Superrich Superstars in Sports, Moral Jellyfish in Life

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.--Hunter S. Thompson

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It’s never been weirder than to hear the Nike Corp. flagship pro athletes, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Andre Agassi and Jerry Rice, disavow any responsibility for speaking out against Nike’s brutal employment practices in Southeast Asia. These athletes and others like them are the pitch men in Nike’s $500-million annual advertising campaigns.

Jordan rationalized, “It’s Nike’s responsibility; they will do the right thing.” Rice, confronted by a hostile media at the opening of Nike’s San Francisco superstore on fashionable Union Square, complained, “I don’t think it’s fair for you guys to throw this in my face.” Woods and Agassi so far have said nothing.

Nike’s response to unflattering reports this past summer about its Asian sweat shops has been to hire former U.N. ambassador and Washington power broker Andrew Young and his public relations firm, Good Works International, and the accounting firm of Ernst & Young for damage control.

It’s important to remember that superstar athletes in the 1960s and ‘70s did stand up and respond to social injustice. Who can forget Tommie Smith’s and John Carlos’ raised black-gloved fists on the victory stand at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, protesting racism in the United States? Or Muhammad Ali’s refusal to be inducted into the military and fight in Vietnam? Or Billie Jean King’s work against the disenfranchisement of women athletes and against sexism in the larger society? Or Arthur Ashe’s vocal oppositionto apartheid in South Africa and racism at home, Martina Navratilova’s defense of gay rights, John McEnroe’s turning down $1 million to play tennis in apartheid South Africa?

Within their particular sports, many superstar athletes forfeited and risked careers to change exploitative conditions in their workplace--Bill Radovitch, John Mackey, Kermit Alexander and Gene Upshaw in professional football, Oscar Robertson in the National Basketball Assn. and Curt Flood in Major League Baseball.

The litany of abuse perpetuated by Nike’s Indonesian, Chinese and Vietnamese subcontractors and condoned by Nike Chief Executive Officer Phil Knight have been well documented during the past year. Girls as young as 13 in Nike factories in these countries work 60 hours per week under slave labor conditions making $1.60 to $2.25 a day.

Working conditions include corporal punishment, mandatory overtime with no extra pay and working unprotected with carcinogenic chemicals and glues in poorly ventilated factories. Obviously these workers are nonunion; their governments have outlawed unions and union organizing. Nike’s 20-odd Asian shoe factories are sweatshops of the worst order, where pay and working conditions rival those of U.S. sweatshops in the 19th century.

Nike’s subcontractors’ $1.60 daily wage in Vietnam is less than the $2.10 it costs to eat three meager meals a day. Top of the line Nike Air Max shoes cost $3.50 to make and sell for around $140. Supercapitalist Knight--who with University of Oregon track coach Bill Bowerman’s waffle running shoe design formed Blue Ribbon Sports, Nike’s predecessor company, in 1962--is worth $5.2 billion.

Accountability is always the name of the game in the world of sport. The superstar athletes in Nike’s corral know this better than anyone. They prove it over and over again by making themselves accountable for their individual and team success. It’s why we call them superstars. Why do these same athletes become moral jellyfish when it comes to broader issues of social accountability?

Third World peoples are facing the brunt of the emerging global economy’s ugly side. Not protesting Knight’s $5 billion and Jordan’s $20 million stacked against a Vietnamese worker’s $1.60 per day is flat out immoral. Shilling for $140 sneakers that cost $3.50 to make is equally immoral. If Jordan, Rice, Agassi and Woods feel no shame at taking Nike’s blood money, what will shame them?

Chris Webber of the Washington Bullets is one superstar athlete who has refused Nike’s blood money. Let Jordan and the rest stand up, and let’s see who the real heroes are.