Nike Australia has signed an ethical clothing contract with the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia designed to help protect industry workers. The union claims that Nike already had its own codes of practice and that these forbade the use of outworkers anywhere in the world.
An interesting business move considering the Australian rag trade has been dominated by dodgy businessmen and run on the backs of outworkers for decades. I’m curious as to where Nike products are manufactured in Australia, if at all.
I fail to understand why Nike would even consider manufactering its products in a western country. The labour rates are too high. Compare $20 in Australia to under $1 in an Asian sweatshop.
You would think that their insanely overpriced products could handle the difference in labour costs. Most people would be happy to pay a little more to know that a product was made locally, but corporate greed knows no bounds. It’s funny how Nike and its corporate ilk are quick to kill off local manufacturing and ship everything to Slave Labour Inc, but the massive savings they make never get passed onto the consumer.
Nike is one of many companies that have been under attack from labour activists for using foreign sweatshops to manufacture their goods, but when Nike tried to defend its position with a campaign of media spin they got their fingers burned for deceptive advertising.
I suspect their local effort is little more than a taste of a huge warm and fuzzy propaganda blitz.
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