As soon as a month, American labor activist Jim Keady logs into Remitly, an app for transferring cash overseas, at his New Jersey house and sends $100 to a former Nike manufacturing unit employee in Indonesia.
Cicih Sukaesih helped carry the world’s consideration to the lives of the younger girls in poor international locations who made sneakers within the Nineteen Nineties, first by organizing a strike and later by marching onto Nike’s bucolic company campus in Oregon to demand a gathering with co-founder Phil Knight.
Her story — at a time of police and army harassment of labor organizers overseas — caught the eye of The New York Occasions and different information organizations. It additionally helped inform a technology of employees about their rights.
“She helped to delivery, I’d argue, the Indonesian commerce union motion inside Nike’s provider factories,” Keady stated.
However media consideration and accolades don’t pay the payments. Cicih had hassle discovering work following her Nineteen Nineties activism. (Cicih prefers to go by one identify. It’s pronounced “Chee Chee.”)
A long time after her campaign light from the headlines, Keady and different labor organizers started sending Cicih cash to maintain her afloat.
“She took a stand and she or he was a revolutionary,” Keady stated. “And she or he has nothing to point out for it.”
Now 62, Cicih welcomed a reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive into her house final 12 months, a part of a reporting journey that included interviews with about 100 employees who make Nike sneakers, principally in Indonesia, which was floor zero for the last decade of sweatshop criticism that stained Nike’s repute within the Nineteen Nineties.
Cicih stated she’s pleased with the instance she set by standing as much as Nike. She stated employees “grew to become conscious of their rights and conscious of the regulation.”
“Many issues modified,” she stated.
The advocacy led to enhancements, she stated, together with cracking down on baby labor, putting in higher security tools and offering menstrual depart.
“A lot of my pals,” Cicih stated, “grew to become courageous sufficient to talk up.”
However she described her work as incomplete as a result of issues linger, together with chronically low wages.
Nike didn’t deal with particular questions on Cicih’s expertise or concerning the Nike provider that employed her within the Nineteen Nineties, nor did Knight present remark. As a substitute, Nike issued a broad assertion saying, partly, “We’re appreciative of the efforts that people and organizations, together with Cicih, have made in serving to push the trade ahead.”
Nike stated the corporate has been “deeply dedicated to advancing a accountable and resilient provide chain for greater than 30 years” and that whereas progress hasn’t been good, it has sought “systemic enhancements throughout the trade.” Nike’s aim, the assertion stated, is that “all individuals concerned within the manufacturing of Nike’s merchandise are revered, valued, and handled pretty.”
Cicih retains tokens of her activism in her house, together with a framed poster that depicts a manufacturing unit employee and reads, “Who made your sneakers?”
Jeff Ballinger, a labor organizer who was outstanding within the Nineteen Nineties’ anti-sweatshop motion, gave it to her. In an interview, Ballinger stated he nonetheless considers Cicih a “hero” — albeit unsung, even in Tangerang, the economic hub the place the Indonesian manufacturing unit motion took off.
“Like in wartime, some individuals simply step up,” Ballinger stated. “In an ideal world, there’d be a statue of her in Tangerang.”
$1.26 a Day
Cicih sat for an interview in a yard stuffed by a hen coop and a small backyard that included pumpkins, bananas and edible bamboo. The small home she and considered one of her sisters inherited from their mother and father in Menes, her childhood village a few 90-mile drive west of Jakarta, is now house.
After placing out snacks that included a standard Indonesian dessert created from rice and grated coconut in banana leaves, Cicih usually flashed a large grin as she mirrored on a life intertwined with Nike’s emergence in her nation.
Nike, then generally known as Blue Ribbon Sports activities, purchased its first sneakers from Japanese factories within the Nineteen Sixties. However as Japan’s wages rose, it shifted manufacturing to lower-cost Asian international locations, together with Taiwan and South Korea.
In 1988, it began making sneakers in Indonesia.
The nation had a horrible human rights report, but it surely was keen to draw international traders. Factories in Jakarta paid wages as little as $1 a day, in contrast with $8 in South Korea, $14 in Taiwan and $33 in Tokyo, in response to a 1988 State Division report.
In 1989, 5 years after she graduated from highschool, Cicih joined considered one of her sisters making Nike sneakers on the Sung Hwa Dunia manufacturing unit 40 miles west of Jakarta, Indonesia’s greatest metropolis.
She began work every day at 7 a.m.
At first, she stated, she cleaned glue and chemical compounds off sneakers together with her naked fingers. Then she moved to a glue line, attaching soles to sneakers. The manufacturing unit was poorly ventilated. Co-workers coughed from the fumes. Cicih recalled seeing one particular person faint after which return to the meeting line as a result of manufacturing unit managers didn’t give her permission to go house.
(The manufacturing unit continues to be open, but it surely has modified house owners and now has a special identify. The present proprietor didn’t reply to emails. The earlier proprietor couldn’t be reached.)
