By Sarah Cox

For Smith, one of two part-time coaches of Canada's national women's basketball team, survival means accepting about $40,000 a year worth of running shoes, shorts, sweats, and equipment from Nike Canada Ltd. on the team's behalf. It was the reason she first wrote to Nike in the late 1970s, when she was a struggling university student, asking for free running shoes, and it is why she now sends a fax to Nike Canada's head office in Thornhill, Ontario, whenever she needs personal equipment and clothes like the burgundy shirt with the swoosh on its left sleeve. "The way amateur sport is now in Canada, we need help from corporations," says Smith, who accepts Nike products along with 500 Canadian athletes in 20 sports that include everything from snowboarding to mountain biking. "I look upon it as a compromise not just for me but for athletes in Canada; we have Third World budgets to operate on. Nike cares about athletes."

For Sukaesih-who was fired from her US$1.20-a-day job gluing soles on Nikes after a wildcat strike to protest working conditions and wages-survival means food to eat and a place to sleep. At 33, unskilled and uneducated, she is considered too old for factory work and relies on her sister for meals and shelter. Along with 23 other workers dismissed simultaneously, she awaits the outcome of a court case on the legality of the firings, bogged down with 2,000 other unrelated cases in the Indonesian Supreme Court. "I question why Nike spends so much money in the United States and Canada while they are exploiting the workers who work very hard to produce the shoes," said Sukaesih-one of half a million workers in 30 countries who make Nike products-during an interview in Vancouver last May. "It has nothing to do with goodwill or care. It has everything to do with raising their profits. It seems that Nike only wants more people to buy Nike."

The world's leading shoe and athletic-wear company, being wooed by B.C. Premier Glen Clark to expand its Oregon headquarters to the Lower Mainland, is fighting a double image. In lucrative consumer markets such as Canada, Nike comes across as a good-hearted corporation that cares about people and communities. It has donated millions of dollars to Canadian charities such as Run for the Cure, given low-income Vancouver children presents of Nike T-shirts and tickets to Vancouver Grizzlies games, and resurfaced asphalt courts with recycled Nike runners, including one at Hastings Community Park-at a cost of $30,000-in return for a foot-long swoosh logo at centre court. The company even chartered a plane last year for Smith, her mother, and Smith's former high-school coach to attend an event honouring the basketball player at her former high school, Salmon Arm Senior Secondary. There, Nike announced a $2,000 annual scholarship fund and presented the school with two portable hoops and warm-up suits for its basketball team. Yet in Indonesia, Vietnam, and China, disturbing tales of labour abuses at factories making Nike shoes continue to surface, despite the sport king's assurances that all is well in its overseas domain. The most recent study, conducted by two Hong Kong-based human-rights groups and released in September, claims that children as young as 13 are employed in the sewing, handwork, and cutting department at the Wellco Nike subcontracting factory in Dongguan, China, even though Chinese labour law prohibits underage factory labour. The report details poor safety conditions at Wellco and another Nike subcontractor in China that have resulted in workers losing fingers and hands in machines; beatings by security guards; verbal abuse by supervisors; fines levied on workers who talk to each other on the job; 72-hour work weeks; and pay less than the Chinese provincial minimum wage of US$0.24 an hour. Even a much-touted June 1997 Nike-commissioned report on the company's overseas operations, by American civil-rights hero Andrew Young and his fledgling consulting firm, GoodWorks International, has been criticized for the use of Nike translators to obtain information from workers, omission of the controversial topic of wages, and listing as contacts people who say they were either never consulted or misrepresented. On Saturday (October 18), human-rights and labour organizations from 12 countries where Nike products are sold will hold demonstrations in front of stores worldwide selling the company's wares, including Nike's Robson Street outlet. Mindful of Nike's economic clout and popularity, organizers of the "day of mobilization in support of Nike workers" are refraining from calling an all-out boycott. Instead, they are merely urging consumers to think twice before they dish out $199 for that coveted pair of Air Max runners, and they are asking them to pressure Nike to allow independent monitoring of the hundreds of overseas factories that make its celebrated products, some employing up to 12,000 people.

