Aren the workers happy to have the factory jobs?
Nike has indeed brought many jobs to Southeast Asia, and workers certainly want jobs. But they want their dignity, too. They don’t want to be physically or verbally abused by their supervisors or to work excessive overtime for extremely low wages. Job creation and worker exploitation should not go hand in hand. It is not enough to simply create jobs; Nike should be creating opportunities and prosperity, paying wages that allow its workers to pull themselves out of poverty. While company officials say that many workers line up to get these jobs whenever there are openings, they fail to mention the numerous strikes that workers organize to protest unfair labor practices. In April 1997, 10,000 Indonesian workers went on strike over wage violations. In the same month, 1,300 workers in Vietnam went on strike demanding a one-cent-per-hour raise and in 1998, 3,000 workers in China went on strike to protest not only low wages, but hazardous working conditions. And remember, in these countries,
