Nike Needs to Raise Worker’s Minimum Wage, Not Minumum Age Let’s not be too quick to canonize Nike. Philip Knight, Nike’s multibilionare Chairman and chief executive, managed to generate a lot of positive press recently when he announed that independent organizations would be allowed to inspect the overseas factories that make his company’s products, that he would toughen the health and safety standards in the factories, and that he would crack down on the use of child labor. There is both merit and a lot of smoke in Knight’s initiative. Knight’s child labor initiative is a smokescreen. Child labor has not been a big problem with Nike, and Philip Knight knows that better than anyone. But public relations is public relations so he announces that he’s not going to let the factories hire kids, and suddenly that’s headlines. Knight is like a three-card Monte player. You have to keep a close eye on him at all times. The biggest problem with Nike is that its overseas workers make wretched, below-subsistence wages. It’s not the mimimum age that needs raising, it’s the minimum wage. Most of the workers in Nike factories in China and Vietnam make less than $2 a day, well below the subsistence levels in those countries. In Indonesia, the pay is less than $1 a day. No wonder Knight has billions. Human rights organizations have been saying the Nike’s overseas workers need to make the equivalent of at least $3 a day to cover their basic food, shelter, and clothing needs. Medea Benjamin, the director of Global Exchange, a San Franscico-based group that has been monitoring Nike’s practices, said, “three dollars a day for Indonesia, China and Vietnam would still be a tiny sum, but it would make a significant difference in the lives of the workers.” Nike hasn’t been listening. Nike blinked this month because it has been getting hammered in the marketplace and in the Court of public opinion. As Knight put it, “The Nike product has become synonymous with slave wages, forced overtime, and arbitary abuse.”