Nike and Its Effects

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Nike started as the American dream, a man who started selling shoes out the back of his car turned that into a billion dollar company. But as shipping costs dropped and the price of manufactering grew, it like many companies before went overseas. A large portion of the shoe making factories ended up in Indonesia. The reason being there are almost no regulations on worker wages, conditions, and environmental saftey. The workers are only paid a little over a dollar a day and have to face the health problems from the chemicals. And when they go home they deal with the huge mounds of scrap rubber left from the factories that leak chemicals into their neighborhoods.

Two Americans decided to go to Indonesia and live on the same pay that the workers. First in order to have housing they could afford, they had to live in a room made of concrete and only ten feet by ten feet. Meals consisted of only rice and vegatables. At one point the woman in the pair got sick with the flu, and with only having the workers wages to live on had to chose between having food for the day and getting a juice pack with vitamin C and some medicine. The living conditions for the workers are horrible as there are open sewers and kids play in burning piles of rubber. There have been attempts to unionize but it is often struck down with force from the factory management. One woman who tried to lead an organization of workers was beaten as an example to others. From going to Indonesia and living amoung the workers the two Americans concluded that one cannot keep their human dignity and work for Nike.

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