Campus Life--Melani Cullen

During my internship, I had an amazing opportunity to travel to one of the footwear factories that manufactures Columbia’s shoes in Mainland China. It was a great experience seeing the assembly lines, and learning about how the company takes an innovative idea and turns it into the products we see in the retail stores. It was so cool to see the process because all the steps that go into creating the 3D objects are often over looked. I never thought about all the pieces that are sewn prior to assembly, or the actual assembly line and how a pair of shoes may by touched by up to a hundred people. Similarly, Columbia exposed me to a more personal side of the industry that people never think about.

Life outside the factory is a topic that is often overlooked. These workers don't experience the typical dorm lifestyle that we generally visualize. They have to travel to the part of the country where the factories are in order to find work, and that means leaving their hometown and loved ones behind. The workers stay for almost a year, and during Chinese New Years they return to their hometown until it is time to return to the factory. The factory provides on-property housing in a dorm like setting. It’s sad to think that the factory becomes all the workers see. They work at the factory 6 days a week, eleven hours a day, and when it’s time to go “home,” they take a 30-second walk across the parking lot to their temporary home. Unfortunately, there are times when workers have to go even longer without a day off due to peak production season in the summer.

The tour through the dorms was mind blowing. Hundreds of workers are in and out of the dorms daily so with out a doubt, everything was almost worn out in regards to the facility’s aesthetics. Even though the rooms had four sets of bunk beds, they were the size of a typical dorm room, which is not big at all. The workers were assigned individual storage cubbies that the workers could lock if they wanted to store anything of value. Each bed also had a curtain around it in order to provide privacy and their own space. Additionally, each dorm room had an air conditioner so that the workers could stay cool and be more comfortable, and there is a children’s room where their kids can stay during the day if they are visiting. There is a schoolroom where they are given lessons, and a playroom as well. Moreover, the dorm had a huge cafeteria on the ground level, which serves breakfast (1 RMB), lunch (2.50 RMB), and dinner (2.50 RMB) for an affordable price, which totals to 6 RMB a day (About $1). The dorms were nothing special and seemed very minimalistic, but you could tell the workers appreciate the things that they do have.

Melani Cullen

Columbia Sportswear