At the end of the day, it doesn't hurt for voters to ask politicians the family question: would you ask your children, your spouses, or your parents to face the consequences of a policy decision and put themselves in the very world you advocate for? If you are going to vote for war, would you ask your kids to drop what they are doing (even if they had, in the immortal words of a war criminal Dick Cheney "other priorities" when their number came up) and sign up for the battlefield?
And when it comes to the TPP, and recruiting Nike to pimp for you to pass this pile of crap, one can ask the President: would you ask your daughters to work in a Nike factory in Vietnam?
The obvious answer is "no" and there's a good reason for that, as my good friends at the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights point out in a detailed report on Nike and Vietnam. Nike has gotten a lot of great PR on "reforming" its sweatshops in Asia, largely for agreeing to publish the names of its contractors. But, as the Institute's co-director, Barbara Briggs, said to me in an email, including the link to their new report:
While progressive Nike does disclose the names and addresses of the factories they use in Vietnam, they and the Vietnamese government have colluded to make darn sure that NO information is available regarding actual working conditions and wages inside those factories. Never in all our years of this work—no even in China—have we encountered such a void.
She was being sarcastic about "progressive Nike" by the way.
To the report, entitled, "A Race to the Bottom:TPP & The Quintessential Case of Nike in Vietnam":
Nike is truly the canary in the coal mine, pointing us to what unfettered “free trade” looks like, and what the world will look like under the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
In the year 2014, Nike produced over 365 million pairs of athletic shoes, while at the same time refusing to make a single sneaker in the United States. Meanwhile, they are making these shoes at a tremendous profit while paying their overseas workers pennies. In fact, Nike’s largest production center is Vietnam, where more than 330,000 workers, mostly young women, toil in 67 factories making goods for Nike. Everyone knows that Nike shoes do not come cheap, selling in the U.S. from $60 to $120 to well past $200.
Wages in Vietnam: 48 to 69 cents an hour 8-hour day, 48-hour work week
More:
For years, Nike has been exploiting the 330,000 Vietnamese workers, mostly young women, who are poorly paid and denied their most fundamental rights.
Basically, Mr. President, you are willing to give the effective blessing to Nike--which is what a company gets from a PR trip by the POTUS--and ignore the fact that young women, many of them not much older than your daughters, work as slaves. Shameful.
Which led Bernie Sanders today to call for the president to cancel his trip to Nike (the letter is actually dated today so the press statement below is incorrect):
Citing Nike’s low wages for foreign workers, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) yesterday asked President Obama to cancel a planned meeting on Friday with executives of the athletic shoe maker at its headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.
Nike has taken advantage of free-trade agreements – similar to proposed new pact which Obama is touting – to offshore tens of thousands of American jobs to Vietnam and other low-wage countries.
“Nike epitomizes why disastrous unfettered free-trade policies during the past four decades have failed American workers, eroded our manufacturing base and increased income and wealth inequality in this country,” Sanders wrote in a letter he sent to the president yesterday.
As part of a campaign on Capitol Hill for a proposed 12-nation trade agreement, the Obama administration has been traveling the country talking about the pact’s supposed benefits.
Sanders and other opponents of the deal have argued that previous trade agreements cost millions of American jobs and widened the United States’ trade deficit – a pattern likely to be repeated if the largest ever trade deal is approved by Congress.
“It is no secret why Nike is supporting the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This would increase the profits of Nike … but do nothing to encourage Nike to create one manufacturing job in this country. It would simply make Nike more money and increase the compensation packages of its executives,” Sanders wrote.
Since 2001, the U.S. has lost 60,000 factories. When Nike was founded in 1964, just 4 percent of footwear sold in the United States was imported. Today, that number has soared to 98 percent and Nike, like many other shoe companies, produces all of its products overseas.
Sanders said Congress should reject the free-trade agreement and instead develop policies that promote jobs in the United States.
I know from colleagues in Oregon that they will be demonstrating against the TPP and Obama's visit. Here is
a bit on that:
The presidential limousine could drive past a line of protestors Friday outside Nike's world headquarters.
The Oregon Fair Trade Campaign on Monday said it will picket outside Nike's Washington County campus when the president visits to talk about a Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
“The TPP model of globalization, epitomized by Nike, is to offshore jobs to countries with horrendous labor and environmental practices," the group said in a statement Monday. "That’s great for corporate elites who want to sell sweatshop-made goods at a huge mark-up, but it’s awful for Americans looking for good-paying jobs."