Labor problems

You may have noticed a headline here or there last month, noting that Nike was ending a contract with one of its offshore suppliers, a Pakistan-based manufacturer called Saga Sports. The problem was evidence that Saga was using at least some child labor.

The Christian Science Monitor has an article taking a more detailed look at this, written by David Montero. “By severing its contract with Saga, Nike is likely to score moral points with its customers in the West,” Montero writse. “But it’s also likely, observers agree, to sink Saga, a corporate giant that makes about 6 million of Pakistan’s annual production of 40-million soccer balls,” employs thousands of stitchers, and depends heavily on Nike as its top customer.
Saga is based in Sialkot, Pakistan (population: 3 million), where the article says that 80 percent of all soccer balls are produced, adding up to a $210 million business category that employes around 45,000 stitchers. (“For as long as there have been soccer balls in Sialkot,” which is more than 100 years, “the hands of children have stitched them,” the piece adds.)

Obviously the article doesn’t suggest that child labor is okay, nor does anyone quoted in the piece say so. But it’s a pretty interesting look at a problem that’s more complicated than it might first appear to be. Check it out.