music analysis
0:04: (background music)
0:10: (Jim Keady) At the age of 18,
0:12: I was just on track. Go to a good college, get a decent degree, do good and
0:20: you’re going to get an entry-level job down at Wall Street.
0:22: You’re going to work real hard; you’re going to be a broker; you’re going to make tons of money;
you’re going to be retired, and
0:26: by a young age, you’re going to have a house on the beach in New Jersey and a
0:29: couple of Mercedes. And a
0:30: trophy wife, and that will be the end of the game.
0:32: I’m done—multi-millionaire—that’s it!
0:38: I was playing professionally for the New Jersey Imperials;
0:41: I was playing the best soccer my life.
0:51: (background music)
1:03: I get offered
1:04: this coaching job by one of my teammates to go coach at Saint John’s University,
1:08: the NCAA Division 1 national champions; they are the best team in the country.
1:12: I was having a blast. I was loving coaching; I was loving playing.
1:16: I’m living in New York. I’m also studying stuff that I really enjoy.
1:20: I’m digging into studying theology
1:22: for the first time in my life in a formal way.
1:26: I get online, I start doing searches about Nike and
1:29: sweatshops and labor practices. And what I found was,
1:33: if you wanted to pick a company that completely violates everything
1:37: the Catholic social teaching is about, Nike would be your perfect case study.
1:41: At the same time I’m doing this research, Saint John’s University Athletic Department
1:45: starts to negotiate a $3.5 million endorsement deal with Nike
1:49: that would require me, as a coach, to wear and promote the products.
1:52: Saint John’s University is the largest Catholic institution in the country,
1:56: coupling itself with the largest sportswear company in the world,
2:01: and I said “how can we, as such a public symbol of Catholicism,
2:07: do something that runs completely counter to our mission?”
2:11: We’re saying to the world, “Look,
2:14: you should care about the poor, and we should fight against injustice, and we
2:18: should seek out the causes of poverty,
2:20: well unless you’re getting some really good athletic equipment
2:23: and $3.5 million along with it.” I mean you want to talk about just
2:27: hypocrisy manifested
2:31: in the real world—this was it! (News broadcast- “And you have the story at Saint John,”
2:35: “Jim Keady has caused a massive pile up.” “He is clearly an idealist.”) I didn’t go to Saint
2:40: John’s University
2:41: to work for Nike; I went there to coach
2:44: and to study theology. (News broadcast: “Keady, a devout Catholic
2:48: protested, ‘How does he reach the point where he thinks it’s immoral to wear the swoosh?’
2:51: ‘Because he’s coming at it from a background of faith and religion;
2:55: this isn’t about
2:56: just money or power or a job or anything. Think about this,
2:59: how many of us on a job that we really want
3:02: are prepared to get a memo from the boss saying stop doing this or you’re out,
3:06: and you keep doing it?’”) I was given an ultimatum by my head coach,
3:09: wear Nike and drop this issue or resign,
3:13: end of story. So, in June of 1998, I was constructively fired.
3:24: People were telling me, “you don’t know what you’re talking about;” “you know, those are great
3:27: jobs, and you can live like a king or queen on those wages, and those people are
3:30: really happy to have those jobs.”
3:32: I want to go find out.
3:35: Doesn’t everybody just want to know the truth? So I wanted to know the truth
3:39: first hand. I wanted to see it. I wanted to smell it. I wanted to hold it in my hand.
3:49: I knew I was going to need other people,
3:50: Leslie was a natural match.
3:54: (Leslie Kretzu) Jim and I went to college together; we came together ultimately because
3:58: we share an interest in labor rights issues.
4:01: (Jim) I eventually met back up there a few years after school
4:05: through an email about sweatshops.
4:08: (Leslie) I really wanted to be working with these issues.
4:11: (Jim) I wrote to my buddy, and said “who is this woman that’s writing you about this stuff?”
4:15: And he said, “she’s nuts like you; you should email her.” She was actually in route
4:19: to go work with Mother Teresa’s sisters in India, and I sent her off this email.
4:23: “Hey, I’ve got this great idea; let’s go starve on Nike’s wages in Indonesia.”
4:26: (Leslie) And so he’s like, “I really need to go.” (Jim) And she wrote me back,
4:29: “sounds great.” (Leslie) Let’s go!
4:37: (Jim) We plopped down in Tangerang, Indonesia, this industrial suburb outside of the
4:42: capital of Jakarta,
4:43: with the plans that, for the next month, we were going to live
4:46: as Nike’s factory workers lived, which
4:49: meant that we were going to go live in a worker’s slum outside of the capital,
4:53: and we were going to live on the workers’ wages, a $1.25 a day,
4:57: for the next month. To try and come to a better understanding
5:01: of what it’s like for Nike factory workers
5:04: to make this kind of money and live under these conditions.