The Nike campaign is one of a growing number of consumer initiatives targeting multinational corporations that do business in the Third World. In the 1970s and 1980s, concern about environmental issues inspired a green consumer movement that led some corporations to introduce ecologically sound production practices and products. In turn, globalization in the 1990s has created a rapidly growing consumer movement aimed at making companies like Nike more accountable for conditions under which their products are made all over the world.

"Consumers are becoming much more aware and interested in the origins of things they buy, whether it's apparel or shoes," says Jacques Bertrand, a coordinator for the Canadian Catholic Organization for Development and Peace, a national organization that supports Third World groups working for human rights and democracy. This spring, a CCODP Nike campaign resulted in 157,000 Canadians sending the company postcards calling for independent monitoring of its overseas operations. "This Nike campaign would not have worked five or seven years ago," Bertrand observes. "People are much more concerned about [ Third World ] working conditions because they are also feeling the pressure of globalization. You work more and you earn less. People lose their jobs."

Companies like the Gap Inc., Starbucks Coffee Company, Liz Claiborne Inc., Phillips-Van Heusen Corp., and Walt Disney Corp. have all recently been targeted by campaigns drawing attention to working conditions for people who produce their merchandise. And Reebok, Nike's main competitor, was also criticized in the recent Hong Kong study of shoemakers in China for equally dismal labour practices. But not since the days of the Nestlé infant-formula boycott have a corporation's overseas practices generated as much negative attention worldwide as Nike's have done.

"The Nike campaign is a big deal because Nike is the industry leader," says Trim Bissell, coordinator of the U.S. Campaign for Labor Rights, which monitors multinationals and dispenses information about consumer campaigns such as the Nike initiative. "Once Nike agrees to do the right thing, the rest of the industry is soon to follow," says Bissell, who accompanied Sukaesih on a May tour across Canada that was sponsored by the Canadian Auto Workers. "In reality, this is about all shoe workers. But we can't go after all shoe companies at once."

Nike is not only the industry leader in sales (with about 200 pairs of shoes sold worldwide every minute of the day and its apparel line growing like blazes-up 70 percent in the U.S. alone in its fiscal year ending May 1997), no other shoe and athletic-wear company comes close to being a cultural deity the way Nike is. The swoosh, designed by an Oregon university student for US$35, is emblazoned everywhere: on hats, shirts, shoes, socks, sandals, shorts, bathing suits, windbreakers, sweats, and even dog tags. It has become an affirmation, a check mark. It's universally understood, something Esperanto never managed to be. What it means is this: You're okay. You fit in. You pass.

Nike Canada president John Chappell says sales in Canada have quadrupled since 1992. Nike's astounding appeal is frequently attributed to the company's television ads featuring sports luminaries such as Michael Jordan, who reportedly earns $20 million a year for his endorsement. But the company's growing charitable donations and its sponsorship of underfunded Canadian sports teams have also been instrumental in spreading the swoosh from coast to coast, because they include generous gifts of Nike clothing and equipment. Chappell says Nike is involved in about 20 Canadian sports, with basketball being one of its main focuses. In addition to supporting high-profile national teams like the Vancouver Grizzlies, the Toronto Raptors, and Canada's national women's and men's basketball teams, Nike also sponsors a variety of sports teams at 12 Canadian universities. In B.C., according to team sources, Nike gives about $10,000 a year in clothing and equipment each to the UBC Thunderbirds basketball team and the SFU women's basketball team, the Clan. Although Nike-sponsored American college teams often sign contracts outlining strict terms of sponsorship, the company's agreements with the two B.C. teams are verbal. "I've been asked to do very little," says Bruce Enns, UBC's head basketball coach. "We're asked to be a member of the [ Nike ] family; we're asked to represent the company in terms of what we wear and how we purport ourselves in the community. If our guys are going out on the street, they're going to be wearing Nike product."

SFU Clan coach Allison McNeill says Nike's product donations for the past eight years-which this year include two pairs of "Air 'Ogants" for each of the team's 15 members-allow the Clan to spend more money on scholarships and travel to places like Colorado for tournaments. "It doesn't sound like a lot in the corporate world, but to a women's basketball team, it means a lot." In exchange for the gifts, Nike gets a big swoosh in the SFU gym along with other sponsors' logos and a free full-page ad in the women's basketball program. Nike also sponsors Basketball B.C., the nonprofit governing body for province-wide basketball. Executive director Mike Hind says Nike's sponsorship has increased during the past 15 years to the point where the company is now providing about $70,000 worth of shoes and clothing annually for thousands of basketball players. In return, Hind says, Basketball B.C. was required to sign an agreement granting Nike exclusivity in footwear and clothing when the team plays.

