NIKE Sweatshops

NIKE Sweatshops – Ryan Lane

There has been a constant debate about whether sweatshops are a good thing or a bad thing. The majority of people have always said that it’s terrible, but there are some people that believe it helps children make some sort of money to be able to survive. I have never really looked too much into this so I was usually just on the fence with either, up until I watched the clip on the Nike sweatshops and how horrible the conditions are there.

The workers in Indonesia are all housed in a very small “metal box” with 4 people all sharing this same “box”. There are no beds, and they all share the same toilet that pretty much looks like a hole in the ground. When it rains and the sewage system overflows all of the sewage ends up flooding into their house. In the clip it stated that each worker only makes enough money to be able to buy 2 very small meals. If they got sick they had to make the tough decision of using their money they made for the day on Tylenol to try and feel better, or food for the day. I know that these sweat shops are in developing countries, but how do people allow other people to live like that? NIKE has even come out and admitted to using violence towards the workers including kicking someone for a mistake or verbally abusing them. I know that its cheap labour costs to run sweatshops, but NIKE is a company that is well known around the world, you would think that after all of these years they wouldn’t want to have that kind of bad reputation.

After watching this video and looking a little more into this problem, I have obviously changed my opinion from on the fence to completely against sweatshops. I own a lot of NIKE products and it almost makes me sick wearing those products, knowing that there are people working to make these products in such terrible conditions.