5:11: We lived in a 9 by 9 cement box.
5:15: It was over 100 degrees, 100% percent humidity, a small window, and certainly no air
5:20: conditioning.
5:21: (Leslie) No furniture, you slept on a very thin mat
5:24: on an uneven cement floor covered in shelf paper.
5:28: (Jim) The streets outside of your home
5:31: are lined by open sewers,
5:34: and what that means in the rainy season is you would have all that feces just
5:38: float up into the streets and into your house.
5:40: (Leslie) And every time that you go to the bathroom, it comes back out into the sewer for
5:44: everybody else to see and smell.
5:46: (Jim) You would have football size rats that would stampede over the ceiling at night
5:51: and come up through the toilet and look for stuff to eat in the house.
5:55: Or the fish size cock roaches that would crawl over you at night.
6:03: I’m Jim. Just like anyone
6:09: around the world, you can’t just drop into someone’s life and be like,
6:12: “hi we’re here; we want to live in your life, and tell us how much it sucks.”
6:16: You had to build bonds of trust.
6:19: Jim, nice to meet you.
6:26: (Leslie) They treated us very politely, and it wasn’t until they saw
6:30: that we were committed in
6:33: the capacity of living on the wages that they’re forced to live on,
6:37: in the conditions that they are living, that they felt that they could
6:41: start to begin to trust us. You get to know them, and you hold their children, and you
6:46: eat with them, and you share stories with them; they become part of your family.
6:51: (Jim) We would go to different workers homes,
6:53: you’ve got like four women sleeping in like an 8 by 8 cement box and
6:59: all of their possessions are in there.
7:00: Like, everything is in this small area.
7:03: (Leslie) The workers would have to share a bathroom with five to ten
7:09: other families. The workers would have to share living
7:13: quarters, actually like a row
7:16: of shacks with hard-hit tin roofs.
7:19: All those families would share a laundry
7:23: corner and a kitchen facility.
7:26: And they would all share the same well to take the water out of.
7:35: (Jim) A $1.25 a day after you’ve paid for your rent, water, electricity, and any major transportation
costs,
7:41: you’re going to be left on average
7:42: with roughly 7,000 Rupiah per day. What the hell does that mean?
7:49: That’s going to buy you two simple meals of rice and vegetables,
7:52: a bag of peanuts, a bottle of iced tea, and some dish detergent.
7:58: And that’s all you can get.
7:59: And that your reward?
8:02: (Leslie) Without a doubt, we found that out the first week that we were there, there’s no way that you
can live,
8:07: on a $1.25 a day and maintain your human dignity.
8:11: It’s just not possible.
8:18: (Jim) I lost 25 pounds living on Nike’s wages in Indonesia.
8:22: I spent the month painfully hungry and
8:25: tired, like near the point of exhaustion most days.
8:28: (Leslie) I just felt my energy storage was just
8:31: depleted, and I just started going downhill fast, and I just started getting sick every day.
8:38: (Jim) And she got very sick one day; she had like
8:40: a fever of 104, and she’s got to deal with “well,
8:44: I have a fever of 104; I can buy aspirin and like a little
8:47: drink box to get some vitamin C, but if I buy those two things
8:51: I don’t eat for the rest of the day.”
8:59: (Leslie) I don’t know what this is going to do, because we’re going to go home, and we’re going to
say
9:07: this is not enough money, and no one is going to do a damn thing different.
9:15: (Jim) How do you feel like a human being?
9:18: How do you feel about your work or your gifts?
9:23: You know, for them, the workers that I’ve talked to the last couple of days,
9:26: a number of them have said the only thing we have is our physical labor.
9:33: Because I just bought the smallest thing of shaving cream
9:36: and one razor that I might be able to use two or three times,
9:42: I have to cut out three meals this week.
10:08: (Leslie) They will be working overtime hours just to get by,
10:12: because they can’t possibly get by on the wage that they’re paid
10:16: without working incredible amounts of overtime.
10:21: And when you’re working up to 15 hours a day, six to seven days a week
10:25: your 2-year-old child just
10:28: doesn’t see you, you know. They don’t get to see their children.
10:32: (Jim) The kids can’t even go to school.
10:35: How are you going to break a cycle of poverty and have real economic development
10:39: if you have a whole lost generation of children that aren’t even
10:42: educated?