Many of Nike's B.C. donations are made through a North America-wide program called PLAY (Participate in the Lives of American Youth, or, in Canada, Participate in the Lives of All Youth). In Canada, Nike devoted $1.5 million to PLAY during a three-year period beginning in 1995. Nike makes cash donations and also gives away products-such as shoes, T-shirts, and caps-that can be used as fund-raising prizes. Although the company does not break down its financial contributions by province, at least 23 charities, community centres, schools, and sports events in B.C. have received assistance from PLAY. These include the Nike-NHL Street Hockey Program, the Rick Hansen Institute, the Hastings Community Centre, Salmon Arm Senior Secondary School, an eight-kilometre run for B.C. cancer research, Kidsport B.C., and Night Hoops, a basketball program for youth.

Above and beyond PLAY donations, Nike buys tickets to professional sporting events, such as Grizzlies games, for low-income children. Through Sport B.C., a nonprofit organization that promotes sports in B.C. communities, Nike has paid for about 120 Vancouver children to attend games and practices so far this year, in some cases giving them T-shirts along with a ticket, according to Diana Davies, Sport B.C.'s special-event and marketing manager. Nike Canada president Chappell says there are two reasons for Nike's extensive contributions: to "give something back" to communities, and as a marketing strategy. "Obviously, if we can develop Canadian sport and increase the number of people participating in Canadian sport, that's good for our business," Chappell says. He says Nike Canada will make an announcement within a few weeks about increasing its involvement with sporting associations. In the next 12 months, the company will make a "pretty dramatic increase in charitable contributions and trying to be a good community citizen". Michelle McSorley, public-affairs supervisor for Nike Canada, told the Georgia Straight that Nike also hopes to encourage more girls and women to become involved in sports-an astute marketing strategy, given that Nike chief executive officer Philip Knight points out in the company's 1997 annual report that one in five school-age girls in the U.S. is involved in sports today, compared to one in 30 when the company began 25 years ago, "and it's not just in the United States where these changes are happening."

"It's a kind of new-wave style of promotion," observes UBC marketing professor Richard Pollay of Nike's overall community activities. "I do think it is a good marketing strategy and they may be drawn to it because they recognize that they have to do something to counter the bad press that they're getting for their overseas practices. They want the publicity spin to help their sales effort, so I think they prefer to spend their resources here, where there's a potential sales payoff, than at the factory, where it may not be clear to them what the payoff is."

The sports giant, which got its start with Knight hawking running shoes out of his car trunk, was also the industry leader when it came to moving shoe production from the U.S. to overseas factories as globalization of industry spread. At first, the company went to South Korea and Taiwan, at that time authoritarian countries with low labour costs. Its competitors soon followed, effectively wiping out the American sport-shoe industry that once employed about 30,000. Then, in the late 1980s, democracy came to Taiwan and South Korea and strong labour movements emerged. Shoemakers' wages tripled. Nike reacted quickly. The company found contractors in China and Indonesia, then later in Vietnam, places where hourly wages totalled pennies, not dollars, and where the lack of independent trade unions posed no threat to profits. "It was a lightning move by industry standards," says Jeff Ballinger, the founder of Press for Change, a U.S. organization that monitors Nike's shoemaking operations in Indonesia. "Nike did the trailblazing out there in Asia, and no one could compete."

