Apparel bearing Bucky Badger and other UW-Madison logos sparked lively discussion at a panel Wednesday examining the rights of workers who make the clothes, responsibilities of those licensed to sell them and complications of monitoring these conditions.
Approximately 40 people gathered at the Pyle Center to learn about issues and challenges involved in improving conditions for garment workers. The panel and audience members focused especially on the issue of wage disclosure. UW-Madison recently added wage disclosure as a requirement for all 450 companies licensed to use the university's logo on products.
Panelist Scott Nova is executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, which universities use to monitor licensee compliance to their codes of conduct. The panel also included Kathy Stevens, the university liaison for the Fair Labor Association, and Gregg Nebel, director of social and environmental affairs for Adidas, one of UW-Madison's largest licensees.
Nebel said the university's demand for wage disclosure was confusing to Adidas because it would be difficult to relate this to living wage, and some of the company's 34 compliance staff members would have to spend time investigating wages instead of working to improve things in the field.
\All we're going to be doing is crunching numbers and then defending those numbers when they come out,"" Nebel said.
Nebel cited challenges to negotiating with factories, saying Adidas may not be the only company purchasing from a factory and in turn is in a difficult position to negotiate for wages.
Stevens said wage disclosure seems like a good idea, but there are complexities involved such as ensuring accuracy of data reported.
Nova added wages are not set based on employee needs, but on what the market will bear so a company can remain competitive.
""The reality is, wages are too low in the industry,"" Nova said. He agreed with Nebel that challenges to wage disclosure exist, but said if the company is complying with the existing policy to pay the federal minimum wage or prevailing local wage, it should already have these numbers.
The panel was part of a two-day conference titled ""The Labor Behind the Label,"" which continues at the Pyle Center today.
