from The Daily Cardinal
5/3/04
One UW licensee meets disclosure deadline
Of UW-Madison's ten largest licensees, one agreed to UW-Madison's new requirement to disclose licensees' workers' wages by the May 1 deadline.
A company called Top of the World was the only company to agree.
"The success of getting Top of the World to agree to a protocol is pretty big," said Ross Reykdal, Student Labor Action Coalition member. "They're agreeing that they're going to disclose the wages in all of the factories that have a contract with."
However, Reykdal said one company, Gear for Sports, has said they will not adhere to the new standards. Representatives from the company claim they will stick to standards set forth by the Fair Labor Association, which does not include worker wage disclosure as a requirement. In doing so, Reykdal said, Gear for Sports is ignoring requirements of the Workers' Rights Consortium, an organization UW-Madison employs to gather disclosure information.
Liana Dalton, member of the university's Labor Licensing Policy Committee, SLAC and UW-Madison sophomore, said she was surprised Gear for Sports definitively said no instead of procrastinating on the decision, which is a tactic she said Adidas uses.
"They're going to have to do it anyways," Dalton said.
Zephor Graphics, a UW-Madison licensee not among the top ten, also agreed to wage disclosure, Dalton said.
-Emily Winter