Open sewers lining the streets, undrinkable water, 24-hour workdays, state repression and six-family bathrooms are just a few conditions that Jim Keady and Leslie Kretzu described as part of their experience when they lived in an Indonesian factory town.
Thursday night, Keady and Kretzu, founders of the Living Wage Project, detailed their experiences with a presentation and slide show. To an audience of approximately 150, the pair shared their story of living among poverty-stricken, factory-controlled villages of an Indonesian community.
“The maxim that we work through with our project is education, empowerment and action,” Keady said. “There is a lot of information that consumers don’t have about this situation that they need to have in order to make informed decisions — as consumers, athletes, shareholders, students at a school heavily funded by the Nike corporation.”
After attempts in May of 1999 to find work in a Nike-owned factory abroad failed, Keady enlisted the Kretzu’s help to organize the next best thing.
This past August, the two Americans embarked on a month-long journey to investigate the reality of sweatshop life in Indonesia.
Calling their endeavor the Living Wage Project, the pair took up residence in a Nike factory town. The team spent the month of August in a small Indonesian community, living on the standard Nike wage of 10,000 rupees per day, which they said translates to roughly $1.20 in the United States.
During their hour-long presentation, they spoke of living conditions that they said were unable to sustain basic, family life, such as workers not able to independently unionize without the fear of death, families unable to pay for health care for their children, workers being fed rancid meat, and families having to choose between meals and basic cleaning supplies.
“This is the information that these companies don’t want you to hear because this is the human side,” Kretzu said. “The reality is that capital and resources are being centralized in the elite and upper middle class. Indonesian factory workers are struggling to feed themselves and their children. The reality is multinational corporations aren’t economically developing developing countries.”
According to Keady and Kretzu, to double the wages of all 110,000 Indonesian factory workers would cost Nike $16 million. This is two percent of Nike’s current advertising budget and a small amount when compared to Nike’s profit margin and the pay rate of CEOs, they said.
Kretzu and Keady both advocated student action in aiding the cause of human rights overseas. Among other things, they advised writing letters or joining the efforts of student or community groups.
“It is impossible to take the position of neutrality in a situation of injustice,” Kretzu said, when referring to current monitoring practices of college campuses.
In the Oregon University System, in particular, the elimination of sweatshop monitoring groups such as the Worker Rights Consortium and Fair Labor Association will have a definite impact on the human rights practices of large companies, Keady and Kretzu said. Unless overturned, they said, the new OUS business policy would disallow University involvement with such groups.
Brought to campus by the Human Rights Alliance, the presentation was part of an effort to increase sweatshop awareness on campus and in the local community.
“We are hoping that the presentation will take the issue back to what it’s really about, which is human rights and human dignity,” Chad Sullivan, HRA member and student, said. “I feel people are tired of the policy aspects and legal debate. It’s time to work on what’s important.”