Report calls for partnership on living wages, sweatshops
A group of leading universities should partner to conduct research and pilot projects related to living wages and sweatshop issues, recommends a new report summarizing last fall’s Living Wage Symposium.
UW–Madison is positioned to play a key role in such a partnership and continue its national leadership on the sweatshop issue: Numerous initiatives already underway include an international pilot monitoring project with four other universities, says the report’s author.
|
Related resources: Highlights of the Living Wage Symposium Report UW-Madison and Sweatshops (Background stories and information) |
“UW-Madison has gone farther than every other university in its attempts to address sweatshop labor, and the recommendation to create a multi-university partnership is right in line with what this university has already been doing for some time,” says John Witte, director of the La Follette Institute and co-chair of a campus advisory committee on sweatshops.
Sponsored by the university, the Living Wage Symposium drew a number of students and faculty members from across the country to UW–Madison, along with labor and religious leaders involved with the living wage issue and the sweatshop movement.
“While I fully understand the gravity of the problems with sweatshops and the necessity to move as quickly as we can, these are very complicated problems with how the apparel industry is structured, how living wages are set, and in terms of enforcement,” says Witte, a professor of political science. “To expect to have these issues solved in six months or one year is not realistic. Pressure must be applied to large number of countries and at many points of supply, and that is difficult.”
UW–Madison’s CLC Task Force Advisory Committee will review the living wage report’s recommendations and findings as it continues to monitor several university initiatives aimed at ending sweatshop labor.
The advisory committee is examining the progress of the Fair Labor Association and the Worker Rights Consortium to conduct monitoring and enforce workplace standards. This spring, the group will receive a report on the results of the university’s pilot monitoring project. That project involves factory inspections of licensed manufacturers in Costa Rica, Korea and Mexico, in partnership with four other colleges and universities: Boston College, Duke University, Georgetown University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
The committee will also review how well licensed manufacturers are complying with UW–Madison’s new workplace standards, which the university implemented Jan. 1. These standards require full public disclosure of factory locations, protection of female workers from harassment and discrimination, and compliance with the provisions of the Collegiate Licensing Company’s draft code of conduct.
Chancellor David Ward created the advisory committee last year as part of an agreement with students following a protest on campus. Three faculty members, three academic staff members and three students comprise the committee, although the student members recently resigned.
Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Paul Barrows has urged Associated Students of Madison appoint three new students to the committee, and says he was disappointed to learn that ASM decided not to offer replacement appointments at its meeting Thursday, Feb. 10.
Barrows and Witte urge students to stay involved in the committee’s work, and they encourage the committee to seek student voices through other channels.
“The committee should continue to advise chancellor on these issues, and we need to continue to have student participation,” says Witte, one of three committee co-chairs. “The committee won’t serve its purpose of shared governance if we don’t have student involvement.”