jacobj said:
I do. When I lived in the UK I did not buy from Asda (UK arm of Wal-Mart), I own nothing from Nike. As for Disney, I was unaware of the situation, but generally avoid them for other reasons.
Actually, some people would cite Nike as a success story for the "No Logo" generation (Nike was a major target of that book, along with Disney). Since then, Nike has, to their credit (I don't often give multinationals credit) made a lot of moves to improve the standards in the factories that manufacture their products. Fifteen years ago, no multinationals would have employed a "Community-Relations Director" or whatever to look over how people percieve the ethics of their company. Of course, the flip side of this is that they're only concerned with how the consumer
percieves their manufacturing standards - not with what those manufacturing standards
actually are. So Nike and co could just be conning us into believing that they've improved the conditions in their factories, much like political parties spin their way into making anything positive.
I personally think the way forward is to put pressure on international and national governmental institutions (UN, EU, NAFTA (if its still called that), etc), those with actually legislative power, to pass directives prohibiting the sale of goods in which have not been manufactured in conditions which can be guaranteed to be humane. A universal living wage, I suppose would be part of that. Even though the biggest multinationals are now more powerful than some nation-states, I think that targeting individual corporations misses the point for three reasons:
1) It isn't just the big multinationals that are employing (either directly or indirectly) slave-labour - its also the unbranded, cheap clothing that you'll buy in street markets. If we concentrate on Nike, GAP, Disney, we're missing a huge player in the perpetuity of slave-labour.
2) Whilst we focus all our efforts on one corporation, another may get away scot-free. Look at all the bad press that has surrounded McDonalds in recent years. Now McDonalds has made credible efforts to make its menu healthier, Burger King, KFC and co have escaped with very little blemishes on their name.
3) There isn't enough information imparted to the consumer to allow us to actually direct our efforts in the right direction anyway. When I buy clothing from H&M or whereever, it says "Made in Sri Lanka" on the label. I have no idea how that was made. I don't want to stop buying clothes made in Sri Lanka based on a prejudice that all manufacturing in the third world is done under terrible conditions. If we all did that, then there'd just be greater destitution in those areas as everyone stops buying products made in that area.
I guess my ideas stem from the belief that the state is still the bastion of political power - the way through which the people should exercise power. It is the state (whether national or internation) which should protect human rights and dignity, not the CEO of Nike. Consumer democracy is BS and unjust; anyone who's not a consumer loses out (those Chinese workers, for example). Whereas we're not all consumers, we're citizens under different governments. Once we recognise that we're all citizens first, consumers second, then we'll recognise reform only lies through the exercies of state power.