You love your Converse Chuck Taylors right? Did you know that Nike owns Converse? Yep, Nike acquired Converse back in 2003. So is it any surprise that your favorite high tops are made in sweatshops?

Under Nike’s leadership, the Converse brand describes itself as “a story of legends, heroes, and innovators tied together by the love of sport.” But “sport” doesn’t include throwing sneakers at factory workers, right?

Did you know that supervisors at the Indonesian factories which produce Converse shoes regularly throw sneakers at their employees? Maybe Nike needs to learn that sneakers aren’t for throwing, and employees aren’t for slapping or calling pigs and dogs. Recent reports compiled by the Associated Press show that Nike’s Converse factories are operating far below the standards it had set for itself ten years ago. Nike confirms these reports, stating that ⅔ of the factories fail to meet Nike standards. But they cannot address these problems, they insist, since these contracts were set before Nike bought Converse in 2003.

Then how does Nike explain the Pou Chen Group factory in Sukabumi, 60 miles from Indonesia’s capital of Jakarta which didn’t start producing Converse products until 2007? At this plant, workers are kicked, slapped, scratched, fired for taking sick days and paid fifty cents and hour. At another plant outside the nation’s capital, a supervisor forced six women to stand unprotected under the sun for two hours for failing to produce the targeted 60 dozen pairs of shoes on time.

Hannah Jones, Nike’s VP of Sustainable Business and Innovation who oversees the company’s efforts to improve working conditions, confirms these findings but states that "We do see other issues of that similar nature coming up across the supply chain but not on a frequent level," she said. "We see issues of working conditions on a less egregious nature across the board."

How many sneakers have to be thrown for working conditions to be considered egregious Ms. Jones? How many workers abused or humiliated?

Nike claims that upon hearing of these abuses, “immediate action was taken,” but the reality is that Nike has still not addressed the structural causes of sweatshop abuses in their overseas factories.

One of the key reasons that these abuses continue is because of decisions made by Nike’s Board of Directors and Senior Management in the drive to maximize profits at all costs for Nike shareholders.

It is time that the Nike Board of Directors and Nike shareholders learn the truth about how their decisions impact workers in places like Indonesia.

Will you join us in our efforts to bring the truth to Nike by signing on to the following letter to Ms. Jones and Nike CEO, Mark Parker?