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The price of shoes
Walkout highlights the contrasts of globalization

It would be difficult to pack more ironies and contrasts into a brief news story. An item in The Register-Guard’s Wednesday business section reported that 20,000 workers had walked off their jobs at a factory in Hanoi, Vietnam, where shoes for Nike are made.

The workers are paid an average of $59 a month. They want a 20 percent increase in pay and better food in the company cafeteria.

The ironies begin with the dateline. The United States waged a long and bloody war to stop communist North Vietnam from taking over the south, and judging from this news story, it would appear that American forces won. Modern Vietnam’s communism is no more than nominal, and the late nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh’s capital of Hanoi has become home to foreign-owned factories representing a form of capitalism as robust and rapacious as any domino theorist could favor.

A second irony arises from the fact that the workers’ wage demands are in response to rising prices, particularly for food. Booming industrial development in Vietnam and other Asian nations has brought an increase in demand for fuel, grain and other commodities. The resulting increase in prices is felt everywhere, particularly among the poor. The Vietnamese workers’ grievances stem from the very process of globalized economic development in which they are participating.

Nike officials wouldn’t comment, but if they had, they probably would have pointed out that the factory belongs to a Taiwanese company. Nike’s relationship to the striking workers is one step removed; consequently, questions or criticisms can be directed to the actual owners of the Hanoi plant. But Nike is a global colossus precisely because it mastered this type of manufacturing arrangement. It’s a design and marketing company that hires others to do the mechanical tasks involved in actually making shoes and apparel.

Now for the contrasts. A pair of Nike Air Max III men’s running shoes costs $140 online. That’s 72 days’ pay for a worker in the Hanoi shoe factory. If workers win their 20 percent raise, they’ll be able to afford a pair of the shoes they’re making in just less than two months.

Another contrast: Nike co-founder Phil Knight and his wife Penny have pledged $100 million to support athletics at the University of Oregon. A worker in the Hanoi shoe factory would have to work 141,243 years to make that much.

Put another way, all 20,000 workers in the Hanoi factory would have to work seven years and two months to earn $100 million. A 20 percent raise would shorten the individual period of labor required to 117,702 years, and the collective amount of time to five years and 10 months.

Contemplating such vast spans of time, it’s not surprising that the workers want better meals.

Disparities of wealth always have existed, and wages are relative — pay at the shoe factory is already 14 percent above Vietnam’s minimum. But in a global economic system, athletic facilities at the UO rise from the ground at least in part because of the availability of cheap labor half a world away, and soaring grain prices on a Chicago trading floor lead to walkouts in Hanoi.

In an economically interconnected world, political and social questions inevitably arise: How much would shoes cost, what kind of athletic facilities might the UO be able to build, what new markets might open, if the people making Nikes could afford to wear them?