[lbo-talk] Re: Nike in Vietnam

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Dec 1 09:47:09 PST 2003


Daniel Davies wrote:


>Note that, from a development point of view, it is much more
>obnoxious to run a
>sweatshop in China or Vietnam than in Indonesia or the Philippines.
>Both China
>and Vietnam have publicly provided education, so it's not even
>possible for the
>neoliberal argument "the children working in the factories are being given a
>job that's better than scrounging for rubbish. etc" to go through. The young
>employees of the Vietnamese and Chinese plants are directly being taken out of
>school, a development model known to be bad.

Welcome back; excellent to see you.

A friend of mine - a lifelong leftist, a self-identified socialist even - who spent two years as a reporter in Vietnam interviewed many young women who worked for Nike. They said factory work was a lot better than what they would have faced on the farm - e.g., chasing rats around rice paddies. I haven't been there and done the interviews myself, but that's what she said.

Doug



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