USA Today (4/26/16) depicts Nike’s Phil Knight as “wondering if some larger force in the universe has played a role in his life’s endeavor.”
USA Today (4/26/16) featured what the paper promoted as a “rare interview” with Nike founder Phil Knight. He offers his opinion that “international trade agreements benefit both nations, always”—the paper doesn’t correct him when he overstates US GDP growth since NAFTA by more than 300 percent—and his worry that the United States might be losing some of what’s called “the entrepreneurial edge that propelled him and fueled Nike.” Students he meets, Knight laments, seem “more pessimistic.”
Billionaires whose wealth was built on the work of people in less developed countries making cents an hour in notoriously abusive conditions—practices only curtailed after years of activism, much of it by students the company did its best to ignore—well, their concerns about the pessimism of today’s youth warrant a side-eye on any day.
But as it happens, Nike, which was for a moment if not a success story, at least an example of a company responding to sweatshop activism, was revealed just five years ago to be falling far short of the standards it set for itself in the furor of the 1990s—the period USA Today’s Susan Page lets Knight pass off as “early missteps” about which, she tells us, he’s “still sounding a bit aggrieved.” (“We got a lot of negative press.”) Just a few months ago, Nike announced that it will no longer allow its factories to be monitored by the Worker Rights Consortium, leading to outcry from United Students Against Sweatshops—a key player in pushing independent monitoring.
Noi Supalai worked for years in a Nike factory in Thailand; on her spring US speaking tour, she talked about what that’s like: 16 hour or longer days, production deadlines such that workers had to take turns going home to shower, and then, when targets weren’t hit, Nike barring the factory from paying them. They formed a union and set a meeting with Nike representatives, who never showed up. (Turns out they’d cut and run.) Supalai’s story is easy to find in college papers. Just don’t look for it in USA Today.
Janine Jackson is the program director of FAIR, and the producer and host of CounterSpin.
Just do it
To ’em
I am a co-founder of the “Justice. Do It NIKE!” a coalition of groups in Oregon (Nike headquarters are a few miles from where I type this). In the 90’s we advocated for Nike workers overseas – in Indonesia. I am not surprised but am again appalled at the adulation of Mr. Knight. The more things change yada yada. He built his and Nike’s fortunes on rapacious, continual exploitation of poor workers in the poorest countries. Still does, mostly young women whose monthly pay would not buy one Nike shoe they make. (Please, jocks’n’capitalists, spare me how it is less expensive to live in Indonesia or Vietnam – you will be out of your depth.)
One year Michael Jordan, a part-time employee of Nike earned (OK, was paid, didn’t earn) more than all Nike Indonesian shoe workers combined, when most shoes were made there. Adidas, Reebok and so on are at least as guilty. Nike raced to the bottom after Indonesia (like S. Korea before) became more democratic. The race to the bottom is real and has real human costs.
I applaud FAIR for calling out USA Today.
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/12/17/nike-blackmails-oregon/
Our corporate paper, The Oregonian”, didn’t cover this as extortion by Nike, but then “The O” has a reputation for not covering news at all.
Great reporting Janine. Phil Knight is the epitome of the antiquated capitalist, and if he’s with the human survival project he and the rest of us would do well for him to change his ways. For example, by immediately and unilaterally divesting himself of 9/10 of his wealth. Last I checked, some 15 years ago, Knight alone was worth three-quarters of a billion dollars. Nice bank account if you can exploit workers around the globe. And put your swoosh on the bread and circus tumbril. Indeed: “One year Michael Jordan, a part-time employee of Nike earned (OK, was paid, didn’t earn) more than all Nike Indonesian shoe workers combined.” Indeed, the hard number is $30 million annually, when Jordan was the height of the talk of the NBA. Even I don’t know how much his Bulls’ salary was at the time. As for his investments. I don’t have the stocks of Pepto Bismal to explore those. More, Max White, it’s the paradigm, the system. I myself have a shoe rack full of New Balance shoes, made according to the precise calculations of the Nike model. Embarrassing enough for me, but then I’m an American, at least I live between the borders of Mexico and Canda. Why I won’t condescend to wear the Nike swoosh, and find it exceptionally worthy of the highest contempt, is because like WalCrap, Nike originated the exploitative model. Whoopie. Phil Knight got filthy rich. 10 trillion laborers gave their all for nothing. And US sports teams got to wear the Nike swoosh as if the 666 mark from The Apocalypse. Everything is working out just fine right now.
A more petty–but still telling–example of Phil Knight’s attitudes toward us “peasants” occurred when Nike sponsored the World Masters Games, kind of a vanity Olympics for older athletes. Not only was competition open to anyone who could pay $200 but Nike put out a call for *volunteer* interpreters.
Really? Volunteer interpreters?
Interpreting isn’t a hobby; it’s a profession. It’s not something that any bilingual person can do well. It requires a thorough knowledge of both languages, including slang and idioms, formal and informal speech levels, and an ability to think on one’s feet. Good interpreters are rare enough that the best ones make very comfortable incomes interpreting for conferences, legal proceedings, and business negotiations. I’m an experienced translator (written materials only), and I only wish I had the skill set and mindset needed to be a successful interpreter.
Nike is not a struggling charity. If it were, it could legitimately ask for volunteer interpreters. But it is a major global corporation, and not paying interpreters is just being cheap.