Employee security was “very, very unhealthy,” Cicih stated by means of an unbiased journalist The Oregonian/OregonLive employed to translate the dialog.
“There have been many, many labor legal guidelines that the corporate didn’t comply with,” she added.
Like immediately, the overwhelming majority of manufacturing unit employees have been younger girls. A lot of the managers have been older males, which Cicih stated led to a pure energy imbalance and issues with sexual harassment.
“I’ve watched and seen quite a lot of girls being sexually abused, or touched inappropriately,” she stated.
There was fixed stress to fulfill day by day manufacturing quotas.
Cicih made $1.26 a day, round minimal wage. A 1989 research discovered the minimal wage was so low that many manufacturing unit employees have been malnourished.
“It was not sufficient for me to get by each day,” she stated. “Nonetheless, I needed to make it on the quantity I obtained.”
Cicih usually labored time beyond regulation till 9 p.m. Typically she labored on Saturday and Sunday, which she thought of pressured labor. The quantity of time beyond regulation, she stated, motivated her to “insurgent.”
“A Wage Improve Was the High Precedence”
The turning level for Cicih got here when one of many firm’s buses, which employees rode to the manufacturing unit and have been all the time overcrowded, flipped and killed a co-worker.
“How can we protest this difficulty to the corporate?” she requested one other co-worker.
Unbeknownst to Cicih, this co-worker had joined a company that taught employees about labor rights. Cicih faked a physician’s letter, obtained a sick day and took a category.
Via the group, she met Ballinger, who had moved to Indonesia to arrange manufacturing unit employees. In 1992, Ballinger wrote a narrative for Harper’s Journal that in contrast the wages of Sadisah, considered one of Cicih’s co-workers, to the earnings of Nike endorser Michael Jordan. Sadisah earned 14 cents an hour. It will have taken her greater than 44,000 years to make what Jordan earned from Nike in a single 12 months.
Cicih began skipping lunch and prayer breaks to arrange her co-workers.
On Sept. 28, 1992, Cicih and employees from her manufacturing unit went on strike. The New York Occasions reported 600 walked out, however Cicih and different activists have put the variety of strikers within the hundreds. They demanded higher remedy of girls, higher union illustration, higher meals, higher transportation and, most significantly, higher pay.
“A wage enhance was the highest precedence,” she stated, holding up the unique doc that listed protesters’ calls for.
Her activism got here with nice dangers. Round that point, Marsinah, a manufacturing unit employee who was acknowledged final 12 months because the nation’s first Nationwide Hero from the labor motion, was kidnapped, tortured and murdered.
“Army and police have been in every single place,” Cicih stated, however she stated her need to assist her co-workers “eclipsed all of the concern.”
The strike lasted two days.
It ended after the manufacturing unit agreed to extend wages for a lot of workers, Cicih stated, however she added that her seniority made her eligible for only a small elevate. The corporate accepted different calls for, together with permitting menstrual depart. Cicih stated she was the primary employee to take it.
That very same 12 months that Cicih led the strike, Nike launched a code of conduct, changing into one of many first manufacturers to take action. Codes of conduct have since change into the default technique firms like Nike use to police abroad factories. The fundamental system: The corporate writes guidelines and contract factories comply with comply with them. Auditors monitor compliance.
A couple of months after the strike, Cicih and roughly two dozen of her co-workers obtained laid off. Leslie Milano, a outstanding American labor organizer within the early 2000s, stated unemployment on the time was excessive in Indonesia.
“That’s why lots of people didn’t need to do what Cicih did,” Milano stated. “They didn’t need to lose their jobs.”
Cicih stated that not lengthy after being laid off, she was hauled right into a police station and spent two days being pressured to admit to destruction of property and inflicting a disturbance. She was not allowed to go to the lavatory, she stated.
Cicih stated the police made her watch them beat a suspect. Then they made her sit in his blood, she stated, earlier than releasing her.
The Indonesian embassy in Washington, D.C., didn’t reply to questions on army repression of employee rights within the Nineteen Nineties. (The nation undertook democratic reform after the dictator Suharto stepped down in 1998, though issues stay.)
After her launch, inspired by Ballinger and others, she joined co-workers in submitting a lawsuit towards the manufacturing unit alleging wrongful termination. The lawsuit went all the best way to Indonesia’s Supreme Court docket. In 1996, Cicih and her co-workers prevailed. She obtained about $200 in again wages. She nonetheless has the verify in a binder with different paperwork from her organizing days.
For 2 years of misplaced wages, Ballinger figures Cicih ought to have gotten greater than $2,000. That will have been sufficient to arrange a small enterprise.
“It will have been a hell of some huge cash again then,” he stated. The motion’s failure to ship larger restitution to Cicih and others “is one thing that I’ll by no means recover from.”
Cicih Involves Oregon
Across the time the lawsuit concluded, in July 1996, Cicih walked onto Nike’s suburban campus close to Beaverton, Oregon, and demanded a gathering with the corporate’s co-founder.
