Behind the Swoosh: Sweatshops and Social Justice As part of "Life Week" at USD, Jim Keady gave a great presentation tonight about the injustices of sweatshop worker wages, focusing on Nike. Keady was hired as the soccer coach at St. John’s University, but when they signed a $3.5 million endorsement deal with Nike, he resigned. He refused to wear Nike because of what he knew about the unjust treatment of their factory workers, which he believes contradicts the principles of Catholic social thought. He traveled to Indonesia and lived on a Nike factory worker’s wage of $1.25 per day to understand their living conditions. He has spent 13 years researching and speaking about the injustices of sweatshops and Nike.
Keady said, “there is no way you can live on $1.25 a day and maintain your human dignity.” This was the overall message of the presentation. Workers should be given livable wages to meet their basic needs: food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and means to provide for their children, ideally with education. On $1.25 per day, these workers have to make tough decisions on which of these needs they will not be able to meet. He gave the example of the woman that travelled with him and got sick. Because she was also living on $1.25 per day to experience how the workers live, she had to choose between buying cough syrup and vitamin C or food for the whole day.
These workers want rights, but they do not want to risk losing their lives. Because their wages do not fulfill their basic needs, they often beg to work overtime in order to earn more money. Keady discussed endorsement deals with professional athletes, specifically Tiger Woods. With his $100 million endorsement deal with Nike, we are saying that this individual is worth more than 700,000 people. This is just ridiculous and I think it is just plain greedy. Unfortunately, in America’s capitalist society, the ideology of maximizing profits and efficiency takes precedence over equal rights and dignity for all people. Nike is a $19.2 billion transnational empire that produces products in over 160 countries. With my recent travels during my semester abroad, I got to see firsthand how huge the brand is in other countries. I could not believe the statistic he provided about how much a pair of Nike Air “Jordan’s” cost. It costs Nike $16.25 to make a pair of shoes that it sells for $220! Only $2.43 of that cost is labor expenses. This is unbelievable, and a terrible injustice. Nike can definitely afford to pay their factory workers more. Keady said, “Labor is not just a commodity. Labor is people.”
Keady calls for a modest approach for change that can be adjusted, scaled, and replicated that could potentially build a global labor movement. He wants to achieve living wages and union contracts for the workers. He is not trying to attack Nike, but he aims to make a point about sweatshops and initiate change. He said that 95% of what we are wearing was produced in sweatshops and most other big brands like Adidas, Puma, clothes from Macy’s, JCPenney, etc., use this form of production. Nike is one of the largest companies to do this, so he hopes that getting Nike to make changes will be an example for other corporations.
To learn more about Jim Keady's project and become involved, go to teamsweat.org. He also encouraged students to e-mail the CEO of Nike, Mark Parker, at mark.parker@nike.com, urging him to do something about worker wages.
