With the regular season fast-approaching, and budgetary issues remaining, hockey fans all over the globe are in a panic. However, the National Hockey League officials seem to be more concerned with how thick they can keep their wallets, and forget that consumer interest is being toyed with in the process.

NHL Lockout Affects Many

With a revenue pot of about $3billion, there have always been debates about what share goes to players, and how much is left for the NHL itself. Apparently, the players’ share is too high for the NHL’s liking, so until further notice, the NHL is a no-go this season. What kind of impression does this leave on the fan-base though? It seems as though the sport we’ve grown to love so much in Canada could soon be viewed as the appealing by-product of a successful business. Between all this quarreling, the league must find a way to appeal to their consumers’ preferences, or else they might watch as their sizable paychecks shrink and shrink. By settling on some common ground, gameplay can start up again, then the little details can be dealt with after everyone has settled into the season.

Although it is unsettling, child labour is a common issue these days. What is even more frightening is how a popular brand like Nike has previously employed young children in third-world countries… a lot of them.

Nike claims that it’s too difficult to specifically tell whether or not a worker is of age, due to the cheap and available quantities of fake identifications in countries such as Pakistan, Cambodia, and Bangladesh. However, the neglectful watch over their various factories led to the sub-contracting of the work, allowing multiple local villages to funnel their young into the workforce.

Co-founder/chairman of Nike, Phillip Knight, admitted that Nike “blew it,” when they allowed kids of the age of ten to join their manufacturing team.

Sadly, the public eye associates Nike’s brand with their world-renowned clothing/sporting goods line; rarely does anyone think to peer behind Nike’s curtain and delve into the disturbing reality of unethical behaviour. Perhaps if the consumers were more aware of Nike’s cruelty, we would think twice before buying a pair of $300 shoes.

This is why the world desperately needs labour groups, such as the Clear Clothes Campaign, to bring multi-million dollar monsters to justice when they stray from regulations.

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