A labor activist since high school, Ballinger felt passionately that any company had a significant
obligation towards even its lowliest workers. He was particularly concerned about the stubborn gap
between wage rates in developed and developing worlds, and about the opportunities this gap
created for rich Western companies to exploit low-wage, politically repressed labor pools. In 1988,
Ballinger was assigned to run the AAFLI office in Indonesia, and was charged with investigating
labor conditions in Indonesian plants and studying minimum wage compliance by overseas
American companies. In the course of his research Ballinger interviewed workers at hundreds of
factories and documented widespread worker dissatisfaction with labor conditions.
Before long, Nike emerged as a key target. Ballinger believed that Nike’s policy of competing on
the basis of cost fostered and even encouraged contractors to mistreat their workers in pursuit of
unrealistic production quotas. Although Indonesia had worker protection legislation in place,
widespread corruption made the laws essentially useless. While the government employed 700 labor
inspectors, Ballinger found that out of 17,000 violations reported in 1988, only 12 prosecutions were
ever made. Bribery took care of the rest.13 Nike contractors, in particular, he believed, were regularly
flouting Indonesian labor laws and paying below-subsistence wages that did not enable workers to
meet their daily requirements for food and other necessities. And to top matters off, he found Nike’s
attitude in the face of these labor practices galling: “It was right around the time that the swoosh
started appearing on everything and everyone,” Ballinger remembered. “Maybe it was the swagger
that did it.”14
What also “did it,” though, was Ballinger’s own strategic calculation — a carefully crafted policy
of “one country-one company.” Ballinger knew that his work would be effective only if it was
carefully focused. And if his goal was to draw worldwide attention to the exploitation of third-world
factory workers by rich U.S. companies, then Nike made a nearly ideal target. The arithmetic was
simple. The same marketing and branding power that drove Nike’s bottom line could also be used to
drive moral outrage against the exploitation of Asian workers. After the publication of his AAFLI
report, Ballinger set out to transform Nike’s competitive strength into a strategic vulnerability.
For several years he worked at the fringes of the activist world, operating out of his in-laws’
basement and publishing his own newsletter on Nike’s practices. For the most part, no one really
noticed. But then, in the early 1990s Ballinger’s arguments coincided with the strikes that swept
across Indonesia and the newfound interest of media groups. Suddenly his stories were big news
and both the Indonesian government and U.S. firms had begun to pay attention.
A labor activist since high school, Ballinger felt passionately that any company had a significant
obligation towards even its lowliest workers. He was particularly concerned about the stubborn gap
between wage rates in developed and developing worlds, and about the opportunities this gap
created for rich Western companies to exploit low-wage, politically repressed labor pools. In 1988,
Ballinger was assigned to run the AAFLI office in Indonesia, and was charged with investigating
labor conditions in Indonesian plants and studying minimum wage compliance by overseas
American companies. In the course of his research Ballinger interviewed workers at hundreds of
factories and documented widespread worker dissatisfaction with labor conditions.
Before long, Nike emerged as a key target. Ballinger believed that Nike’s policy of competing on
the basis of cost fostered and even encouraged contractors to mistreat their workers in pursuit of
unrealistic production quotas. Although Indonesia had worker protection legislation in place,
widespread corruption made the laws essentially useless. While the government employed 700 labor
inspectors, Ballinger found that out of 17,000 violations reported in 1988, only 12 prosecutions were
ever made. Bribery took care of the rest.13 Nike contractors, in particular, he believed, were regularly
flouting Indonesian labor laws and paying below-subsistence wages that did not enable workers to
meet their daily requirements for food and other necessities. And to top matters off, he found Nike’s
attitude in the face of these labor practices galling: “It was right around the time that the swoosh
started appearing on everything and everyone,” Ballinger remembered. “Maybe it was the swagger
that did it.”14
What also “did it,” though, was Ballinger’s own strategic calculation — a carefully crafted policy
of “one country-one company.” Ballinger knew that his work would be effective only if it was
carefully focused. And if his goal was to draw worldwide attention to the exploitation of third-world
factory workers by rich U.S. companies, then Nike made a nearly ideal target. The arithmetic was
simple. The same marketing and branding power that drove Nike’s bottom line could also be used to
drive moral outrage against the exploitation of Asian workers. After the publication of his AAFLI
report, Ballinger set out to transform Nike’s competitive strength into a strategic vulnerability.
For several years he worked at the fringes of the activist world, operating out of his in-laws’
basement and publishing his own newsletter on Nike’s practices. For the most part, no one really
noticed. But then, in the early 1990s Ballinger’s arguments coincided with the strikes that swept
across Indonesia and the newfound interest of media groups. Suddenly his stories were big news
and both the Indonesian government and U.S. firms had begun to pay attention.
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