William Arguelles
Spiro Alexandratos
Seminar 3
October 15, 2012
Opinion Paper 6
So breaking with my tradition of pointing out the “supervillian” corporation and then ranting about how ridiculous the supervillian is, I think I’m going to focus on something else for once. Not because there wasn’t a supervillian this time, because Lord knows that Nike came across as pure unadulterated evil in their treatment of those Bengali workers. I mean I’ve sadly come to expect corporations outsourcing their manufacturing to impoverished countries to increase their profits. But to me, Nike is only occupying a niche made available by the utter neglect and economic exploitation of the world’s population.
Nike however, decided that just outsourcing wasn’t exploitative enough, so they decided to trick some poor Bengali men and women into signing these contracts which basically treated them like 17th century indentured servants. These men and women would sign contracts in a language they couldn’t read that would have them move to another country (I think it was Malaysia) and then forfeit their passports to the company. Without a passport, the workers were effectively trapped in the country working for Nike until they fulfilled their contract and bought back their own passports with all the money Nike had paid them over the three or so years they worked for Nike. In short, Nike is essentially acting as a New World plantation owner, tricking the poor starving peasants into signing years of their lives away to work on plantations in horrific conditions.
Now, Nike is obviously in the wrong here. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights among practically every State’s constitution and/or bill of rights states that slavery and indentured servitude is illegal and immoral. There is no excuse for what Nike is doing to these men and women, and they should be punished for it to the fullest extent of the law. However, like the 17th century plantation owner, Nike is more emblematic of the underlying problem; the despicable living conditions and abject poverty in these states that drives these workers to sign such horrible deals.
For example, let’s look at Bangladesh, the most densely populous nation in the world. There are some significant downsides to being ridiculously overcrowded, so that millions of Bengali people live in abject poverty. I remember watching a Natural Geographic special about these Bengali women who lived in these villages comprised of a bunch of hastily constructed makeshift shacks on the side of a major thoroughfare and were basically a harem of prostitutes for the passing truckers. The women were brought there at the age of eight or nine, sold by relatives into this slavery, and forced to have sex with anyone who paid their madam about twenty U.S. dollars. After however many years of this abuse, the women were granted their “freedom” to make money themselves, but they still had to pay a ridiculous exorbitant rent. I think all and all, the women made approximately a dollar or two for each John.
I bring this up because it illustrates my point that while Nike is obviously wrong, to these workers, it could appear as an escape from their horrible lives. Yes, Nike should pay their workers more than two dollars an hour, but when sixteen percent of the world makes approximately a dollar a day, those two dollars might sound like living in the lap of luxury. And if the person has to choose between having barely consensual sex with passing truckers or making shoes in a factory they’re told is much nicer then their shack, I can see droves of people signing up for this without a second thought.
Praying on the weak of the world is disgusting, and Nike should be ashamed of doing it. But what is truly horrific is that such a large portion of the world lives in such a deplorable state. Like the plantation owners, Nike is morally corrupt, but the only reason their practice even exists is because the conditions are so terrible that signing away three years of your life to make shoes for little to no pay sounds better than starving in the streets or being a sex slave. It’s easy to say Nike is wrong, but Nike is only a symptom of the much greater problems plaguing the world.
