Copyright 1996 Stern Publishing, Inc. OC Weekly
Just Do It!
The Boycott Nike Campaign Comes To Nike Townby Daniel C. Tsang
December 13, 1996 "Just don t do it! that s what some Vietnamese-American student activists want you to do, reversing Nike s ubiquitous advertising slogan. And they don t want you to listen to Michael Jordan s pitch; he earns $20 million a year endorsing Nike s shoes.
Outraged by reports that female workers who make the sports shoes in Vietnam are being exploited, the students are organizing a demonstration at Nike Town at Triangle Square on Saturday afternoon. Protesters are calling for a boycott, and they re organizing a letter-writing campaign, not just to Nike founder Phil Knight (the sixth-richest man in America, according to CBS News), but also to the U.S. Congress.
The protesters want Congress to make sure U.S. negotiators in bilateral trade talks (which have been proceeding slowly since the normalization of U.S.-Vietnam relations) get Vietnam to enforce labor laws and improve human and labor rights in all new trade agreements. Nike shoes are made in four Vietnamese plants, all of them run by South Korean subcontractors.
UC Irvine graduate student and protest organizer Mariam Beevi asked UCI's student-government leaders to remove Nike products from the campus bookstore last week. Beevi, who was born in Vietnam, played a videotape of an October 1995 48 Hours program that contended Nike workers in Vietnam were being physically and sexually abused while earning just 20 cents an hour.
The program reported that Nike, which was looking to expand, made the move to Vietnam when wages in Indonesia went up. The report also quoted one team leader at the plant saying that she would have liked to buy a Nike product as a souvenir, but she couldn t see any way she could afford it at her low wage.
Protests against Nike disrupted its annual shareholders meeting in Oregon in September, when an Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility member presented an unprecedented resolution, calling for the independent monitoring of Nike-contracted factories. Demonstrations have also spread internationally: a Canadian human-rights group called Development and Peace offered to monitor conditions at Nike plants to verify the company s code of conduct. Nike refused. The Canadian organization nevertheless gathered 86,500 signatures on a petition to boycott Nike products.
Justice Do It Nike, a Portland-based group, put together a booklet on the Boycott Nike campaign. The Nike Production Primer is available for $8 through Campaign for Labor Rights, 477 E. 32nd Ave., Eugene, OR 97405.
Orange County protesters are part of a growing labor-and-human-rights coalition organized under the name Campaign for Labor Rights (CLR). CLR s Web site (www.saigon.com/~nike/) includes the 48 Hours transcript, reports on Nike in China and Indonesia (where the military stands ready to quash any labor unrest) and on the company s use of child labor. CLR demands that Nike pay a living wage, stop boot camp-style assembly lines, stop using child labor, investigate all reported acts of abuse, and allow truly independent monitoring of factories.
The Boycott Nike Rally runs from 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday outside Nike Town at Triangle Square, 1875 Newport Blvd., Costa Mesa.
Credit: Coral M. Wilson
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