Nike Manager Charged With Abuse

Authorities in southern Vietnam have charged a Nike factory manager with abusing her employees, a police spokesman said today.

The charges come just days after the U.S. shoe giant suspended the same manager for allegedly forcing factory workers to run laps to punish them.

The manager, identified by Vietnamese authorities as a 27-year-old Taiwanese woman, was charged with abusing laborers, police said. Her passport was taken away.

She was accused of making 56 female workers at the Nike plant run laps as punishment for not wearing regulation shoes, labor rights activist Thuyen Nguyen said in a report released last week.

At least 12 of the women fainted and were hospitalized.