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Article: U.S. Industry Overseas: Sweatshop or Job Source?; Indonesians Praise Work at Nike Factory
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- July 28, 1996
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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The young women are the daughters of rural farmers, village
schoolteachers or shop clerks. Now they live together in the
Indonesian factory town of Serang, a dozen to a dormitory room,
sleeping on bunk beds. They spend most of their time in a nearby
Taiwanese-owned factory, where they are paid $2.28 a day to cut the
soles, sew the seams and run the machines that make the most popular
-- and controversial -- athletic shoe in the world: Nike.
And most of them say they like it.
Factories such as the one in Serang, which employs 18,000
Indonesians, in recent months have come to symbolize the role of
American companies in the developing world. A number of critics,
some funded by organized ...