The University of Wisconsin boasts the women's NCAA championship hockey team and the nation's ninth-ranked football team. Shamefully, Chancellor Wiley has chosen to disgrace our world-class athletes by providing them with uniforms sewn in sweatshops.
To produce its athletic uniforms, UW-Madison holds an exclusive sideline contract with the German-based Adidas group. Unfortunately, the company responsible for clothing every UW-Madison athlete is one of the worst abusers of sweatshop labor in the apparel industry. The Adidas name has become practically synonymous with the exploitation of garment workers by apparel manufacturers bent on producing clothing at the lowest possible cost.
By way of example, consider the Hermosa factory in El Salvador. For years, factory owners had illegally failed to compensate workers with overtime and maternity benefits and even withheld wages for hours logged. In addition, workers were required to work 15-hour shifts with no breaks and faced persistent sexual harassment on the job. Management made it clear that anyone who spoke out against these abuses would be fired.
In 2005, after the workers began to organize a union, the owner closed the factory and terminated all 190 workers. The Hermosa workers are owed close to a million dollars by the factory owner and Adidas for unpaid wages, severance and benefits.
The Hermosa case represents a clear example of a practice all too common in the global apparel industry: the cut-and-run. The cut-and-run is one of the apparel industry's favorite tactics to try to keep workers on their knees and production costs at the bare minimum. The industry paradigm in the apparel market is referred to as the race to the bottom,"" whereby factories compete to produce clothing at the lowest possible cost. Because the costs of land, rent, raw materials and equipment are essentially static, it is the workers who suffer as avaricious factory owners attempt to squeeze every last ounce of energy out of their workers while paying them barely above subsistence level.
When workers attempt to organize themselves to counter this dynamic and demand living wages, safe working conditions and basic benefits, the factory owners simply close the factory and fire the workers (cutting) and move the factory to an area where the cost of labor is even cheaper (running).
The only way conditions at garment factories will improve is if workers are able to organize labor unions and fight for better working conditions. All too often, workers are left to the whim and fancy of the ruthless apparel industry, with production always staying one step ahead of organized labor.
However, as university students, we have the right to demand that companies like Adidas, who produce clothing for UW-Madison, respect the right of workers to organize.
Placing priority production in factories with unionized workers is the only effective and democratic way to create change in the apparel industry. However, in order to support organized workers, UW-Madison must be willing to cut its ties with any company that shows such flagrant disregard for workers' rights.
Last semester, students and community members began demanding that UW-Madison cut its exclusivity agreement with Adidas in response to the Hermosa case and the pattern of worker rights violations at Adidas source factories.
In February, UW-Madison's own Labor and Licensing Policy Committee voted unanimously to recommend to Chancellor Wiley that the Adidas contract be cut.
Wiley's response: smoke and mirrors - an epic display of recalcitrance, bureaucratic foot dragging and broken promises. Wiley chose to ignore the voices of students and community members, refute the recommendations of his own committee and place the interests of the executives at Adidas over those of struggling garment workers.
As students at one of the finest public universities in the country, we should not tolerate seeing our university's reputation dragged through the mud by Adidas. We owe it to our athletes to provide them with only the finest equipment and apparel. Chancellor Wiley: stop disgracing our athletes and cut the Adidas contract now!
John Bruning is a senior majoring in sociology and latin studies. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com
