University joins effort to monitor workplace standards

The university plans to join with four other major colleges and universities to test-monitor workplace standards among makers of licensed university products.

UW–Madison, Boston College, Georgetown University, Duke University and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill will participate in the pilot project. A start date has not been set.

“These efforts reflect, I believe, the continuing commitment of the participating schools to remain active in trying to curb sweatshop abuses,” says Casey Nagy, special assistant to Provost John Wiley.

Nagy says the pilot project is designed to work through some of the logistics and difficulties related to actual enforcement of workplace standards. The institutions are still deciding on the licensed manufacturers to be monitored and who will perform the monitoring.

“The concept is not to have any ‘surprise inspections,’ but to work cooperatively with the licensee(s) to find out the issues and problems leading to full compliance,” Nagy says.

In its continuing effort to be a national leader in ending the use of sweatshop labor by manufacturers of university-licensed apparel and other products, the university in June joined the Fair Labor Association, which now consists of 118 colleges and universities.

Nagy was elected to the FLA University Advisory Council’s Executive Committee.

Through its participation in the FLA, the university continues to work with other institutions to encourage adoption of these standards, which are more stringent than those originally proposed by the FLA and the Collegiate Licensing Company.