10:53: I’m walking down this dirt path into this village,
10:55: and I see this massive pile of scrap shoe rubber that I later learned came
11:00: from one of Nike’s factories.
11:02: And piles like that get dumped there all the time, and the end result of these
11:06: piles is that they get burned
11:08: in that village in the big open space where kids play.
11:11: And the burning fumes, I learned from the company that designs Nike shoe
11:16: rubber,
11:16: will give off toxins and carcinogens.
11:20: Kids are paying the price, and they’re the ones with chest infections, and
11:23: they’re the ones that are going to develop cancer.
11:32: When we were in Indonesia, we made attempts
11:34: to get into a Nike factory because Nike claims on their website, “we have nothing
11:39: to hide.”
11:40: (Male voice) I’m Mike.
11:41: (Nike employee) Hi, Mike.
11:42: (Male voice) How are you doing?
11:43: (Nike employee) Good,
11:44: We went over to Nike’s corporate offices,
11:45: and Nike denied us that.
11:49: (Nike employee) We’re unable to accommodate that request.
11:53: (Leslie) Nike headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon had faxed an info sheet out to all the
11:56: factories to be placed on the wall for all workers to see
12:00: that read, “if you are approached by Jim Keady, Leslie Kretzu, or Mike Pierantozzi,
12:03: do not speak to them. (Jim) They’re only to speak to management; there will
12:07: be severe consequences if you’re found talking to them.’
12:11: (Leslie) And they know from their management how they’re supposed to act, and if they don’t,
12:14: there are some severe ramifications.
12:16: Anywhere from significant harassment to
12:19: death, and I mean this in a very literal sense.
12:27: Certainly, management of the factory didn’t
12:30: want us to be there, and it was kinda frightening because several times we tried
12:34: to get into the factory.
12:35: (Jim) We weren’t out of the van for more than three minutes,
12:39: and there was security like surrounding us, and then the factory managers came out. “What’s
12:44: going on?”
12:45: We’re outside a Nike shoe factory right now; security is kind of surrounding us.
12:50: (Leslie) They’re like, “What are you doing here?
12:53: Why are you here?” It was frightening, you know,
12:56: because—who knows?
13:02: (Mike) Security guy here was tracking us down.
13:05: (Jim) From that moment, we were tailed by factory security
13:09: the prey men for the local mafia.
13:13: The local mafia certainly works in conjunction with these factory bosses.
13:18: The factory bosses—some of them—are just brutal, ruthless,
13:22: hired muscle to keep workers in line. We met with one worker, Julianto.
13:26: He told us because he was union organizing, he was trying to form an
13:30: independent union.
13:31: (Leslie) He was threatened at gunpoint; he had his house ransacked,
13:36: he was given death threats, and he had to flee back to his home village
13:40: because he feared for his life.
13:46: This is literally a life and death issue, and this happens at all the factories.
13:50: (Jim) Every worker that we talk to,
13:54: there’s this struggle with this fear—
13:57: this culture of fear that just permeates the air
14:01: that, yeah, they want to tell you the truth and try and fight for their rights,
14:06: but they also want the kids to have a father or a mother.
14:10: They’re dealing everyday with the threat of losing their lives for doing this kind
14:14: of work.
14:15: I mean, they showed tremendous courage in light of that.
14:20: We were able to meet with a woman by the name of Dita Sari who had been
14:24: organizing Nike and Reebok factory workers at the age of 23 and was illegally
14:29: jailed and put in prison and tortured.
14:31: (Dita Sari) On the 8th of July 1996, I was arrested by the army,
14:35: the local army, in East Jawa.
Commented [MS1]: Check word
14:39: They kicked me and they used their fists and their sticks.
14:43: And they were told to hurt me and to torture me in front of the workers
14:46: to show them an example.
14:51: (Leslie) I think the majority of workers were saying “look, we don’t want
14:55: you to pull out the jobs; we want to work.
14:59: We’d like to work; we want to make the shoes. We were proud of what
15:04: we do,
15:04: but we don’t want to be exploited.
15:07: Why can’t you just let us meet our basic needs?”
15:11: (Jim) We’re talking about food, clothing, housing, health care, education,
15:15: being able to take care of your kids, and some modest savings.
15:19: That’s not a tall order.
15:22: Excuse me, do you guys know where the Nike campus is?
15:26: (Jogger) Yeah, you make a right on Walker, and you’ll see it on your southwest corner.
15:30: (Jim) Okay, thanks.
15:34: Okay, so we’re on Nike’s campus right now; it’s a little bit different than the factories in Indonesia—
15:38: just a tiny bit.
15:41: (Leslie) Hi, how are you?
