Shoemaker Yue Yuen Industrial Holdings Ltd. has reported that over 1,000 factory workers have gone on strike. Yue Yuen, a shoe manufacturer and supplier for Nike Inc. and Adidas AG, owns factories in China, Vietnam, and Indonesia. In the southern Chinese city of Dongguan, where Yue Yuen employs over 40,000 people, workers took to the streets in protest of the company refusing to pay them their full social security and housing fund contributions. While Yue Yuen says that 600 workers staged a demonstration yesterday, the China Labor Bulletin in Hong Kong estimated it was 10,000 workers that demonstrated. The China Labor Watch, based in New York, put that number in the “tens of thousands.”
Geoffrey Crothall, a spokesman for China Labor Bulletin, stated in an interview today, “It’s a determination not to accept terms and conditions being dictated to them by their employer, they want to have negotiations, they want to have a voice.”
Nike did not answer phone calls outside office hours and an Adidas representative did not return a call to comment.
Matt Powell at SportsOneSource has just listed the top 10 best selling sneaker models of March 2014. Seven were Nikes and three were from Jordan Brand.
It becomes easy to forget that the shoes many of us obsess over every weekend come from countries where the workers are oppressed and taken advantage of. This is the reality of the “sneaker game” today. Nike, Jordan Brand, Adidas, and many others, clearly profit from mistreating thousands of their workers. Don’t forget that when waking up this Saturday.
Photo and story source: Bloomberg News.
Enlightening. Sad that there are ppl who are struggling so I can blow over 100-200 dollars on something that goes on my feet. That’s not to say that people who can acquire those things shouldn’t. My point is that there are those over seas and here who have to go through hardship while providing some of us with the things that we enjoy.
This
That’s very unfortunate but I’m still copping them foam pro yeezys on saturday