Sweatshop workers share the tale

By Zack Kucharski, Gazette staff writer

IOWA CITY – Leslie Kretzu and Jim Keady said that no matter what they did, they couldn't live on $1.25 per day in Indonesia.

Both spent a month living in the town of Tangerang, visiting with and living like workers in the town's Nike factory. They tried to live on their wages of $1.25 per day.

"It's not a way to live," Keady said of the wage. "At best, it's a way to maintain."

They told stories of workers from the Indonesian town to more than 100 people gathered at the UI Main Library on Friday afternoon.

Keady and Kretzu's visit to Iowa City was part of a seven-month national tour.

They say they are raising awareness of the human rights violations by sharing the personal stories of workers afraid to speak against their employer because of the fear of retaliation, of a woman who may have become infertile because of the glue she works with on the assembly line, and people allegedly tortured because of their desire to unionize.

Workweeks were often six and seven days long, and individual workdays between eight and 15 hours, they said.

Keady and Kretzu gave a slide presentation and a short video showing pictures from the town, which included piles of scrap shoe rubber left in the center of the town to be burned.

"I found this and I wasn't even looking for it," Keady said of the piles of rubber. "Imagine what they must be hiding."

A day's visit to a doctor cost nine days' wages for workers, while a package of peanuts would cost 30 cents, or 23 percent of the day's wages, or a package of children's vitamins would be 66 percent of a day's wage, they said.

Keady and Kretzu said they targeted Nike because of its self-promotion as a worldwide leader.

They said their presentation was not anti-Nike but "pro-justice." They also criticized a number of other companies, listing Adidas, Reebok, Gap, Old Navy, Tommy Hilfiger, Polo, Ralph Lauren, Lotto and Fila because they operate plants near Nike's Tangerang plant.

Despite the problems, employees don't want the companies to leave, Kretzu said. Instead, they want the opportunity to unionize, in addition to pay raises and independent monitoring of the company to prevent human rights abuses.

Keady was a soccer coach at St. John's University in New York until he was forced to resign for refusing to promote Nike equipment. Kretzu is a graduate of St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia.

More information about the group can be found at www.nikewages.org.

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