Behind the Swoosh

Hello,

Today in class we learned more about the meaning of sweatshops. We learned that Nike has many of them in the world and has people working in them for only about $2 a day. In the video that we watched a man named Jimmy, who wouldn't wear Nike products because of the way the workers were treated, went to Indonesia where one of the sweatshops is and tried to live off of the wages that they were given. They wanted to live just like them (minus the work) to see if they could actually do it. During the summer that they spent there he experienced things like extreme sickness and severe weight loss. He then realized that doing this plus having kids is no where near enough to live off of. Jimmy was a soccer coach at St. John's which was at the time the best soccer team in the nation. They then signed a $3.5 million with Nike and they supplied many products for them to use and their coach, Jimmy, refused to wear the things. He was later fired which made him want to experience what it is like working in Indonesia and seeing where they lived and how they lived. After living their for the summer they met with the CEO of Nike who declined to speak to them. No people from Nike are supposed to be talking to him and people who are found talking to him are said to have immense consequences. No Nike workers will now talk to him and he still to this day stands by what he believes in and thinks that action should be taken against Nike. This whole experience and video has a lot to do with globalization. This is one way that globalization isn't the best, because of sweatshops and low wages like this. I can't wait to learn more and learn more about the topic of globalization.