The Running Industrial Complex
How does depending on the systemic exploitation of sweatshop labor influence the running industry and running community's framing of justice?
Some of my first memories are of the sweatshop that my mother worked in. Unable to afford childcare, she would bring my brother and I to the Brooklyn, New York factory where she spent hours hunched over a sewing machine while we sat at her feet with a toy or a book. I still recall the deafening cacophony of the sewing machines and the smell of machine oil and fabric. The first friend I ever had was the son of the woman who worked in the sewing station next to my mother’s. My mother often couldn’t finish her allotted work in the sweatshop, so she took fabric home, where we had a sewing machine instead of a kitchen table. She was paid less than minimum wage. It was not a rare occurrence for us to not have heat or hot water on cold winter days. Eventually, my mother saved up enough money to learn English and get a degree in bookkeeping.
Watching my mother toil in that factory shaped my moral compass and preferences. When I was a teenager, after finding out that Nikes are made in sweatshops, I used a Sharpie to color in the white swoosh on my black Nikes. Eventually, I stopped wearing Nikes altogether, and I adopted a personal policy of not wearing clothing that featured big brand logos. I didn’t want to be a billboard.
I volunteered with National Mobilization Against Sweatshops (NMASS), and traveled to Washington, D.C. with a group of workers to meet with the Senate Subcommittee on Employment and Workplace Safety. One of NMASS’s members, a seamstress, shared that after falling and breaking her arm on a slippery factory floor, the manager refused to call an ambulance and had her removed from the premises. Later, that manager denied she’d ever worked in that factory. After listening to hours of testimony from workers recounting the dangerous conditions of their workplaces, being denied compensation, and suffering from chronic pain due to work-related injuries, Senator Hillary Clinton thanked the workers for sharing, and promised that the committee would investigate. I dozed off at some point during Senator Clinton’s remarks, and when we spoke briefly afterward she ribbed me for that. I hope that’s not why we didn’t hear from the Senate Subcommittee subsequently.
A decade later, when I took up running after donating one of my kidneys, I had to purchase running shoes and clothes. While functionality and comfort were paramount for me, I found myself thinking about my mother in that sweatshop and wondering about every article of clothing, “where was this made?”, and “who made this?” Eventually, I settled on wearing as little as possible.
In a decade of running, I don’t recall having a conversation with another runner about sweatshops. While I think most people know that most of what we wear and a lot of our gadgets are made in sweatshops, it’s not something we talk about, especially in running spaces. Even since 2020, when more runners (but not all) are more receptive to having conversations about justice, the topic of sweatshops remains taboo.
One of the reasons runners don’t talk about sweatshops is the ubiquitous presence of the running industry. Global shoe and apparel brands such as Nike, Adidas, Altra, Brooks, Lululemon, New Balance, On Cloud, Newton, Salomon, Skechers, Under Armor, etc. are present in almost all running spaces. If you want to make a living as an elite runner, or your club wants to achieve a measure of legitimacy, then you must be sponsored by one of the brands. Want to get free or discounted gear, and grow your social media following? Become a brand ambassador. Need money to put together a running event? Get a brand to underwrite some of the costs, make the race shirts, and provide the swag that runners expect to receive. Blogs, magazines, and podcasts need running industry advertising revenue to stay afloat. Whatever money brands are investing in events, organizations, and content creators pales in comparison to the profits generated from selling shoes and apparel.
Without access to low wage factory workers in Asia, Africa, Central America, South America, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the U.S., shoe and apparel brands would not be able to generate as much revenue. Some brands would cease to exist. There would be less money to invest in content creators, elite runners, ambassadors, events, and clubs. Brands would likely increase the cost of shoes and apparel in order to maximize profits.
Thus, we have a running industrial complex- a network of relationships between global shoe and apparel brands, countries who have lax laws around worker safety and compensation, gatekeepers, content creators, and runners designed to promote consumption of consumer goods made by exploited sweatshop workers.
Since 2020, many brands have adopted a version of, “buy from us because we invest in communities and do good work”. Brands have sponsored BIPOC organizers, content creators, and events. Lululemon has touted their investment in diversity, equity, and inclusion while Bangladeshi women workers are beaten in Lululemon factories. (Sidenote: The name Lululemon is Anti-Asian.) This seems to be a form of sportswashing- the use of BIPOC faces and work to mask exploitation and bigotry. I want to be clear that I believe that the work BIPOC runners do to increase representation and uplift communities is real and sincere. This is not a purity test. We are all part of the running industrial complex and complicit to some degree. I think that lack of discussion about sweatshops has rendered the issue and exploited workers invisible. You have to dig around to find reports about sweatshops and to hear the voices and see the faces of those who make the shoes and clothes. The brands have made finding that kind of information hard (you’ll never find this kind of reporting in Runner’s World or any running-related publication), and they’re using the work of BIPOC athletes to bury the information even deeper.
I think it is long overdue, but necessary to ask hard questions and have uncomfortable conversations.
How does money from the running industry influence activism within running?
Can a running apparel brand declare that they believe Black Lives Matter or that they stand with Asian Americans against Anti-Asian Hate if that brand is exploiting African women and children and Asian women and children inside their sweatshops?
How comfortable are we with investing money derived from exploiting BIPOC women and children workers into elite runners, running events, clubs, and DEI initiatives that will never benefit the workers?
Is increasing BIPOC representation in running limited to promoting BIPOC content creators and hiring BIPOC corporate officers and executives? Are the women and children who make running apparel part of the running community?
Is BIPOC leaders having a seat at the decision maker’s table in a corporation that exploits BIPOC sweatshop workers considered progress?
What duty do runners have to know where and how their apparel is made?
What duty do brands have to be transparent?
Where does our obligation to advocate for exploited sweatshop workers begin and end?
I don’t know that writing this rambling mess of a post will change anything. I’m not sure that I can convince people who never saw their mother hunched over a sewing machine in a sweatshop to pick up this fight. For me, sweatshops are real. Progress isn’t just seeing more people like me (educated, upwardly mobile) represented in running, but confronting and eliminating the exploitative situation my mother came from, and that running is built on.
Sweatshops have been around for a long time. Nike has been using them since the 1970’s, though I doubt this will be depicted in the Ben Affleck directed film, Air. I looked over the cast list and did see any Asian women or children actors listed. Anyway, just because sweatshops are prevalent and have existed for a long time doesn’t mean that their continued existence is an inevitability. There are people willing to fight for justice alongside those who are being exploited. In order for runners to be allies, they must first break the cardinal rule of silence and “no politics” (i.e. subjects that make fragile people uncomfortable) that running brands, gatekeepers, and institutions have put in place. In order to move towards justice, runners must betray the runner industrial complex.