Local activists in America organize leafleting at Nike outlet as part of an international protest of Nike's starvation wages in Indonesia and other countries.

Local activists will be leafleting at [name of store and location] on [date and time] as part of an international mobilization to protest wages and conditions at Nike shoe factories in Indonesia and other Asian countries. This will be the third Nike mobilization organized by Campaign for Labor Rights, based in Washington, DC. The first two, in April of this year and October of 1997, each involved leafleting and other events in some 50 U.S. cities, as well as a number of events in Canada and other countries around the world.

The theme of the current mobilization is "a living wage for a regular work week," with a special focus on Indonesia, where wages for Nike shoe workers have now fallen to less than 75 cents a day, which comes out to less than 10 cents per hour. As wages drop and unemployment spreads in Indonesia, there has been increasing unrest, with riots in many cities. Nike workers, too, are being driven to the point of desperation by their sub-minimal purchasing power. In May, Nike CEO Philip Knight went before the National Press Club in Washington, DC to announce a series of new labor practices initiatives by the company. The package did not include a promise to pay workers a living wage.

In recent months, Nike has cut at least 44,000 of its peak 120,000 shoe manufacturing jobs in Indonesia and an undisclosed number of garment production jobs there as the company continues its prolonged tailspin. Nike profits in the most recent quarter dropped another 35 percent and the company prepared to lay off another 300 direct employees, in addition to laying off 1,600 direct employees this spring.

According to Trim Bissell, national coordinator of Campaign for Labor Rights: "The Asian miracle economies for which Nike claimed much of the credit in recent years has proved to be the sham which human rights advocates have been declaring all along. Now Nike is paying a price for building its fortune on a foundation of sweatshops. But worst of all is the price being paid by Nike shoe workers. In Indonesia, Nike workers now receive less than 10 cents per hour. By any measure, those are starvation wages. Nike should be ashamed."