The Spotlight and the Bottom Line: How Multinationals Export Human Rights

Abstract

In 1996 Kathie Lee Gifford made frontpage news. The well-liked television personality had lent her name to a discount line of women's clothing that, it was discovered, had been made by underage Central American workers. That same year, the Walt Disney Company was exposed contracting with Haitian suppliers who paid their workers less than Haiti's minimum wage of $2.40 a day. Nike and Reebok, makers of perhaps the world's most popular athletic footwear, were similarly and repeatedly exposed.