Recent misjudgments in favor of affirmative action and sodomy overshadowed one issue on which the Supreme Court came down sensibly. Citing procedural problems, the court declined to hear a case brought against Nike by anti-corporate crusader Marc Kasky, who argued that conditions in Southeast Asian factories do not live up to Nike’s propaganda. The activist was fishing for a ruling to state that Nike’s corporate advertisements qualify as commercial speech rather than political or social commentary. Because the court has not applied strict First Amendment protection to commercial speech, Mr. Kasky was hoping Nike could be sued for false advertising and even subjected to injunctions against continued advertising. But it is Mr. Kasky — not Nike — who is full of nonsense.
It was an unusual coalition that united against Mr. Kasky, including some groups unaccustomed to backing a manufacturer over a leftist political activist. Among the 18 organizations filing amicus briefs in support of Nike’s position were the AFL-CIO and the ACLU. In its brief, the ACLU wrote that “Nike’s interest in telling its side of the story in a nationwide debate focusing attention on alleged abuses at its overseas workplaces is no less entitled to full First Amendment protection than statements made by those who have leveled charges critical of Nike’s employment practices. The public also has a compelling First Amendment interest in hearing a balanced debate.” In its own brief, the AFL-CIO said that, “The First Amendment is intended to foster debate on public issues that is uninhibited, robust and wide-open on all sides — not debate in which one side is inhibited by state regulation that does not apply to the other side.”
We believe that Mr. Kasky’s attempts to carve away exceptions to First Amendment rights are dangerous, and his sanctimonious battles in the name of the poor in places such as Southeast Asia hurt the people he claims to be trying to help. In many developing countries, the only competitive advantage poor people have is the comparatively cheap labor they can offer. Factory jobs and working conditions created by firms like Nike are safer and pay many times more than anything else available, such as toiling away in miserable rice paddies. That’s why thousands line up for a chance to get a job whenever a new factory opens up.
Boycotts and legal actions against so-called sweatshops are contrary to the American way, which is based on the ability to climb one’s way up the economic ladder. This country was made by millions who left the romanticized bucolic countryside to live in slums and work in factories, knowing the regular work and higher wages offered a way out of permanent poverty for their families. Of course, Third World factories do not offer wages equal to the First World. But what self-proclaimed do-gooders fail to realize is that factories like Nike’s provide a step up for peasants in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines and elsewhere. These people deserve a shot at new opportunities as much as the Italians, Irish, Germans and everyone else who flooded to America to work over the past two centuries.
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