Although Nike still produces apparel in North America, it continues to move production to countries with cheaper labour. In Canada, a Quebec factory produces Nike socks for the North American market, according to Nike Canada president Chappell. McSorley says that about Cdn$10 million worth of Nike fleece apparel is also produced domestically each year, mainly in Quebec. On the other side of the coin, however, a Downsview, Ontario, manufacturer of Nike athletic clothing shut down in 1994 when Nike shifted the production contract to undisclosed cheaper locations, according to Alexandra Dagg, manager of the Ontario District Council of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees. More than 100 UNITE members lost their jobs as a result, Dagg says. Then, this spring, Nike stunned 400 unionized employees of Bauer Inc., which it bought in 1994, when it announced it will close the Cambridge, Ontario, plant by the end of next year. In newspaper interviews, workers have speculated that the company wanted the Bauer name and access to its coveted designs and technology before moving skate-making operations to Asia. "My understanding of it is that only the entry-level production has gone overseas and that they do anticipate moving jobs into the Quebec [ Bauer ] plant," Chappell says.

Like some other multinationals, Nike does not own factories that make its products. Factories are owned by other companies, known as subcontractors, who must accept the multinational's time line and a certain price per item if they want to stay in business. This arrangement keeps wages in Third World factories low and puts pressure on workers for frequent overtime to meet quotas and rush orders.

In Indonesia, Sukaesih was one of 6,500 workers hired by Nike subcontractor P.T. Sunghwa Dunia in 1989. Then 25, she was older than most factory workers in the Third World apparel and shoe industries. Factories generally prefer to employ young women, who are considered to be docile and nimble-fingered. The study of Chinese workers making Nike and Reebok shoes, for example, found that 90 percent were women aged 17 to 23. Frequently from poor rural areas, young women are unlikely to protest arduous conditions or complain about forced overtime to meet production quotas.

"A lot of times we even had to work Sunday," Sukaesih says, speaking through an interpreter. "Working days were six full days a week and then sometimes Sunday, so that meant seven days a week. There was no break at all. In the room I was in, there were 700 people. I had to put some chemical on sponges for the soles of the shoes. It smelled really bad. I don't know what it was. They gave us a mask, but it was very thin and you could still smell it. There were some fans, but they weren't effective with so many people. They didn't want to put in more fans because they said the glue would dry faster and it would not be good for production."

Water rations, timed bathroom breaks, low pay, forced overtime, and lack of subsidized transportation to the West Java factory led Sukaesih and her coworkers to agitate for better conditions and the right to form an independent trade union. In September 1992, they held a one-day wildcat strike. The factory management eventually capitulated to some of their demands, instituting a slight pay raise and improving working conditions. But shortly after, Sukaesih and 23 other workers were called, two by two, into the local police station.

"I was interrogated from 9 o'clock in the morning until 6 o'clock at night. I was first asked to be a witness of activities in the factory: what was I doing, what did I see, what were people doing. Later, all of a sudden, I was a typical suspect. They charged me with being involved in illegal organizations. They didn't specify what I had done against the law. Then we got a letter saying we had been suspended, and then we were called by the Department of Labour, and then were fired."

When Sukaesih toured Canada last May, Nike Canada Ltd. issued a news release saying that she had been dismissed "for inciting an illegal strike which damaged the premises and resulted in loss of production for three days". Yet in Indonesia-a repressive country where the head of an unrecognized independent trade union, Muchtar Pakpahan, is in jail for treason and faces a possible death sentence-it is illegal to hold a meeting of more than five people without a permit, says Ballinger of Press for Change. As a result, Indonesian workers have been holding wildcat strikes similar to the one at Sukaesih's factory. This year, in late April, 10,000 workers at a Nike subcontractor in Indonesia held two wildcat strikes to demand that their employer-the PT Hardaya Aneka Shoes Industry, on Jakarta's outskirts-comply with the country's new minimum wage of US$2.46 a day. The HASI factory owners had requested exemption from the new wage, claiming that an extra 20 cents would result in financial hardship.

Nike Canada's McSorley points out that the factory where Sukaesih worked is under new management and has met workers' demands, but Ballinger says this is small consolation for Sukaesih, jobless for years and with little chance of compensation. Both he and Sukaesih believe she and the other workers fired in January 1993 were scapegoated to prevent others from challenging poor working conditions and low pay.

