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For Nike, It's About Shoes
Tom Archdeacon
April 20, 2026, SundayBy now, you've probably seen the ads on television.
One features black baseball stars - from Henry Aaron and Reggie Jackson to Ken Griffey Jr. - all thanking Jackie Robinson for breaking the color barrier in big-league baseball. Mixing measured words with old, faded film footage makes this seem like the most poignant of all tributes to a courageous man and his monumental accomplishment. It taps into your heart, your emotions, your sense of what's right and just as all of that is registering deep in your consciousness, what shows up on the screen?
The Nike swoosh.
It's the same with that Tiger Woods ad, where children from all around the word smile beatifically as they dream of one day being just like Tiger. And then, just as that We-Are-the-World warmth starts to come over you, what do you see?
That same Nike swoosh.
In neither of these ads does Nike ask for something as mundane as buying its shoes. The aim is much higher here. Nike is asking - no, make that manipulating you - to buy an image. The Nike image. And if you think Nike, then you will want to wear Nike, which means you'll buy Nike.
And after these ads, why wouldn't you? The image - which ties itself so morally to Jackie Robinson and Tiger Woods - is that Nike stands up for what's right in humanity. That it's an enabler for people around the world to dream, to overcome, to achieve.
But take away the film splicer and the smiles of those people paid for their words - be they child actors or top-dollar pitchmen like Michael Jordan and the Dallas Cowboys - and you find some people who are part of the Nike dream, but not smiling.
It was just a month ago that 56 women employed at a sweatshop making Nike shoes in Dong Nai, Vietnam, were punished because they hadn't worn regulation shoes to work. Factory bosses herded the women outside and made them run laps around the plant in the hot sun. The punishment kept up as one woman collapsed, then another and another. Eventually, a dozen of the women were hospitalized. If you think such treatment was an isolated incident, you should see the report released 10 days ago by Thuyen Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American partner in a New Jersey financial services company and a former Bankers Trust Company vice president. He did a lengthy study of Vietnamese factories that make Nike products and found the same kind of abuses that numerous Nike critics have been bringing up for years.
Nike, Nguyen said, has set up shop in Vietnam because labor is cheaper there than in several of the other places in southeast Asia where the shoe company once had factories. Still Nguyen found that several Nike contractors still didn't bother to pay the minimum wage - which is less than $ 2 a day.
More than 90 percent of Nike's workers in Vietnam are girls or young women. They are paid $ 1.60 a day. They get one bathroom break and two glasses of water per eight-hour shift. People who talk too much get their mouths taped shut.
Nguyen found that treatment of them by factory managers - most of whom are Taiwanese or Korean nationals - is a "constant source of humiliation.'' He noted sexual harassment, verbal abuse and corporal punishment are common occurrences. "It's a common occurrence to have workers faint from exhaustion, heat and poor nutrition during their shifts,' Nguyen wrote. "We were told several workers even coughed up blood before fainting.''
Before Vietnam, Nike was making its shoes in Indonesia. But in 1991, the minimum wage there was raised to $ 1.25 a day. Many of the operators Nike had contracted refused to pay it and that led to a rare walkout by 600 workers at the Sung Hwa Dunia factory in Serang, West Java. Police and the military were called in and the workers were intimidated enough to go back to work. Two dozen women considered to be the most outspoken workers were dismissed. One was 32-year-old Cicih Sukaesih, who was brought to the U.S. last summer by labor and human rights activists.
"We were treated with no respect,'' she told the New York Times . "Supervisors yelled at us. There were some who liked to hit people and slap people. There were some who would kick the Muslim workers when they were praying during there lunch break.'' She told of the women who work at the factories starving themselves so they can buy some food for their children.
When contacted by the New York Times , Nike chief executive officer Phil Knight - said to be worth $ 5 billion - claimed it would wreck Indonesia's economy if wages were allowed to get too high. Other Nike spokespersons noted that Nike wasn't oppressing unemployed workers when it hired them.
That's doesn't excuse Nike, whose earnings this quarter alone jumped 77 percent while profits rose to $ 237 million. Operating in poor countries that need investment, a global company like Nike has enormous leverage to push for improved working conditions and wages.
But that doesn't quite fit the Nike formula, where the cost of a making the product is almost nothing and the selling price of the shoes is astronomical - up to $ 180 for a pair.
Four years ago a study showed than 200 pairs of Nikes were being sold every minute of every day. Today, the cash register rings even more furiously, especially since the Nike swoosh is found almost everywhere. It's on the uniforms of pro team, colleges like Ohio State, Penn State and Florida State, even high schools. Coaches get kickbacks for making their team a swoosh school. Top athletes are paid handsomely to wear the swoosh logo, so much so that they'll balk - as several NBA players did on the Olympic medal stand in Barcelona - if they must wear anything other than Nike.
With marketing geared at kids, is it any wonder some of them are killing each other for these shoes? Nike said it can't be blamed for the violence, the familial breakdowns - all the social ills that plague our world. If that's the case, it shouldn't be patted on the back for social accomplishment either.
Nike had nothing to do with Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier. Nothing to do with combatting prejudice in golf, nothing to do with helping the disenfranchised of the world dream, overcome and achieve.
Nike is about selling shoes, not warm and fuzzy feelings.
And that brings us to one Nike commercial that was right on the mark. A couple of Christmases ago, the company featured NBA bad boy Dennis Rodman intimidating Santa, who thought the Bull was more naughty than nice. Rodman laughed in defiance, picked the frightened Santa up and demanded some Nikes. "Give him the shoes,'' Santa mumbled meekly.
That's the Nike image.
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