Recent reports reveal that Nike, a UW-Madison licensee, violated several workers' rights laws in India and Honduras.
The Workers Rights Consortium, an organization that monitors workers' rights among apparel manufacturers, released a report March 4 indicating Nike did not comply with minimum wage laws in Bangalore, India.
According to a release from the UW-Madison Student Labor Action Coalition, Nike's wage violation has resulted in $10.5 million being withheld from 125,000 garment workers.
SLAC said they want Chancellor Biddy Martin to cut the university's contract with Nike immediately.
SLAC member Beth Huang said continuing the contract reflects negatively on the university.
""It is horrible that the University of Wisconsin continues to do business with a morally destitute company such as Nike,"" Huang said. ""It has been shown that Nike has violated workers' rights over and over. The university cannot stand for this by letting the Nike swoosh sit alongside Bucky the Badger.""
The WRC released another report March 16 that detailed failures by Nike's Hugger and Vision Tech factories in Honduras to make payments to the national health-care system. Because of the lack of payment, workers were denied access to health care they were legally entitled to, according to the WRC.
In December 2009, Martin gave Nike a four-month deadline to make improvements in its treatment of workers before UW-Madison would sever their contract with Nike.
Nike replied to Martin stating they were making improvements through job training for previous employees, according to Huang.
However, Huang said she believes Nike is not truly making progress with workers' rights.
""It is very evident that these job trainings are a way to ... say that they are making progress when there really is no true progress being made,"" Huang said.
According to Huang, SLAC plans to organize more actions to raise campus awareness of the Nike violations.
