The Daily Cardinal -Tuesday, 22 November 2005
UW closer to deciding on sweatshop proposal
UW pieces labor plan together for logo apparel
Written by Jackie Martin
A "fireside chat" with members from organizations concerned with UW-Madison"s sweatshop policy met Monday night to discuss the issues facing the university.
Samantha Ziesemer, campus relations chair of Associated Students of Madison, said the main focus of the event was to make sure the channels of communication were open between the students, the chancellor and other organizations.
John Bruning, a member of the Student Labor Action Coalition and the Labor Licensing Policy Committee, a panel that advises the chancellor on labor practices, explained the newly proposed policy.
"It will call for 25 percent of the factories producing UW apparel to allow their workers to have representative bodies," he said. "The other aspect of the policy is that it will force Madison to pay more money to the factories so that workers will have more space to bargain for their wages."
Michelle Quinn, LLPC academic staff, stated why the panel believes this policy will be successful.
"If there can be jobs created and apparel made there, then the brand names can count on a certain amount of business occurring," she said.
LLPC and SLAC member Liana Dalton added that if UW-Madison adopted this policy, it would be a good role model for others, and it will eventually extend beyond collegiate apparel.
Kevin Phelps, vice president of the University Bookstore, stated that there could be negative effects.
"There definitely would be increases in prices at the wholesale level," he said.
LaMarr Billups, special assistant to the chancellor, added there could also be less variety and the quality of products may also decrease.
In response to the "Facebook Wiley," campaign created by SLAC, Bruning said that its focus was not just a personal attack on Chancellor Wiley, but to create awareness.
Billups said that he could not speak directly for Wiley, but commented, "I said to the community today that I would like someone to work on the personal attacks."
In order for the proposal to be put into action, communication between students, the university and the workers must be established, Quinn said.
When the Chancellor returns from his trip to South Africa, Billups said he will tell him details of the sweatshop proposal.
"We"re going to talk about findings from our expert, the discussions we"ve had with other schools, and the results of those," he said. "Hopefully we"ll have a response pretty quick."