Forum tonight on sweatshop labor

The university’s interest in promoting fair and humane working conditions in factories where university sports apparel is produced will be the subject of a free public forum today, Sept. 25.

The Labor Licensing Policies Committee, a university committee made up of faculty, academic staff and students that advises on university activity in this area, has scheduled a forum at 7 p.m. in the Red Gym’s On Wisconsin! Room.

Daniel Long, graduate student in sociology and LLPC member, will introduce the university’s continuing efforts to ensure that companies producing apparel with UW–Madison logos use fair labor practices. Also scheduled to speak is Jane Collins, professor of rural sociology and women’s studies, who is currently researching the global apparel industry.

Attendees will also hear from the two primary groups active in attempting to monitor factory conditions in the apparel industry, the Workers Rights Consortium and the Fair Labor Association.

“This panel discussion is another step forward in the university’s attempts to remain a leader in monitoring how workers are treated by companies that manufacture university licensed goods,” says Lamarr Billups, special assistant to Chancellor John Wiley. “This campus has made major strides in the last several years, often with the important influence of students and other community leaders, and an informed community discussion at this time is important to our evaluation of next steps.”

UW–Madison’s LaFollette Institute administered a Living Wage Symposium in Fall 1999, which recommended a university consortium to carry out research and pilot projects dealing with living wages and workplace monitoring. As a result, UW–Madison joined with five other major universities, five U.S. companies and the Collegiate Licensing Company in a pilot project that inspected workplace standards at factories that make university licensed products.

The program found relatively few instances in which employees were subjected to mandatory overtime or paid below the prevailing minimum wage, both of which are subject to wide local variance throughout the manufacturing world, but did reveal significant and systemic safety and health concerns.

“The project helped us to better identify some of the most chronic and difficult problems associate with apparel production, which in turn advances our ability to try to control for those problems in the manufacture of our own products,” Billups says.

UW–Madison began requiring all companies manufacturing apparel with the university’s logos to disclose their factory locations by Jan.1, 2001, as well as to comply with a rigorous set of workplace standards. Later that spring, UW–Madison ended its relationships with eight manufacturers that failed to make the required disclosures.

During the same time period, a student protest in Bascom Hall eventually led to UW–Madison withdrawing from the Fair Labor Association and joining the Workers Rights Consortium.

Earlier this year, UW–Madison signed a five-year agreement with Adidas to supply sports apparel for all of the university’s athletes and coaches.

That deal required Adidas to allow UW–Madison access to confidential company records to help officials verify that the university’s workplace standards are being met.