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Sat Oct 11 2008

Columns

Alexander Cockburn

Take your prize and stuff it: Dita Sari says no to Reebok
February 7, 2002

Right till the end of January, Dita Sari, an Indonesian in her late twenties, was preparing to fly from her home near Jakarta, Indonesia, to Salt Lake City. She would bask Feb. 7 in the admiration of assorted do-gooders and celebrities mustered by the public relations department of Reebok for the thirteenth annual Human Rights Awards, overseen by a board including Jimmy Carter and Kerry Kennedy Cuomo. Reebok is a company that dukes it out each year with Adidas and New Balance for second place, far behind the behemoth of the business, Nike, in the world of sports shoes and apparel.

Make no mistake, the folk -- usually somewhere between four and six recipients -- getting these annual Reebok awards have all been fine organizers and activists, committed to working for minorities, the disenfranchised, the disabled, the underdogs in our wicked world.

Dita Sari's plan was to accept the ticket from Reebok, proceed to the podium in the Capitol Theater in downtown Salt Lake City, where the world's winter athletes are now assembled, and then, when offered the human rights award by either Desmond Tutu or Robert Redford, reject it.

Now, this annual Reebok ceremony isn't up there with the Nobels or the genius grants from McArthur. Despite Reebok's best efforts, it's definitely a second-tier event. Nonetheless, it's paid off for Reebok. Says Jeff Ballinger, an anti-sweatshop organizer who's organized with shoe workers in Indonesia the past 13 years, "With this kind of ceremony, Reebok gets its name into respectable company. When they give a prize to someone like Julie Su, a lawyer for immigrant workers in California, people who wouldn't be seen dead in Nikes are impressed."

Dita Sari got picked by Reebok's judges because she defied her government on the issue of independent trade unions. In her own words: "In 1995, I was arrested and tortured by the police, after leading a strike of 5,000 workers of PT Indoshoes Industry. They demanded an increase of their wages (they were paid only $1 for working 8 hours a day), and maternity leave as well. This company operated in West Java, and produced shoes of Reebok and Adidas."

She got out of prison in 1999. Since then, she's been building a union of workers in plants across Java.

Reebok's flacks can brandish armloads of studies, codes, monitoring reports, guidelines and kindred matter all attesting to the company's dedication to the fair treatment of anyone making consumer items with the name Reebok printed on them. But nothing has really changed. "We've created a cottage industry of monitors and inspectors and drafters of codes," Ballinger says, "but all these workers ever wanted was to sit down in dignity and negotiate with their bosses, and this has never happened."

Due in large part to the efforts of the workers and western allies like Ballinger's Press for Change, the daily wage in Indonesia actually went up over 300 percent between 1990 and 1997, at which point the Asian economic crisis struck. Inflation wiped out all these gains. Workers' daily pay is now half of what it was before the crisis hit.

These were the points Dita Sari was going to make when she got to Salt Lake City. Then she learned that Reebok intended to schedule her and other recipients for some public events before the actual award ceremony. Rather than let Reebok benefit in any way from her presence, Dita Sari pulled the plug and, at last word, is in Jakarta trying to raise relief money for workers left destitute by the worst flooding in decades. She's sent the speech she was planning to give at the Awards in Salt Lake City:

"I have taken this award into a very deep consideration. We finally decide not to accept this. On the one hand, this is a kind of recognition of the struggle and the hard work that we have done for years. But on the other hand, we are very conscious of the condition of the Reebok workers from the third-world countries, such as in Indonesia, Mexico, China, Thailand, Brazil and Vietnam.

"In Indonesia, there are five Reebok companies. Eighty percent of the workers are women. All companies are sub-contracted, often by the South Korean companies such as Dong Jo and Tong Yang. Since the workers can only get around $1.50 a day, they then have to live in a slum area, surrounded by poor and unhealthy conditions, especially for their children. At the same time, Reebok collected millions of dollars of profit every year, directly contributed by these workers. The low pay and exploitation of the workers of Indonesia, Mexico and Vietnam are the main reasons why we will not accept this award."

But with its awards isn't Reebok at least trying to do something decent? The way Dita Sari sees things, the answer is that the attempt is a phony. All the awards in the world, all the window dressing with Desmond Tutu, Carly Simon, Sting and Robert Redford doesn't alter the basic facts: that workers in the third world are being paid at the absolute minimum to make a very profitable product, at a value added in the tens of millions. According to Ballinger, the labor cost of a $70 pair of sneakers made in China, Vietnam or Indonesia is $1 or less.

Dita Sari sees the world clearly, a lot more clearly than the celebrities and activists massed at such events as the one organized by Reebok in Salt Lake City, a city already awash with Olympian bunkum about human brotherhood. Dita Sari turned down $50,000 from Reebok and will go on organizing against corporate exploitation and government harassment. Do-gooders should study her fine example and stiffen their spines.

Alexander Cockburn is coeditor with Jeffrey St Clair of the muckraking newsletter CounterPunch. To find out more about Alexander Cockburn and read features by other columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2002 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

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