When employees at Nike subcontracting factories break rules, retribution is often swift. On International Women's Day this year, at the Nike Pouchen shoemaking factory in Dong Nai, Vietnam, 56 young women were punished for failing to wear regulation footwear. Instead of putting on plastic flip-flops for work, the women entered the factory with outdoor thongs. Angry supervisors ordered them back outside. In the sweltering sun, they were forced to run around the complex wearing not the fabled running shoes they stitch and glue but flimsy sandals. Twelve women collapsed, according to various sources. They were taken to hospital by coworkers. The incident might have passed unnoticed outside Vietnam had it not been for Thuyen Nguyen, a Wall Street investment consultant who read about it in Vietnamese newspapers. Nguyen, who happened to be in Vietnam at the time, was on a personal mission to investigate allegations of labour abuses at Nike's five Vietnamese shoe subcontractors, which employ 32,000 people. He had seen a CBS documentary about mistreatment of workers at Vietnamese factories making Nike shoes and was so distressed that, together with friends, he started a group called Vietnam Labor Watch to monitor American companies in Vietnam.

"Nike invited us to go to Vietnam," Nguyen says in a phone interview from New York City. "We went there and they took us on a factory tour and basically said, 'That's it; you can go home now.' And we said, 'We need to talk to the workers without factory managers present.' They said, 'Okay, we can't help you there.' So there we were in Vietnam, investigating on our own. Nike told us CBS was exaggerating, but things were even worse than CBS had reported."

After six months of research in Vietnam and the U.S., and after confidential interviews with off-shift Nike workers, Nguyen gave the company a list of abuses he had discovered: forced knee bends and push-ups for workers who accidentally broke sewing needles; employees' mouths taped shut for talking to coworkers; bathroom use restricted to one visit in an eight-hour shift; drinking of water allowed only twice during a shift; workers collapsing on the assembly line from exhaustion, heat, and poor nutrition; and sexual harassment by supervisors.

Nguyen included copies of pay stubs proving that workers were receiving less than the monthly minimum wage of US$45 and that some put in 70 or 80 hours of overtime a month, violating Vietnamese labour laws. He says Nike never responded. Nguyen says he threw his swoosh shoes in the closet and went public. "It's not like these workers are asking to share the wealth that Phil Knight has," says Nguyen, who will be participating in the October 18 demonstration in either Washington, D.C., or New York City. "They're just asking for enough money to live on. They are asking to be treated okay. They just ask not to be beat up once in a while. They ask that they not be forced to work so many hours of overtime. These are not major demands. They are very practical, humane demands."

Nguyen, who will return to Vietnam in November to continue his investigations, says subcontractors recently made it even more difficult to monitor working conditions. After Nguyen gave a copy of his report to the Vietnamese government, he says, the Sam Yang Vietnam Co. sent a letter to workers apologizing for violating Vietnam's legal overtime limit for the whole of 1997 during just the first four months of the year. But copies of May pay stubs from the subcontractor, sent to Nguyen and passed on to the Georgia Straight, show that the company no longer puts overtime hours on pay stubs. "They just put in the amount that the worker got paid without explaining where the amount comes from," Nguyen says. "The factory did that to circumvent our monitoring effort."

Although Nike chose to ignore Nguyen and Vietnam Labor Watch, it responded swiftly to the more recent study of working conditions at its subcontracting factories in China, showing that the company is increasingly concerned about negative publicity. Although Nike's sales and profits do not appear to have suffered as a result of the campaign, UBC's Pollay says a long-term campaign would likely start to drive customers away. "If people start to feel that Nike is, for example, an inferior good because of the way in which it is manufactured, it's pretty easy for them to shift their purchasing behaviour to other brands of running shoes," says Pollay, who will use Nike as an example this fall to introduce UBC business students to the concept of consumer campaigns.

The Chinese study, conducted by the Hong Kong Christian Industrial Committee and the Hong Kong-based Asia Monitor Resource Centre, concluded that working conditions have worsened since 1995 in both Nike and Reebok subcontracting factories. "All categories of the companies' Codes of Conduct-health and safety, freedom of association, wages and benefits, hours of work, overtime compensation, nondiscrimination, harassment and child labor-are being violated," according to the report, which conducted detailed employee interviews.

At the Wellco factory, a Nike subcontractor on the Pearl River Delta employing 8,000 people, researchers found employees working an 11-hour shift, as well as two to four hours of overtime each day. The long hours violate both Chinese labour law, which allows only 36 hours of overtime a month, and Nike's own code of conduct, which allows a 48-hour work week with only 12 hours of overtime. If workers refuse, according to the report, they can be fined up to US$3.61 or docked the entire day's pay.

