Nike Likes A "Strong Government"

As Nike PR flacks raced back and forth across the country in recent weeks to put out the fires of protest, they handed out thick folders of press releases and other disinformation to repair the company's much-damaged reputation. Probably, the packets varied a bit according to which materials the Nike PR department had on hand at the moment. In at least some cases, the packets included an article (reprinted in color), produced by Jardine Fleming Research, a branch of Jardine Fleming International Securities Limited. The title suggests Nike's oft-stated and doubtful claim that the company's sneaker factories have led the way for development in Asia: "Tracking NIKE's Footprints across Asia: NIKE as a leading indicator of economic success." There is an amazing subtext to this article -- amazing when you consider that Nike itself reprinted the piece in answer to its critics. Consider the following passage:

"Nike likes a strong government If we delve deeper into where NIKE has produced sneakers and its comments about political stability, we notice that NIKE tends to favour strong governments. For example, NIKE was a major producer in both Korea and Taiwan when these countries were largely under military rule. It currently favours China, where the communists and only two men have led the country since 1949, and Indonesia where President Suharto has been in charge since 1967. The communist party is still very much alive in Vietnam. Likewise, NIKE never did move into the Philippines in a big way in the 1980s, a period when democracy there flourished. Thailand's democracy movement of 1992 also corresponded to NIKE's downgrading of production in that country."

That passage sheds some light on what is meant by "stringent labour laws" in the following:

"NIKE management found that it was very hard to make sneakers in America, primarily because of much higher labour costs and more stringent labour laws."

Ah, if only we had a "strong" government like China's, we wouldn't have to worry about those stringent laws.

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