“I’m right here to fulfill with Phil Knight,” she stated, in response to The Oregonian’s protection of her go to. “I need to ask him to contemplate the plight of Indonesian employees.”
Cicih had stayed in contact with Ballinger. He helped carry her to the US to place stress on Nike, considered one of 4 such visits she made to the nation.
Knight refused to see her.
Every week earlier than Cicih arrived in Beaverton, Knight wrote a letter to her journey’s organizers, saying he was “sympathetic” to her case however most well-liked to fulfill with individuals “fascinated by constructive, proactive options, not those that announce their intentions by means of information conferences and mean-spirited media campaigns.”
He defended Nike’s response to issues at Cicih’s manufacturing unit, saying Nike had labored to appropriate them.
“The manufacturing unit the place Ms. Sukaesih labored has been beneath new Indonesian administration for 2 years, the grievances have been addressed and the minimal wage is in power,” Knight wrote. “In our view, that is an instance of the profit Nike brings in upgrading labor practices in rising market societies.”
After she made her request to fulfill with Knight, a “trio of beefy Nike safety guards” escorted Cicih off Nike’s campus and native sheriff’s deputies requested her to go away the premises, in response to The Oregonian’s protection.
Roughly every week later, Knight sat throughout the desk from President Invoice Clinton on the White Home to speak about labor reforms, in response to data obtained from the Clinton Presidential Library. Knight then stood within the Rose Backyard behind Clinton because the president introduced a sweeping effort to deal with sweatshop situations in abroad factories.
“Whereas I feel that we’ve got been good residents inside our trade, I feel there’s clearly much more that we are able to do, that we are able to certainly be higher,” Knight stated in his temporary remarks.
The assembly with Clinton led to the creation of the Truthful Labor Affiliation, considered one of a number of teams that monitor manufacturing unit working situations.
Knight publicly dedicated to particular sweatshop reforms in a 1998 speech on the Nationwide Press Membership. Knight introduced six adjustments, together with heightened indoor air high quality requirements, elevated manufacturing unit monitoring and elevating the minimal age in footwear factories to 18.
He didn’t say something about elevating wages.
“You Must Battle”
Lately, Nike manufacturing unit employees in Indonesia instructed The Oregonian/OregonLive, the sort of pressured time beyond regulation that sparked Cicih’s need to “insurgent” is nonexistent. Additionally they stated Nike lived as much as Knight’s dedication to get underage employees out of Indonesian factories.
However they stated issues stay.
In interviews, they criticized the auditing course of, the linchpin of the manufacturing unit monitoring system that Nike helped pioneer. Employees stated factories know upfront when auditors will arrive. At one manufacturing unit, employees stated security tools had been distributed on the eve of an audit.
“The perfect time to work at a Nike manufacturing unit is when it’s being audited,” a employee stated.
Employees stated extra rigorous and constant auditing would catch issues with security and sexual harassment, which they stated stay persistent.
Requested concerning the employees’ description of factories prepping for deliberate audits, Nike stated that it conducts unannounced audits along with these which are scheduled upfront, and that these are supplemented by “employee engagement and well-being surveys,” amongst different efforts.
“When points are dropped at our consideration, by means of any mechanism, we work with suppliers to validate, establish root causes and implement complete remediation processes,” Nike stated.
Nike’s most up-to-date disclosures say 87% of the 623 suppliers it audited in fiscal 12 months 2024 no less than met the corporate’s primary code of conduct necessities. The corporate additionally disclosed a manufacturing unit damage price considerably beneath its friends. Lower than 1% of code of conduct violations associated to harassment and abuse, in response to the disclosure.
Employees and union leaders additionally say their No. 1 concern — low wages — has not been addressed. Many stated they work second jobs to make ends meet.
“One job isn’t sufficient,” Keady stated. “They’re not getting a second job as a result of they need to ship their child to a very good non-public college or they need to purchase a house in an incredible neighborhood. They’re getting a second job as a result of they’ll’t afford three meals a day for his or her household.”
Cicih additionally has struggled.
After her lawsuit towards the manufacturing unit that when employed her, she had the choice to return, however she declined. She thought the surroundings can be uncomfortable due to her historical past as an organizer.
She did some volunteer work as a labor organizer. Another organizers inspired her to arrange a small enterprise.
These efforts by no means panned out. She moved again to her hometown of Menes in 2018.
A sister on whom Cicih depended financially died throughout the pandemic. Cicih opened a roadside meals stall and offered vegetable salad and gado gado, a sort of Indonesian dish, but it surely didn’t go nicely.
She will get by on donations from American do-gooders, together with Keady. She grows a few of her personal meals. She doesn’t have a pension or financial savings.
“Nothing,” she stated.
However she’s resolute.
“It’s important to do that,” she stated, reflecting on her years as an activist. “It’s important to combat.”
