November 1, 2000

Swooping Down on Nike
These St. Joe's grads lived like sweatshop workers to show that Nike exploits overseas labor.
BY BRIAN HICKEY

They slept on thin mats placed atop a concrete floor and woke up hungry in the savage heat of an Indonesian summer.

They ate rice, vegetables and noodles painstakingly cooked atop the same kerosene heater they used to boil their drinking water.

They dealt with football-sized rats as fumes from burning trash mixed in the open air with the scent of the village's open sewer system.

Funny thing is, this is the life St. Joseph University graduates Jim Keady and Leslie Kretzu chose for themselves this past summer.

The St. Joe's grads had a motive for spending their summer in such distress: to give the Nike sweatshop issue a human face.

After replacing some of the pounds they lost in the town of Tangerang, about 12 miles west of Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, in August, they're telling their stories to college students as part of the Olympic Living Wage Project national speaking tour.

For them, the issue is simple: The world's largest athletic apparel company exploits workers across the world by making them work long hours inside dangerous factories for too little money to live.

To prove their point, the pair existed on $1.25 a day while videotaping workers and researching their cause for a documentary.

"Kathie Lee [Gifford] and Nike both make for interesting headlines--and for a moment they make people think what's going on is horrible," says Keady, a Belmar, N.J., native who graduated from St. Joe's in 1993. "Well, it's more than horrible. We have a responsibility to do something about it."

Keady first zeroed in on the Oregon-based shoe behemoth as an assistant soccer coach at St. John's University in New York three years ago while looking into overseas sweatshops for a theology class research paper.

When the question of whether the university should sign a $3.5 million Nike contract surfaced on campus, he wrote a letter to the school's official publication, St. John's Today, condemning the proposal.

The athletic director demanded a meeting with Keady after hearing about his letter. After agreeing to disagree, they parted ways that afternoon. But Keady says "university bigwigs" later 86'd his missive.

When the issue hit the school newspaper's front page a day later, "World War III broke out," Keady recalls.

Because of a contingency in the contract that said no athlete or coach could make public criticisms of Nike, he says the school ordered him to pick a side, an accusation both the school and Nike deny.

In June 1998, he bid his job farewell. (A U.S. District Court dismissed his $11 million civil-rights and human-rights violations lawsuit during the summer. It's currently under appeal).

Out of work, Keady volunteered to spend a month working in an Indonesian factory where Nike products are manufactured. Company reps politely declined, saying he wouldn't get a true feel after 30 days. They also pointed out that he didn't speak the language and that his presence would displace a worker they "cared about."

He countered that he would work six months in a Latin American apparel plant (he speaks Spanish). And in exchange, he would guarantee a displaced worker cash and a place to stay in the United States. He says the company turned down his counteroffer.

As Keady pondered his next move, Roxborough native Leslie Kretzu decided that married life, kids and a house in the suburbs weren't for her. The 1996 St. Joe's alum and longtime Keady friend packed up and moved to California before volunteering with the Missionaries of Charity in India and Nepal.

Keady sought out Kretzu for his backup plan.

The pair aligned themselves with an anti-sweatshop organization and headed overseas. They lived with workers and recorded the horror stories. Along for the ride was Mike Pierantozzi, Keady's fraternity brother who took a leave of absence from his Narberth copywriting job to record the trip with digital cameras and video equipment.

"The workers were hesitant at first because they don't trust anyone," Keady recalls. "There's a whole culture of fear operating there."

Female workers spoke of having to "prove" to their bosses that they were menstruating; others complained that the verbal abuse from superiors was intolerable. The take-home pay was inadequate. (When Kretzu grew sick from exhaustion, she could only afford a small box of orange juice and rudimentary medication.)

"We have to work 100 years to get what [U.S. Women's Soccer player and Nike endorser] Mia Hamm gets in one year," a female worker told them.

The project's goal is to force Nike and other corporations to offer a "living wage" to their employees, something the company says it's working toward by already boosting entry-level Indonesian workers' salaries by 70 percent.

"Mr. Keady's motives are suspect, his research dubious and his conduct and methods questionable," says Nike spokesperson Vada Manager. "It appears he's more interested in drumming up publicity than actually discussing issues with us. Despite his attempts to divert Nike's attention, we have made considerable improvements in the way we do business around the world. His accounts just don't match up with what's really going on in our company around the world."

Two years ago, Nike released details of a new initiative to improve conditions for its overseas workers. In 1999, it became the first American company to list the locations of some of its plants.

The activists say that despite Nike's protests, not enough is being done.

"What struck me most was how the workers described themselves as slaves," Kretzu recalls. "If slavery was alive and thriving in the U.S. today, I'd be so outraged I wouldn't stop fighting it. When the slave owners are U.S. companies, we have a responsibility to stop them."

Keady and Kretzu are urging college students to write politicians to decry Nike. They say they were disappointed with the turnout at the tour's October kickoff at St. Joe's but hope interest will grow.

Then they'll winnow the 45 hours of tape they brought back from their summer experience to produce an hourlong film.

"The whole point is to get people to experience it the way we did, to get to know these people, to know they're real people who are living horribly," says Pierantozzi. "I don't know how to fix it, but it has to be fixed."

"More information about the Olympic Living Wage project can be found at www.nikewages.org."

Brian Hickey (bhickey@philadelphiaweekly.com) also wrote this week's cover story.