For years, the former professional goalie has waged a one-man campaign to highlight Nike's labor practices, complaining that the company pays Indonesian workers low wages to stitch together the uniforms that have made the company the world's most successful sports garment manufacturer.
Sitting at an outdoor coffeehouse here, Keady produced several Nike jerseys in Cup team colors. "These jerseys are real wealth you can touch," he said. "They're making Nike and the players rich while the workers who make them continue to grind out lives of abject poverty."
Keady's campaign goes back to 1997 when, as a soccer coach for St. John's University in New York, he questioned the school's plans to sign a $3.5-million endorsement deal with Nike.
The devout Catholic insisted that the contract would be hypocritical for a Christian university. "I was told to drop the issue or get out," he said. "So I resigned in protest."
...In 2000, the towering, redheaded Keady moved to Indonesia and lived on the same salary as a Nike worker, which at the time was about $1.25 a day, staying in a 9-by-9-foot home in a community where 10 families share bathroom and kitchen facilities.
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