The study, made public the day before Nike's annual shareholders' meeting on September 22, prompted Dusty Kidd, Nike's director of labour practices, to issue a news release calling the company's critics "fringe groups which are again using the Internet and fax modems to promote mis-truths and distortions for their own purposes". Nike claims that no Wellco employees earn less than the minimum wage of US$1.90 a day for eight hours of work and that the average salary for "direct labour" in July 1997 was about US$82 a month. The company also says that no one under 16 works at Wellco in any capacity. Nike's McSorley points out that in August 1997, Wellco was provided with pocket-sized Nike code-of-conduct cards for each employee. But Nike has yet to respond to other findings by the human-rights groups, including forced overtime, industrial accidents resulting in the loss of fingers, workers required to pay a pre-hiring deposit that is kept for one year or until they leave the factory under favourable conditions, and fines for such misdemeanours as missing morning calisthenics.

On the same day that Nike responded to the China study, it announced it had severed its relationship with three Indonesian apparel subcontractors who failed to comply with its code-of-conduct requirements for wages and working conditions. But Bissell, of the Campaign for Labor Rights, points out that Nike's critics are not trying to drive the company out of particular factories or countries-on the contrary, he says, they are urging Nike to work with subcontractors to improve conditions for workers. "While there hasn't been a systematic policy change, we're keeping the heat on," Bissell says. "Every time there's a scandal and Nike's critics publicize it and make it a scandal, Nike comes back and says 'We've dealt with that; I wish these critics would stop bringing up old business.' Well, the only reason they've dealt with those scandals is because we got on their case. They criticize the very people who are forcing them to do the right things."

Nike's Chappell says the company has been sensitive to concerns raised about overseas operations. "We have continued to improve what we do, and part of the improvement, of course, has been because issues and concerns have been brought to our attention in various ways. At any one time on any given day, we've got 500,000 people making footwear and apparel for Nike in various parts of the world. So it's the size of a small city. I think one or two people, as there are in any city.are going to do something foolish or do something that really is not the way anyone wanted it to be. What we have to do is to try to keep that at an absolute minimum."

In fact, allegations of labour abuses at Nike's overseas operations reached such a crescendo earlier this year that the company hired Andrew Young, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to investigate. Young's Atlanta business, GoodWorks International, sent the former ambassador on a flying tour of 12 Nike factories in three countries in 10 days. When Young released his report in June, Nike took out full-page ads in major newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post. The ads quoted Young as saying: "It is my sincere belief that Nike is doing a good job.but Nike can and should do better."

Nike seems to have gotten its public-relations message-that things are fine in overseas factories that make its products-across with aplomb. Asked about Nike's track record in Third World countries, Canadian athletes and coaches such as Smith, McNeill, and Enns cite the GoodWorks report as evidence that Nike has taken concrete action to address criticism. Yet Nguyen and others point to several serious flaws in Young's research. Nguyen says the use of company translators to obtain information from workers and the three to four hours Young spent in each factory severely limited his ability to ascertain true working conditions. "No worker will complain in front of the boss. The workers [ in Vietnam ] told us that when there's a visitor, they are warned not to say anything. When there's a visitor, the factories are cleaned up, they're allowed to work a little bit slower. To visit without actually talking to the workers themselves outside the factory is just going through a show."

At the back of his report, Young lists nongovernmental organizations "with whom GoodWorks met or spoke". Ballinger is listed, and so is Bertrand, from Development and Peace. So is Medea Benjamin, executive director of Global Exchange, the San Francisco-based human-rights group that distributed the China study on behalf of the Hong Kong groups.

Yet Benjamin says she was never consulted by Young or anyone else from GoodWorks. "I was shocked to see my name there. I had called his [ Young's ] office many times to set up a meeting and I never got a response." Ballinger says his phone conversation with Young lasted only 20 minutes and his views were not represented in the report. And Bertrand says he had two short conversations with GoodWorks and in neither case was his opinion even solicited. "This is very misleading," he says. "It gives the impression that I had substantial conversations with them, but we never had any. The first time I called them and asked about their mandate. The second time I returned a call and we talked about a meeting in Washington that never took place." Critics say another major flaw in Young's glossy report is his refusal to address the controversial issue of wages. In the report, Young says he was not asked by Nike to address "cost of living" issues. "While it is tempting to criticize a few highly visible and successful companies for paying 'low wages,' meaningful reform can only be achieved through national law or international standards that enforce a 'level playing field' for all companies, not just a few," he wrote.

