A Sweaty Love Letter from Phil Knight

In which our man Durst leaks the secret contents of a letter from Nike CEO Phil Knight, explaining his moral obligation to <a href='http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/04/25/MN28628.DTL'><font color=cc0000>stop funding universities</font></a> that won’t use sweatshop labor.

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Dear University and/or College Colleagues and Partners:

Hello friends.

I’m sure you’re aware of the recent scurrilous movement to usurp the dominion and authority of the Fair Labor Association by the student-led rabble that has intimated violent action if we refuse to subvert our principles and, thereby, the integrity and security of our employees. Which, we assure you, will never happen.

It is impossible to express the terrible grief we have experienced in the face of these thinly veiled threats by the so-called Worker Rights Consortium, which apparently wants to turn back the clock to the purges of Stalin, all for the supposed sake of our workers, who in fact kiss the ground we walk on.

If it weren’t for us, who knows if these people would even have jobs. They’re not only happy working 16 hour days — our studies show they prefer it. As everybody knows, Asians take pride in hard labor. To suggest otherwise is racist and ignorant and to impugn their culture, which is different from ours. And while the salaries we pay may not seem like much to us, in their country, they are quite literally fortunes. These people live like kings.

The Fair Labor Association is just that — an association devoted to fair labor. Why else the name? The Worker Rights Consortium, on the other hand, is nothing but a pawn of the US organized labor movement, with conspicuous ties to Castro, and merely attempting to further its socialist agenda by its outrageous demands that our industry submit to its commando-style raids on offshore factories. “How can a reasonable dialogue be held with people committed to the overthrow of democracy as we know it?” you might ask, and you’d be right.

So let us take this moment to reiterate how much we cherish our relationship, and also how much we would hate like hell to be forced to stop all subsidies and incentives augmenting your campus’s all-important athletic programs. We regret the circumstances that forced us to sever ties with the Universities of Michigan and Oregon, and reiterate our position that these are just coincidences having nothing to do with those institutions’ embracement of the WRC Communist philosophy. Absolutely nothing.

So here’s a few suggestions we would like to see implemented that would go a long way toward maintaining our current mutually advantageous relationship:

  • Assurances that the words “sweat” and “shop” will never appear in the same sentence of any official university correspondence. This includes thesis papers.

  • An investigation into the financial aid status of all Worker Rights Consortium ringleaders and followers. Any discrepancy will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  • We would never ask you to deny campus entrance to anybody wearing Reebok, Converse, Adidas, or New Balance shoes. That would be silly and tantamount to prosecution under federal trade restriction legislation. Instead, we suggest a discount of five to 10 percent at all university stores to students wearing Nike running shoes.

We trust our relationship will remain, as Rod Stewart sings, “Forever Young,” and the need will never arise for an embarrassment of the sort that might include half-time locker-room shoe removal during a nationally televised broadcast. Or worse.

Happy running.

Your friend and treasured associate,

Phil Knight
President and CEO of Nike

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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