UW-Madison officials announced Thursday the university will cut its contract with Russell Athletics, which previously had a licensing deal to use the UW logo on its clothing. Russell was accused in a Workers Rights Consortium preventing workers from forming a union by closing their Jerzees Choloma plant, denying them freedom of association, thus violating the UW licensing and code of conduct.
Although Russell Athletic spokespeople denied the accusations, saying Six of the seven plants closed were non-union plants,"" Chancellor Biddy Martin put her foot down and will not renew the contract, which expires in March. Gone with the contract is the relatively scant $39,514 annual revenue that the contract brought the university in 2007-2008.
The Workers Rights Consortium, the third party source the university depends upon for its labor rights research, provided the detailed report of Russell Athletics' violations from which Chancellor Martin made her decision.
Another labor rights group, the Fair Labor Association, has a different take on the motives behind the closing of the Jerzees Choloma plant: Through separate independent investigations, they claim Russell had legitimate business interests in closing down the plant, leaving open the possibility that the plant closing and unionizing were unrelated.
The chancellor's final decision makes any Russell claims moot, but we have to wonder whether Chancellor Martin jumped the gun with the contract termination. It is important for her to follow the footsteps of former Chancellor John Wiley, who proactively investigated claims to workers rights violations in the Adidas Hermosa plant in 2007, but there is a possibility that Russell was unnecessarily made an example of .
There is some amount of indifference in this debate, however, as the revenue coming to UW is insignificant and neither the university nor its students have any vested interest in Russell Athletics. What is of significance is Chancellor Martin making hasty decisions to establish her identity as the new chancellor. We would like to think a great amount of deliberation goes into her decisions, and hopefully the Russell contract situation was insignificant enough to not warrant the kind of deliberation we expect.
