The Daily Cardinal - Tuesday, 13 December 2005
Written by Nicky Kurtzweil
UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley will unveil a definitive policy Tuesday in a press conference regarding how the university's logo apparel will be manufactured, according to LaMarr Billups, special assistant to the chancellor.
The Labor and Licensing Policy Committee along with Student Labor Action Coalition has recommended to the Chancellor that the UW's apparel should be union-made as proposed in the United Students Against Sweatshops' Designated Suppliers Program.
USAS, a nationwide student labor group, proposed a "sweat-free" policy to be phased in over three years. The policy mandates that 75 percent of licensed apparel or products that bear the university logo would be made in union factories that pay living wages after three years.
"As the students and others have pointed out, every day that you don't do something about itb more workers suffer," Billups said. "As long as we can assure ourselves that we're doing something that has some impact as opposed to something simply symbolic, then we ought to take action as soon as is practicable and reasonable,"
SLAC has been pushing hard for a response to the USAS proposal all semester.
"Hopefully the chancellor will go along with the proposal the committee endorsed earlier this year, specifically the provisions about union labor and living wage," said John Bruning, a UW-Madison sophomore who sits on LLPC and is a member of SLAC.
However, according to Billups, any policy alteration holds the potential to cause unintentional economic and social effects, so the university may still choose to move cautiously.
"That doesn't mean we're trying not to do it," Billups said. "It just means that we want to be careful about what we want to do and be relatively sure about it."
The university will not comment on the contents of the policy until Wiley presents it today.
Also, despite months of preparation, the plan will probably still see more revision as lingering questions become answered.
"We've worked long and hard on it, and we're still working long and hard on it. There's still some unanswered questions we have about the USAS proposal," Billups said. "There are some questions about the legal impact it has on existing suppliers and consumers."
Student activists expressed enthusiasm that the proposal could move forward.
"I think it's exciting that the chancellor has taken our proposal into consideration," said UW-Madison junior Joel Feingold, also a member of SLAC and LLPC. "As long as at the end in the policy unions are preferred and required, that's good. We can take tentative steps as long as they advance us towards this goal of union production of collegiate apparel."