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 facility employee in Indonesia.
Cicih Sukaesih helped deliver the world’s consideration to the lives of the younger ladies in poor nations 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 navy harassment of labor organizers overseas — caught the eye of The New York Instances and different information organizations. It additionally helped inform a technology of staff about their rights.
“She helped to beginning, I might argue, the Indonesian commerce union motion inside Nike’s provider factories,” Keady mentioned.
However media consideration and accolades don’t pay the payments. Cicih had bother 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 mentioned. “And he or she has nothing to indicate 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 staff who make Nike sneakers, largely in Indonesia, which was floor zero for the last decade of sweatshop criticism that stained Nike’s repute within the Nineteen Nineties.
Cicih mentioned she’s happy with the instance she set by standing as much as Nike. She mentioned staff “turned conscious of their rights and conscious of the regulation.”
“Many issues modified,” she mentioned.
The advocacy led to enhancements, she mentioned, together with cracking down on baby labor, putting in higher security tools and offering menstrual depart.
“A lot of my associates,” Cicih mentioned, “turned 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 an alternative, 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 mentioned 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 excellent, it has sought “systemic enhancements throughout the trade.” Nike’s purpose, the assertion mentioned, is that “all folks 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 facility employee and reads, “Who made your footwear?”
Jeff Ballinger, a labor organizer who was outstanding within the Nineteen Nineties’ anti-sweatshop motion, gave it to her. In an interview, Ballinger mentioned he nonetheless considers Cicih a “hero” — albeit unsung, even in Tangerang, the economic hub the place the Indonesian manufacturing facility motion took off.
“Like in wartime, some folks simply step up,” Ballinger mentioned. “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 crammed by a rooster coop and a small backyard that included pumpkins, bananas and edible bamboo. The small home she and certainly 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 conventional Indonesian dessert produced from rice and grated coconut in banana leaves, Cicih typically 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 Sixties. However as Japan’s wages rose, it shifted manufacturing to lower-cost Asian nations, together with Taiwan and South Korea.
In 1988, it began making sneakers in Indonesia.
The nation had a horrible human rights document, 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 certainly one of her sisters making Nike sneakers on the Sung Hwa Dunia manufacturing facility 40 miles west of Jakarta, Indonesia’s greatest metropolis.
She began work every day at 7 a.m.
At first, she mentioned, she cleaned glue and chemical substances off sneakers along with her naked palms. Then she moved to a glue line, attaching soles to footwear. The manufacturing facility 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 facility managers didn’t give her permission to go house.
(The manufacturing facility continues to be open, but it surely has modified homeowners 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 mentioned by an unbiased journalist The Oregonian/OregonLive employed to translate the dialog.
“There have been many, many labor legal guidelines that the corporate didn’t observe,” she added.
Like immediately, the overwhelming majority of manufacturing facility staff have been younger ladies. A lot of the managers have been older males, which Cicih mentioned led to a pure energy imbalance and issues with sexual harassment.
“I’ve watched and seen a variety of ladies being sexually abused, or touched inappropriately,” she mentioned.
There was fixed strain to fulfill every 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 facility staff have been malnourished.
“It was not sufficient for me to get by each day,” she mentioned. “Nevertheless, I needed to make it on the quantity I acquired.”
Cicih typically labored time beyond regulation till 9 p.m. Typically she labored on Saturday and Sunday, which she thought-about pressured labor. The quantity of time beyond regulation, she mentioned, motivated her to “insurgent.”
“A Wage Improve Was the Prime Precedence”
The turning level for Cicih got here when one of many firm’s buses, which staff rode to the manufacturing facility and have been all the time overcrowded, flipped and killed a co-worker.
“How can we protest this subject to the corporate?” she requested one other co-worker.
Unbeknownst to Cicih, this co-worker had joined a company that taught staff about labor rights. Cicih faked a physician’s letter, obtained a sick day and took a category.
By means of the group, she met Ballinger, who had moved to Indonesia to arrange manufacturing facility staff. In 1992, Ballinger wrote a narrative for Harper’s Journal that in contrast the wages of Sadisah, certainly one of Cicih’s co-workers, to the earnings of Nike endorser Michael Jordan. Sadisah earned 14 cents an hour. It might 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 staff from her manufacturing facility went on strike. The New York Instances reported 600 walked out, however Cicih and different activists have put the variety of strikers within the 1000’s. They demanded higher therapy of girls, higher union illustration, higher meals, higher transportation and, most significantly, higher pay.
“A wage enhance was the highest precedence,” she mentioned, holding up the unique doc that listed protesters’ calls for.
