That's for you, Nike--the corporation that's been admonishing the rest of us to "Just Do It!" for the past few years. Why pick on Nike? For their overwhelming greed, pure and simple.
The new federal trade deficit figures were released today, showing an "unexpectedly" widened gap over last quarter's figures, up a few billion dollars, in fact. This was a bit of an embarrassment to NAFTA supporters who were predicting 100,000 more jobs by September 1995 as a result of relaxed trade. Instead, the U.S. lost about additional 250,000 jobs. What does NAFTA got to do with Nike? They're ruled by the same philosophy: It's okay to run over the masses if it means that a few at the top can make obscene profits.
You see, Nike used to make their high-priced sneakers in America. But by the mid-'80s, Nike closed its last plant, an operation in New England that paid women about $8 an hour to make shoes, and moved all manufacturing to Asia, where Nike contracts with third parties for the cheapest labor it can find. Today Nike shoes are assembled in China and Thailand, where workers receive 8 cents an hour, ship on Japanese fleets and sell them in the U.S. for anywhere between $69.96 on sale to $159.95. Total cost for a pair of shoes is about $8. A comfortable profit margin, wouldn't you say? Enough to cover their exorbitant endorsements contracts with superstar athletes.
And about those ads...where are they? In the neighborhoods of former Nike workers. Picture the billboard with basketball's latest and greatest sporting his hot new Nikes, looking like the American dream, unattainable, unbelievable. Picture that laid-off Nike worker in New England, like the one interviewed, a working mom who has gone through several job changes since her plant closed, each position racheting down her paycheck to a bare $4.50 an hour. Listen to her eight-year-old son as he whines and insists that he's got to have those $159 Nikes or he can't be seen at school.
Thousands of American workers laid off. Entire towns devastated. People without a political voice, without a prayer in Washington these days. As the welfare lines close, this strange economic climate just may breed a backlash that will make the Los Angeles riots look like a weenie roast. I realize it's considered almost un-American to suggest that big business doesn't have every right to skin workers alive if it means larger profits. But conscience aside, who's going to afford the shoes?
Dole's pineapple division closed in Hawaii and moved to Thailand where it pays workers no wages, just meals. Former Hawaiin workers are living in their cars. The week after NAFTA was signed, the largest tomato grower and processor closed in Florida and moved to Mexico, laying off 14,000 people in one swift action. The ink wasn't even dry on the new law when Zenith ended its television manufacturing in the U.S. Tens of thousands of people laid off. Bizarre: Two TVs in most households, not one of them made here. So the next time you go to lace up your Nikes, encouraging the unfit to "Just do it!", consider the real meaning of the Nike Elite, and watch where you prance your status symbols.
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