The following letter was sent to Mr. Phil Knight, Nike Founder/Chairman of the Board on April 13, 2007. 

Dear Mr. Knight,

We are writing to continue the dialogue with your company regarding labor and environmental issues, which has spanned over the past 8 years.  Currently, we are seeking to discuss the wage levels earned by people producing Nike products around the world. 
 
As far back as May 13, 1998, in an interview with Mr. Phil Ponce from Newshour, you asserted that workers producing Nike products were making a living wage.  "Absolutely," you stated, "No question about it."  (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/business/jan-june98/nike_5-13.html)
 
Your company has also published information in the past such as: "Continued research into the well-being of the people making our products reveals that minimum wage earners are usually able to meet their basic needs as well as to assist in supporting other family members or building modest savings." (www.nikebiz.com/labor/faq.shtml) 
 
Statements such as these indicate that both you and your executives feel certain that the wages earned by people producing Nike products are sufficient for meeting an individual's basic needs in the local towns where goods are produced.  Unfortunately, based on Educating for Justice's ongoing research of the same, we are not as convinced.
 
We imagine that you have made your claims based on objective data and perhaps this differing of opinions is grounded in an information gap (i.e. you have information about wage levels that we do not have.)  Given this, we would like to review your data and measure it against our own research.  To this end, we are requesting that you disclose the wage rates for factory workers at each of your subcontracted factories worldwide. 
 
By making this information public, at a minimum, we can ensure that both labor advocates such as ourselves and executives at Nike are working from the same set of facts.  We are hopeful that you will agree to the importance of this request in that it is necessary for consumers and investors to eliminate any potential information asymmetry that may currently exist in the marketplace.
 
We recognize that gathering this data may take some time so we are requesting that this information be made public by June 1, 2007.
 
If you have any questions regarding this request, please feel free to contact us at 732.988.7322 or at this email address. 
 
We hope this finds you well and we look forward to hearing from you soon. 
 
 
Peace,
 
James W. Keady and Leslie E. Kretzu, Directors
Educating for Justice