By Travis Pillow
On Friday, the University of Wisconsin-Madison (the state’s flagship university and home of the Big 10′s Badgers) announced it would end its licensing contract with Nike, making it the first university to cut its contract with the company over the improper closing of two factories in Honduras.
The Worker Rights Consortium (which I’ve previously written about here) issued a report in October describing the ways the factory closings were improper and illegal. Workers in the factories were owed more than $2 million in back pay, and UW decided its code of conduct for workers had been violated.
Coming on the heels of a major victory over Russell Athletic in the Fall, this lends new credibility to a student anti-sweatshop movement that seems to be finding its second wind. UW is big and so is its football program, so they just hit Nike where it hurts: its bottom line.
Two weeks ago, Gina Cano and Lowlee Urquia, former workers from the factories, visited UF and, through translators, gave an emotional presentation on their lives as sweatshop workers, and the devastation caused by the sudden closing of the plant.
Earlier that day, I took part in on a meeting with them, representatives from the national United Students Against Sweatshops, two fellow members of Gators for a Sweatshop-Free Campus, and representatives of the UF administration. After hearing from the workers, Ed Poppell, UF’s Vice President for Business Affairs and Anna Prizzia, director of the Office of Sustainability, said they intended to side with students in support of UF joining the WRC.
Cano and Lowlee are now on a USAS-sponsored tour across the United States, where they’re visiting college campuses to explain how students and their universities can support the fight for workers’ rights. We’ll have a story on their visit and UF’s ongoing progress toward becoming a member of the WRC in the April issue of the Fine Print.
Tags: sweatshops