The name Nike, to many people, invokes images of 8 year old kids working 14 hour days in some third word country sewing together Air Jordans for six cents an hour. Therefore, a lot of “activist” types (of whom I count myself one), refuse to wear Nike and look down upon those that do. In the meantime, these same people lace up their Adidas, or whatever other non-Nike product they wear, which bears the words, “Made in Indonesia,” or something similar. I’m assuming, based on label checking, somewhere in the vicinity of 75% or more of the clothing available today is made in third world countries in sweatshop conditions. (And as an aside, don’t fool yourself into thinking Made in USA means there was no sweatshop involved. There are many, many sweatshops in the US.) So what, pray tell, is the big deal about Nike? I believe Nike is essentially a figurehead, singled out basically because of the minor distinction that many of its products are very expensive, thus enabling the comparison, “Nike charges $150 for a pair of shoes but pay their workers 12 cents to make a pair.” I bought a pair of Nikes because they met my criteria: comfortable, <$20, no leather. So does this mean I care less about sweat shop conditions than Mr. Adidas? I’d have to make all of my own clothes to be free of sweat shop influence entirely.
My size 14 Nike shoes only cost me 70 bucks. I say only because most shoes my size seem to cost much more then that. Don’t even get me started on dress shoes.
I don’t know if it really is a big deal that workers there make 16 cents (or whatever it really is)an hour. How far does 16 cents an hour go over there? If the wage over there is so crummy why is there no shortage of workers?
Marc
Before this turns into an inevitably large and ugly shouting match, I just want to point out why people have a problem with this: it’s not only wages, but work conditions. Things that are illegal and condemned in the US are completely legal in other countries, and exporting labor to those countries is viewed as a deliberate attempt to circumvent the laws that were established in the first place.
Furthermore, exporting mass quantities of labor to these countries encourages poor working conditions, since countries that attempt to rectify this situation by enacting labor laws similar to ours will no longer be as attractive to US companies.
And before anyone calls me on it, every monetary figure I made regarding sweatshop wages is farcical. I don’t know the real figure, but I imagine it can’t be too far from the numbers I’ve used.
Actually, Nike has mostly cleaned up its act. But as that does not sell newspapers, you would not know it. But I guess as long as moron comedians make jokes about “driving on the parkway and parking on the driveway” we are going to put up with snipes at Nike.
Next, if the wage is only 1 cent a day, but with that one cent you can feed, house & clothe a family of 6, then it makes no ense to rail on about those low wages. I notice that the media loves to mention those “incredibly low by US standards wages” without mentioning the std of living. Sometimes those “sweatshops” pay more (for the std of living) than the US minimum wage. So, when you hear “they are only paid $X a day!!!”, that is meaningless unless you know what “$X” can buy, or how it compares to the local stds.
As for why Nike and not the other companies, this page at Global Exchange summarizes it with three reasons:
- Worst offender in the industry
- Profitable enough to be able to easily afford improvements
- As the industy leader, what improvements they make will be followed by the rest of the industry
Tzel, you don’t need to make your own clothes to avoid supporting sweatshops, you just need to do a little research. Lots of companies make clothes without bad labor practices.
Did you read your own site? They specifically say Nike is not the worst offender, in fact they praise Nike for its recent improvements. They gave no cogent reasons as to why they concentrate their activities on Nike. “We have always slammed Nike, so I guess we will keep on doing it”. Their reasons break down into 2: Nike is the “industry leader”, and Nike “can afford it”.
The problem with this realy stupid attitude, is that if they keep slamming Nike after Nike makes those “sincere recent improvements”, then why should Nike improve? I mean, if my boss comes to me and say I am doing a terrible job, and I improve a 100%, but he keeps on my ass, with the same vigor; why not just go back to slacking? It’s the Stick AND the carrot, not just the stick, you marooons.
Next, they will get into the “boy-who-cried-wolf” syndrome. Look at the United Farm Workers: they started a boycott vs table grapes because of the terrible conditions in that industry. Well, the workers got unionized (but they went for another Union with better benefits), and conditions improved. But the Boycott continued, for another reason (pesticides?), and again, and again, often for reasons that had nothing to do with table grapes. Some 20 years of boycotts. Now, there are very few that pay any attention to this “boycott”, anymore.
Once they got Nike to improve conditions, on to Adidas! Not keep attacking Nike ferkrisake.
What pisses me off about Nike is that their plants here in the US paid good money so to save a buck they shipped those good jobs to Asia saying…“We will pass our savings on to you!”
Like that happened.
For all of the bitching regarding sweat shops, regardless of how much they suck, they must be better than anything else out there or at least compirable in whatever country that the sweatshops exist or else people would not work in them. At least this is not slave labor with a gun to someone’s head. If it is, I support you all the way on your attempt to close these shops down, man.
Just consider this: if the activists had their way and all of the sweatshops were shut down, would any worker actually thank the activists?
Threemae, the problem is that these factories and jobs are made in place of equivalent american jobs. This isn’t some startup third world country company that’s financially forced to maintain these conditions; these are companies that can afford to do better but deliberately do not because they can get away with it outside of the US.
We export the labor, but we don’t export the rules on how that labor is treated. This creates a ‘lowest common denominator’ effect: the country with the least regulations on working environments will attract the most business, so countries looking to attract revenue will scramble to relax any regulations they have.
It’s important to note that when this happens, the US (and other countries with highly regulated work environments) lose out. Why would Nike keep jobs in the US when it can export labor to Indonesia? Likewise, why would Indonesia consider trying to raise it’s work standards, which will result in Nike looking elsewhere? Allowing first world country corporations to export all their labor to third world countries creates a bad situation for everyone involved, except for CEO’s in the short term.