Are there any links of places to buy running shoes that aren’t made by (near) slave labor?
I see places selling shirts and hemp items (blech) of all kinds, but can not find one with running shoes. Any?
I’m pretty sure that New Balance are manufactured in Bangor, Maine. At least they used to be.
dunno about who makes them, but check out a brand called macbeth - they’re vegan
According to this site http://www.newbalance.com/cms-service/stream/pdf/?pdf_id=1942084, I was close.
New Balance also has an Endorsed by No One philosophy.
I’m kind of partial to Saucony shoes, the company headquarters are in Peabody, MA 01960 according to their homepage at www.saucony.com I believe they manufacture there shoes there as well. I’m certainly open to correction if I’m mistaken about that, though.
Satch
I’m wary of straying into GD territory here, but are any imported products made by workers who are forced to work there? I’m aware that most of these don’t pay enough to live large, but are the workers forced, with threat of physical harm, to work there?
There’s the Hersey Custom Show Company, which makes sneakers by hand in the United States.
Show-shoe. Preview!
What would happen if big shoe companies stopped paying low wages to all those workers in far away destitute places? Would they go find better work somewhere or be closer to starving to death?
Nike chairman: People of Guzambu, I am pleased to announce that Nike will no longer be accused of underpaying Gazambuans.
Peasants: YAY!
Nike: We are closing our factories this month
Peasants: YAY! No more low wages!
Another vote for New Balance. Their shoes are better than anything I’ve ever gotten from Nike, and at a fraction of the price. They also contribute a portion of their money from women’s shoes to breast cancer research.
Robin
Actually I’d love it if someone could find the straight dope on this… Pangea sells Sauconys and they specifically state that they vet all their suppliers for ethical manufacture, including making sure they’re sweat-free. However, when I checked my now-dead Sauconys at home (dead but not that old – 6 months – I run a lot) the tag on the tongue says “Made in China.” bwah?
I think Brooks shoes are American-made, but again, I can’t seem to find anything which says for sure.
What constitutes an “ethical” manufacturer is a matter of opinion. I’ll move this thread to IMHO because the OP is obviously looking for suggestions, not a debate about what constitutes ethical manufacturing.
Debates about what is or is not ethical manufacturing practice should go in another thread in Great Debates if anyone cares to start one.
bibliophage
moderator GQ
Y’know, they could just pay them… gasp… proper wages!
It’s a terribly revolutionary concept, I know, but well, worker’s have only been fighting for it for, oh… a couple of hundred years.
So Nike starts paying its Indonesian workers what they’d make in the US. All of a sudden, it costs more to make shoes in Indonesia than it does here…
So you could say “they could just raise wages to a point still below where costs would exceed US manufacture”…
So then how the heck is Vince Carter supposed to get eelskin seats in his Hummer? I mean if Nike starts paying its workers that much, obviously endorsers have to suffer…
Oh wait, right, they’ll just raise shoe prices. They will then lose more and more sales to the lower (read: reasonably) priced brands, and start closing southeast Asian plants anyway.
Now, if Reebok and Adidas do the same thing, sponsorship for sports across the United States and Canada goes downhill, and North American professional sports as we know them collapse. (the best thing that could happen to them, if you ask me). On the other hand, Ferrari pays Michael Schumacher more than anyone gets paid to flog high-tops, so maybe we should stop buying Ferraris too 
Aren’t many “Made in US” clothing products actually made in Saipan, which is somehow exempt from most US laws on minimum wage and worker safety?
UnuMondo
Umm, “Made in China” does not always equal sweat-shops, you know. There are ethical companies over there.
Well, sure, but without some sort of independent verification, there’s no way for me to tell if this particular “Made in China” item was made by an ethical Chinese company or a sweatshop just from the tag. Hence my request for some straight dope on the question.
When you said ethical running shoes, I assumed you were looking for a link to non-leather shoes.
http://www.veganessentials.com/vegandotcom/
Not sure where they source them though.
Much of what is labeled “Made in China” is made by prison labor. And I’d expect that trying to leave a Chinese prison would result in “threat of personal harm”.