Apparel manufacturer responds to UW–Madison concerns

Apparel licensee Russell Athletic has been responsive in dealing with the concerns of UW–Madison and universities across the country over potential workers rights abuses in one of the company’s factories in Honduras.

According to UW–Madison’s international monitoring organization, the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), workers at Russell’s Jerzees de Choloma facility who were active union supporters were fired from the factory. Management was also alleged to have threatened to close the factory in retaliation for union activity.

In early November, UW–Madison notified Russell of its intention to end its licensing agreement if remedial steps were not promptly taken, says Dawn Crim, acting special assistant to Chancellor John Wiley for Community Relations and liaison to the university’s Labor Licensing Policy Committee.

Russell, a subsidiary of Fruit of the Loom, agreed to a series of steps to address the reinstatement and compensation of fired workers.

Among the steps it has proposed, Russell has agreed to offer reinstatement to the group of workers most recently dismissed from Jerzees Choloma; to offer reinstatement to workers dismissed from a second factory, Jerzees de Honduras; to provide full back pay from the date of dismissal to all of the fired workers from both factories; to allow representatives of the monitoring organizations to be present at the factories to observe the reinstatement of those workers who choose to return; and to enhance the program of communications that the company is planning to use to assure its Honduran employees that there will be no retaliation in the future against those who seek to exercise their associational rights.

In addition, the company, in collaboration with the WRC, Fair Labor Association and CGT union in Honduras, also agreed to written reprimands to supervisors who were found to have engaged in harassment and/or abuse.

As part of UW–Madison licensing standards, brands and suppliers are required to adhere to a code of conduct and allow for monitoring by the WRC.

The code addresses workers’ wages, working hours, overtime compensation, child labor, forced labor, health and safety, nondiscrimination, harassment or abuse, women’s rights, freedom of association and full public disclosure of factory locations.

Firings or threats of closure, in retaliation for exercising the code of conduct’s guarantee of freedom of association, are direct violations.

If code violations occur, a licensee has the opportunity to correct the problem or have its relationship with the university terminated.

Russell Athletic generated $74,564 in licensing revenue for the university, fourth overall. The university has severed two licenses — New Era and Lands’ End — in the past decade. New Era has since been reinstated.