The University Book Store announced the arrival of Fair Trade Wisconsin T-shirts Friday as part of a new university licensing agreement.
The shirts, which went on sale this week for $14.95, display traditional Wisconsin graphics, according to University Book Store Vice President Kevin Phelps.
Phelps said UW-Madison partnered with Manhattan-based apparel company Counter Sourcing to make the Fair Trade T-shirts available.
According to the Counter Sourcing website, fair trade guarantees apparel producers receive fair and just prices for their products and in addition a Fair Trade Premium which directly benefits the workers who produced the products.""
UW-Madison is the first university in the Midwest to carry Fair Trade apparel, joining institutions such as Duke, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and New York University in licensing their apparel to Fair Trade.
Although Counter Sourcing CEO Joseph Falcone said official standards for Fair Trade apparel are not fully established, the company and UW-Madison were able to create guidelines for what constitutes fair trade for clothing by referring to criteria used by Equal Exchange - the Fair Trade coffee, tea and chocolate co-op - as well as TransfairUSA.
Falcone said Fair Trade apparel at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill has been successful, and both schools have reordered inventory several times.
University Bookstore Vice President Kevin Phelps said the store is anticipating the same kind of reception of the Fair Trade collection here in Madison.
""We are working with Fair Indigo to have them source additional products like sweatshirts and polos,"" he said.
However, some are still skeptical of the breadth of influence the Fair Trade T-shirts will have on improving poor conditions overall.
""In the grand scheme of things, having a few Fair Trade T-shirts is not going to make a huge difference,"" said Jan Van Tol, a UW-Madison Student Labor Action Coalition member. ""We want to see all of UW apparel produced under good conditions.""
SLAC has played a large role in advocating for just labor practices in UW-Madison apparel contracts and have campaigned to terminate the athletics apparel contract with Adidas, which they claim breached its code of conduct in the form of human rights violations in 2005.
Dawn Crim, acting special assistant to the chancellor for community relations, who traveled to El Salvador in April 2007 to report any Adidas conduct violations, said the sale of Fair Trade T-shirts is a resolution in favor of social responsibility from which the university and community will benefit.
""We all have a code of conduct and we hold our licensees accountable to our code of conduct,"" she said. ""In this particular case, the business model that a fair trade company uses ensures the things our code of conduct assures, so it is a marriage of principles right from the beginning.
