“Nike, we made you. We can break you.”
I recently read a short story called “The Swoosh by Naomi Klein,” In this story, Naomi analyzes and touches base on the Nike controversy, dated back to the nineties. Nike CEO Phil Knight became business hero turned Satanist when the public gained knowledge of the sweatshops all throughout Southeast Asia. He was slaving away poor children, paying less than minimum wage (two dollars a day), and inflating Nike merchandise prices 20 times the actual value. Then taking the money saved and paying celebrities such as Michael Jordan $20 million a year to endorse the company. Teenagers housed a “shoe-in,” dumping their old Nike’s on the doorstep of Nike Town. The campaign against Nike gathered so much press that Nike had agreed to raise 30 percent of the Indonesian workforce with an overall 31 percent pay increase (this amounted to a one dollar increase.)
In my opinion, this is not enough. It’s not right that Nike was underpaying their staff to such an extreme, and they should have been a lot more giving when they were finally caught. Price inflation aside, child labour is unacceptable, and to quiet down the press, raising wages up one dollar isn’t classified as an increase. It also stated that in the Bronx, kids spent their parent’s whole pay cheque on a pair of Nike’s, and a child was beaten to death for his pair of shoes. Not only are the shoes overpriced, but kids fight to death over them. An item, unethically manufactured with a price that is 20 times the cost, has become the most coveted item a teenage boy could own. But when someone took action, Nike said they were merely a footwear manufacturer, not political activists. I cannot condone this as an excuse for their inhumanity.
Photo via: Find that logo
Book review found at: Yes Magazine