UW-Madison to host labor licensing conference

Creating fair and humane working conditions for textile workers involved in making licensed university apparel is the focus of an upcoming conference at UW–Madison.

The Labor Behind the Label: Code of Conduct Compliance Conference will be held at the Pyle Center, 702 Langdon St. Wednesday and Thursday, March 24 and 25. Students, faculty, staff and the Madison community are invited to attend.

The session is sponsored by the Student Labor Action Committee and the Labor Licensing Policies Committee, a committee made up of faculty, academic staff and students that advises on university licensing policies.

One highlight will be a question-and-answer forum at 7 p.m. Thursday, which is designed to address wage disclosure, labor licensing and factory working conditions, among other issues.

Conference participants will include Gregg Nebel, Adidas’ head of social and environmental affairs for the Americas region; Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC); and LaMarr Billups, special assistant to Chancellor John D. Wiley. Several UW–Madison graduate students, faculty and LLPC members also are scheduled to participate.

“This conference is part of UW–Madison’s continued effort to remain a leader in monitoring how workers are treated by companies that manufacture university-licensed goods,” says Billups. “We have made major strides in these areas over the last several years, often with the important influence of students and industry leaders.”

UW–Madison, which receives $1 million in annual revenue from officially licensed products, began requiring in 2001 that all companies manufacturing apparel with the university’s logos comply with a rigorous set of workplace standards.
Licensees are required to pay employees at least the minimum wage required by local law or the prevailing wage, whichever is higher, as well as legally mandated benefits.

In January, Wiley announced that UW–Madison would begin exploring methods to collect detailed worker-wage information from the university’s 450 official licensees. More than 3,300 factories in 47 countries produce products with UW–Madison logos.

For more information or a complete conference schedule, contact Billups at billups@bascom.wisc.edu or (608) 263-5510.