After it met in closed session last Thursday, UW-Madison's Labor Licensing Policy Committee has come to an agreement regarding the university's contract with Adidas and the Hermosa factory situation.
Although the decision will not be made public to the university community until Friday, Special Assistant to the Chancellor Dawn Crim said UW-Madison's Student Labor Action Coalition members and UW-Madison administrators reached a happy compromise in their discussions.
""I can't specifically say what the decision was, but I can say that the committee reached a unanimous decision on the strategy that we will employ,"" Crim said, ""and we feel that it will be a productive one.""
SLAC member and LLPC member Joel Feingold also said the labor group was pleased with the university's decision.
After approximately 70 workers were allegedly laid off from the now-closed Hermosa factory in El Salvador—an Adidas subcontractor—and blacklisted from the apparel industry for unionizing, SLAC members lobbied the university to cut the UW Athletic Department's contract with Adidas for its team apparel.
Numerous protests and rallies were held, the most recent being April 18, as SLAC members marched up Bascom Hill, chanting for UW-Madison to end the contract. A large paper mache boot was also left in Chancellor John Wiley's office earlier this semester, along with athletic shoes on a separate incident, urging him to ""give Adidas the boot.""
Crim went to El Salvador to investigate the factory situation in mid-April and said at an April 25 LLPC meeting that the factories' working conditions were suitable and that the workers were being paid living wages, but that it appeared the former Hermosa workers had indeed been blacklisted from getting employment in the apparel industry after unionizing.
There was no confidence in the El Salvadorian government to provide the Hermosa workers' unpaid wages, Crim said at the April 25 meeting, and Hermosa's factory owner ""basically watched it close"" and is now being prosecuted in a court of law.
""In the closed session, we discussed a variety of strategies for how to get the ultimate goal, which was to help the workers in two areas, one being getting their back pay and the other area being getting reemployment,"" Crim said, adding that the committee used the university's legal counsel to help inform its decision.
The legal counsel was necessary, she explained, because the closed session discussion dealt with contractual matters concerning a lucrative business deal with a powerhouse company like Adidas.
The final decision will be announced to the public and the university committee Friday.
Check http://news.wisc.edu for a University Communications release.