Her activism got here with nice dangers. Round that point, Marsinah, a manufacturing facility 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 mentioned, however she mentioned her need to assist her co-workers “eclipsed all of the concern.”
The strike lasted two days.
It ended after the manufacturing facility agreed to extend wages for a lot of staff, Cicih mentioned, 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 mentioned she was the primary employee to take it.
That very same 12 months that Cicih led the strike, Nike launched a code of conduct, turning into one of many first manufacturers to take action. Codes of conduct have since turn into the default technique firms like Nike use to police abroad factories. The essential system: The corporate writes guidelines and contract factories comply with observe 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, mentioned unemployment on the time was excessive in Indonesia.
“That’s why lots of people didn’t wish to do what Cicih did,” Milano mentioned. “They didn’t wish to lose their jobs.”
Cicih mentioned 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 mentioned.
Cicih mentioned the police made her watch them beat a suspect. Then they made her sit in his blood, she mentioned, earlier than releasing her.
The Indonesian embassy in Washington, D.C., didn’t reply to questions on navy 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 facility alleging wrongful termination. The lawsuit went all the best way to Indonesia’s Supreme Courtroom. In 1996, Cicih and her co-workers prevailed. She obtained about $200 in again wages. She nonetheless has the examine 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 may have been sufficient to arrange a small enterprise.
“It might have been a hell of some huge cash again then,” he mentioned. 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 mentioned, in response to The Oregonian’s protection of her go to. “I wish to ask him to contemplate the plight of Indonesian staff.”
Cicih had stayed in contact with Ballinger. He helped deliver her to america to place strain on Nike, certainly 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 popular to fulfill with folks “keen on constructive, proactive options, not those that announce their intentions by information conferences and mean-spirited media campaigns.”
He defended Nike’s response to issues at Cicih’s manufacturing facility, saying Nike had labored to right them.
“The manufacturing facility 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 handle sweatshop circumstances in abroad factories.
“Whereas I believe that now we have been good residents inside our trade, I believe there’s clearly much more that we are able to do, that we are able to certainly be higher,” Knight mentioned in his temporary remarks.
The assembly with Clinton led to the creation of the Honest Labor Affiliation, certainly one of a number of teams that monitor manufacturing facility working circumstances.
Knight publicly dedicated to particular sweatshop reforms in a 1998 speech on the Nationwide Press Membership. Knight introduced six modifications, together with heightened indoor air high quality requirements, elevated manufacturing facility monitoring and elevating the minimal age in footwear factories to 18.
He didn’t say something about elevating wages.
“You Need to Struggle”
As of late, Nike manufacturing facility staff in Indonesia advised The Oregonian/OregonLive, the sort of pressured time beyond regulation that sparked Cicih’s need to “insurgent” is nonexistent. In addition they mentioned Nike lived as much as Knight’s dedication to get underage staff out of Indonesian factories.
However they mentioned issues stay.
In interviews, they criticized the auditing course of, the linchpin of the manufacturing facility monitoring system that Nike helped pioneer. Staff mentioned factories know upfront when auditors will arrive. At one manufacturing facility, staff mentioned security tools had been distributed on the eve of an audit.
“The most effective time to work at a Nike manufacturing facility is when it’s being audited,” a employee mentioned.
Staff mentioned extra rigorous and constant auditing would catch issues with security and sexual harassment, which they mentioned stay persistent.
Requested concerning the staff’ description of factories prepping for deliberate audits, Nike mentioned 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 any mechanism, we work with suppliers to validate, determine root causes and implement complete remediation processes,” Nike mentioned.
Nike’s most up-to-date disclosures say 87% of the 623 suppliers it audited in fiscal 12 months 2024 a minimum of met the corporate’s primary code of conduct necessities. The corporate additionally disclosed a manufacturing facility damage fee considerably beneath its friends. Lower than 1% of code of conduct violations associated to harassment and abuse, in response to the disclosure.
Staff and union leaders additionally say their No. 1 concern — low wages — has not been addressed. Many mentioned they work second jobs to make ends meet.
“One job isn’t sufficient,” Keady mentioned. “They’re not getting a second job as a result of they wish to ship their child to a very good personal college or they wish to purchase a house in a fantastic 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 facility that after employed her, she had the choice to return, however she declined. She thought the setting could 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 in the course of the pandemic. Cicih opened a roadside meals stall and offered vegetable salad and gado gado, a kind 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 mentioned.
However she’s resolute.
“It’s important to do that,” she mentioned, reflecting on her years as an activist. “It’s important to battle.”
