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NIKE VIETNAM BOSS CHARGED IN ABUSE
April 1, 2026Hanoi, Vietnam - Authorities in southern Vietnam have charged a Nike factory manager with abusing her employees, a police spokesman said yesterday. The charges come just days after the U.S. shoe giant suspended the manager for allegedly forcing factory workers to run laps as punishment.
Capitalizing on Vietnam's low labor costs, Nike has five manufacturing plants in this country that produce about 4 percent of the company's merchandise. But it has run into a storm of bad publicity in the past week over conditions at those plants.
The manager was identified by police as 27-year-old Hsu Chin-yun from Taiwan. She has been charged with abusing laborers, police said, and her passport was taken away.
A report released last week by labor-rights activist Thuyen Nguyen accused the manager of making 56 female workers at the Nike plant run laps as punishment for not wearing regulation shoes. At least 12 of the women fainted and were hospitalized, according to the investigation.
The woman charged was a technical manager at Nike subcontractor Pou Chen Co. in Dong Nai, on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City. Nike suspended her in response to the labor-rights report.
Police in Dong Nai confirmed the charges against her, but refused to elaborate. Pou Chen company officials said she had not been take into custody.
Martha Benson, Nike's director of communications for the Asia-Pacific region, said the criticism would be expected to have an effect on Nike stock only if the company ignored the problem. Benson is in Ho Chi Minh City on what she said was a previously scheduled trip to visit Nike's five subcontractor factories in Vietnam.
"There could be some impact over the long term if we weren't doing something about it," Benson said. "But we are addressing it."
Hsu Chin-yun is the second foreign manager working for Nike in Vietnam to be brought up on charges of mistreating workers. Last year, a South Korean factory floor manager working for Nike subcontractor Sam Yang Co. was convicted of beating Vietnamese employees with a shoe.
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