatshops, pressed it to pay some $2 million in severance that the two subcontractors had failed to pay.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison terminated its licensing agreement with Nike over the Honduran dispute, and Cornell warned that it would do the same unless Nike resolved the matter.

A Nike spokeswoman, Kate Meyers, said that the $1.54 million was for “a worker relief fund” and was not for severance. Nike also agreed to provide vocational training and finance health coverage for workers laid off by the two subcontractors.

“This may be a watershed moment,” Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, a group of 186 universities that monitors factories that make college-logo apparel, said.

“Up until now, major apparel brands have steadfastly refused to take any direct financial responsibility for the obligations to the workers in their contractors’ factories,’’ Nova said. “Now the most high-profile sports apparel firm has done just that.”

The agreement is the latest involving overseas apparel factories in which an image-conscious brand like Nike shows its sensitivity — advocates might say vulnerability — to campaigns led by college students who often pressure universities to stand up to producers of college-logo apparel over workers’ rights.

Nike issued a statement in conjunction with a Honduran labor federation, Central General de Trabajadores, saying it had “reached an agreement to help improve the lives of workers affected” by the plant closings.

As part of the deal with the labor group, Nike pledged that other factories it uses in Honduras would give priority to hiring workers laid off by the two subcontractors.

“We were trying genuinely to find a way in which we can help set up a program that would be meaningful to workers on the ground,” Meyers said.

The dispute began in January 2009, when Hugger and Vision Tex — two subcontractors that made T-shirts and sweatshirts for Nike in Honduras — closed their plants.

After the workers complained, the Workers Rights Consortium gave more than 100 American universities a report it did finding that the subcontractors had failed to pay more than $2 million in severance owed under Honduran law.