In a search for the truth about Nike’s labor practices, Jim Keady spent time in Indonesia to see what working as one of Nike’s factory workers was really like. He lived on $1.25 a day and resided in what he described as a “9 feet by 9 feet cement block” worker’s slum. Huge rats were frequent houseguests and the open sewage system flowed right next to the sidewalk outside. Over the course of a month there, he lost 25 pounds. His reasoning for embarking on the crusade in Nike’s sweatshops stems from his studies as well as his interests.
Back in 1997, Keady was a soccer coach at St. John’s University while simultaneously working towards his masters in theology. A class assignment led him to research how Nike’s labor practices violate human rights. Concurrently, St. John’s was negotiating a $3.5 million endorsement deal with Nike, meaning that he, as a coach, would be required to wear and endorse Nike. Keady realized that it would be hypocritical for a Catholic school, supposedly an institution of Catholic social thought, to partner itself with a transnational sports empire that was violating human rights. This realization turned to activism and he lost his coaching job because he refused to drop the issue and wear Nike. Soon after, he embarked on his life-changing trip to Indonesia and formed Team Sweat, an organization committed to changing Nike’s labor practices.
Nike currently employs a million workers in 1,000 factories across 52 different countries. When Keady tried to ask Nike about their labor policies, he was met with subterfuge and lies. He pursued answers through many different divisions of the company, and even tried to set up a meeting with Phil Knight, the former CEO of Nike. Often he was turned away, and when he did receive an answer, the information was often conflicting. Nike would like to have the public believe that they have cleaned up their act, but Keady said he went to Indonesia, saw the reality of Nike sweatshops with his own eyes, and made a short film about his time there. It can be viewed at vimeo.com/6109896.
It should also be noted that Nike is not the only company that uses sweatshops; sweatshops are the reality of most modern apparel production. Nike was simply the company that first caught Keady’s attention and he chose to make an example of it for four reasons, as listed on his website, teamsweat.org.
First, Nike is the leader in the sportswear industry. They control roughly 45 percent of the global market. Second, Nike led the push into low wage countries with poor human rights records. They exploited, and continue to exploit, these countries for their cheap labor. Third, labor abuses in Nike factories have been extensively and reliably documented over a 15-year period. There is no other company for which there is this much objective research. Finally, as the company with the largest profit margins in the industry ($1.5 billion in profits in 2008) Nike can more easily afford to ensure living wages and fair working conditions in their factories.
However, the mission is not to boycott Nike. Although Keady feels it would be effective, the factory workers themselves have not asked for a boycott. The mission is to put continued pressure on Nike to change their labor policies by educating people about the sweatshop situation.
If Keady’s organization, Team Sweat, is able to put enough pressure on Nike to clean up their act, then the same model of change can be replicated to change other companies and eventually the entire industry.
“The thing that I took away from the talk was that Nike is simply a case study and the largest corporation that owns sweatshops,” junior JaRae Birkeland said. “Plenty of other companies do the exact same thing. Adidas, Puma, Abercrombie, etcetera, all have sweatshops in Southeast Asia and other third world countries. Advocating against the Nike company is important but so is putting up a front against other companies as well and leaning towards purchasing fair trade products.”
When Keady presented this breakdown to a manager at an Indonesian factory, the manager said, “Hang on, they [Nike] only pay us $10 to $11 for a pair of shoes?” Even worse, upon further examination and number crunching, Keady found that to double the workers wages, in essence paying them about $5 per day instead of $2.43 per day, it would only cost Nike about seven percent of their advertising budget. There was silence in the room after Keady shared this.
Nike is a $18.6 billion dollar corporation, and if Nike would spare 7 percent of their advertising budget, they could double the wages that their workers receive and hence pay them a fair livable wage.
“One example that really shocked me and stuck with me was about how much Tiger Woods makes in one game of golf just by wearing Nike,” Birkeland said. “Tiger Woods is worth more than 700,000 workers and makes enough in one second of time to buy an Indonesian worker a house.”
It would take a Nike factory worker in Indonesia 9.5 years to make as much as Tiger makes for playing one round of golf clothed in Nike. Students wondered what this says about how North America measures the worth of a person.
Another poignant moment during the presentation was when Keady displayed a picture of Nike’s logo emblazoned alongside our school’s logo on merchandise from the bookstore.
“It was not the most comfortable part of the presentation because it shocked me,” junior Ryann Berens said. “The entire room as well kind of gasped and shifted in their seats. This is when the reality of the situation hit home and made it personal.”
Keady said that Nike is aiming to partner itself with Catholic schools because they want to associate themselves with places of Catholic teaching; it is a strategic public relations move.