Yet one might think that any study worth its salt would have made at least an attempt to address this issue, a key one for workers who make Nike products, Bissell says. The April strikes by thousands of Indonesian Nike workers were over wage issues. Wages were also a major grievance in the wildcat strike that resulted in Sukaesih being fired in January 1993. Nguyen says low wages are a major complaint of Vietnamese workers. The study of Nike and Reebok operations in China alleges that subcontractors for both companies violate minimum-wage laws. Workers at Nike's Wellco factory receive as little as US$30 a month before overtime, while the minimum state wage is US$42 a month, according to the study. It reports "many wildcat strikes" in the factory during the past two years.

Chappell, however, says Nike pays "quite a long way in excess" of minimum wages in each country. Less than two dollars a day may not sound like a lot to Canadians, but Chappell says it is plenty to live on in a country like Vietnam. "We're comparing Canadian wages to Vietnamese wages, and, of course, the purchasing power is quite different. In countries like Vietnam, we're paying about twice what the average manufacturing wage is, and that enables people to maintain the lifestyle that they have and save some money. One thing that's very important to the folks working in our factories is that they're able to help care for extended families, so if they're living at home, they're helping support other children. If they're not living at home, they're sending money home. And the average savings that we've been able to identify is that they're saving somewhere between 25 and 40 percent of what they get paid."

However, none of the 35 workers interviewed by Nguyen were able to live on the basic factory wage of about US$1.60 a day. Renting a room costs about $6 a month. A simple meal of rice, tofu, and vegetables costs 70 cents; three meals a day would cost US$2.10. As a result, according to Vietnam Labor Watch's report, workers skip meals and eat less. Some receive gifts of food from family members.

Given Nike's rosy financial health, Ballinger and other critics argue that the company could easily afford to improve basic working conditions in plants that make its products. Providing clean drinking water for 800 workers in an Indonesian factory would cost US$80 a day, Ballinger says. Contracting Indonesian nongovernmental organizations to conduct independent monitoring of Nike subcontractors to ensure compliance with the company's code of conduct would cost US$300,000 a year, he says. Paying the half-million labourers who make Nike products a "living wage"-an additional annual cost of US$60 million, according to Press for Change-would have reduced Nike's 1997 revenues from US$9.19 billion to US $9.13 billion, a drop of less than one percent.

At the University of Victoria's National Coaching Institute, where Bev Smith is an apprentice coach this fall, the former basketball star is showing the 13-member UVic women's basketball team, the Vikes, new tricks for making a "fast break", the transition from defence to offence. On her feet are a pair of Air Max, men's size 10, courtesy of Nike. "I'm teaching athletes about morals and ethics within a team," Smith says. "I told them it's funny how your principles change when you have to deal with survival. Maybe it's a selfish way of looking at it, but I'm a basketball coach. I would like to do the right thing for everybody in the situation, but I'm concerned about me and my team first. It would be my hope that the [ Nike ] people I deal with in Canada-they are decent individuals-are trying to do the right thing." Sukaesih wears cheap blue canvas sneakers made in China, a gift from an American well-wisher. She tried on a pair of Air Jordans once, at Niketown in Oregon. "The shoes were so nice, and I felt I was just equal with Michael Jordan. But I would never be able to afford them," she says. "An Indonesian [ Nike ] worker would have to work for three months to buy a pair. Three months if you don't eat, don't pay rent. Nike has a slogan: Just Do It. And Just Do It on the factory floor is different than the Just Do It they portray on television and everywhere in Canada and in the United States. On the factory floor, that means work really hard, do as much overtime as you can. The people who sew the swoosh sign have to stand up for hours and hours. Some of them faint just to sew that swoosh sign. I do hope that there will be some changes. But I don't know how much I can hope for."

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