15:42: (Phil Knight) Hi, good to see you.
15:44: (Jim) Listen, umm, I was hoping to set some time where we could talk.
15:50: I’m really concerned about the workforce in Indonesia.
15:53: You know, I spent the summer living there, living with them, and living on the wages that are paid
to factory workers.
15:57: (Phil Knight) You’re worried about that?
15:58: (Jim) Yeah.
16:00: (Phil Knight) Ok, why don’t you call my secretary, and see what happens.
16:01: (Jim) I did. I called Lisa last week. I called Vada. I called Dusty. I called Brad Figel.
16:06: I called Amanda.
16:08: (Phil Knight) You’re going to have to talk to someone else; maybe you need to talk to Dusty Kidd.
16:10: (Jim) I mean, you’re the guy the buck stops with, right?
16:13: (Phil Knight) yeah, it doesn’t start with me though.
16:14: (Jim) No, but I mean, I don’t know who else to talk to.
16:15: (Phil Knight) Try Dusty Kidd.
16:17: (Jim) He doesn’t want to talk to me.
16:18: (Phil Knight) Well then, I guess you don’t get through then.
16:20: (Jim) But, you’re the man, I mean.
16:22: (Phil Knight) Thank you.
16:24: (Jim) You’re the man that needs to.
16:26: (Phil Knight) I appreciate your concern, but I’m having lunch with a friend,
16:29: and we’ve talked about it, and you’re..
16:30: (Jim) I apologize for interrupting your lunch. I mean, I’ve come all the way from New Jersey to talk
16:33: to you about this.
16:34: (Phil Knight) I’m not talking to you.
16:35: (Jim) I’ve gotten stonewalled at every turn; you know, the workers have asked for me
16:40: that I try bringing you back to Indonesia to meet them in their homes not, not in the office in
Jakarta.
16:49: (Phil Knight) Do you understand no? You just got a no. I’m not going to talk to you about it.
16:56: (Jim) Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike,
16:58: or Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods or Mia Hamm or any of the other people that are
17:02: really making a lot of money because of the way that Nike does things
17:06: should care about these workers because they’re human beings.
17:16: (Leslie) When I see
17:17: people like Tiger Woods get a $100 million just for wearing the clothes,
17:21: we’re saying as a society, “like this one individual because [he or she] plays golf well and
17:26: is worth more than 700,000 people.”
17:41: (Jim) We made up these
17:42: wage charts and have them look down at it, and they look up and say,
17:47: “Tiger Woods makes enough in a second
17:50: to buy me a house. Why?
17:54: I work hard for the company too.”
18:00: What do you say to them?
18:01: “Well, hey, that’s the system. Deal with it.
18:05: Suck it up; it’s capitalism—survival of the fittest. I guess you’re not the fittest.”
18:13: Nike is in Indonesia for one reason—cheap labor.
18:17: (Leslie) It’s an ideology of maximizing profit at all costs—
18:21: to humanity and nature. And it’s this entire
18:24: vicious cycle that starts with the heads of
18:28: the corporations that want to make a great return on shareholders’ investment.
18:34: (Jim) Some people say, “well, hey, that’s the way things are; that’s the American way.
18:38: It’s capitalism; that’s the American way.” No, the American way is
18:41: democracy; that’s what our country was founded on.
18:44: A belief that all people are equal—that there should be a respect for
18:48: for democracy, for human rights, and for the protection of human life—that’s what we’re about as
Americans.
18:53: We spent the last year and a half traveling around the country, visiting
18:59: over a hundred schools, high schools, and universities—
19:01: 15,000 students. So, how are you feeling about the turnout?
19:04: (Student 1) I’m feeling pretty good about the turnout.
19:05: (Jim) What were you thinking about the turnout here?
19:10: (Student 2) It’s great; this is the best possible turnout.
19:12: (Jim) And we try as best we can to
19:14: introduce them to these human beings.
19:17: And say, as students, as
19:20: high school athletes, college athletes, as consumers, you’ve got tremendous power.
19:25: And because we can’t fly them over to Indonesia, we can bring Indonesia to them.
19:30: And if we can give them that spark, even if it’s one or two
19:34: on that day, that’s going to multiply. And eventually,
19:38: we’ll reach this critical mass, and we’ll have a great harvest. And the harvest will
19:42: be truth,
19:43: and justice, and fairness for all people.
19:50: Something’s wrong here, and we can fix it; it’s a necessity.
19:55: (Leslie) The tipping point is now.
19:59: (Jim) At this point in our history, we need
20:00: a story like this to be told.
20:05: (background music)
