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Adidas, UW keep relationship alive

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Also by Laura Sexauer:

School of Business ranks 33 in social, environmental initiatives (October 15, 2007)
Activist advocates for animals (October 10, 2007)
UW receives energy grant (October 1, 2007)
Women's summit to teach executive power (September 28, 2007)

by Laura Sexauer

Monday, October 29, 2007

After pressure from a University of Wisconsin student group urging the university to end its ties with Adidas, UW officials decided to keep its athletic apparel contract with Adidas Friday.

The Labor Licensing Policy Committee and members of the Student Labor Action Coalition met with Adidas Group’s director of social and environmental affairs Gregg Nebel before the agreement was made to discuss the company’s progress in a case involving the embezzlement of employees’ pension and social security funds in Hermosa, El Salvador.

Adidas is publishing a letter to the Salvadoran government today in two major Salvadoran newspapers in attempts to pressure the government to take action against the Hermosa factory owner, Nebel said.

According to Dawn Crim, special assistant to the chancellor for community relations, Hermosa employees who unionized to demand their money were terminated and blacklisted in 2005, preventing workers from finding further employment.

"Corporate responsibility is something everybody is concerned about," Nebel said. "We pursued all the proper, what we thought to be legal recourse to try and get attention to the workers."

According to Crim, the committee wants to continue the relationship with Adidas because the company is making efforts to solve the situation at Hermosa.

Crim said it is important for Adidas to follow though with the Hermosa investigation, even if UW had pulled its license.

"We must make the industry better as a whole by looking at root causes and long term relationships," Crim said.

Although the ultimate decision was to continue the relationship, SLAC representatives were unsatisfied. All three student participants voted to terminate the relationship.

"If Adidas’ system requires this long to resolve even such an obvious case of labor rights violations as Hermosa, that system is obviously broken," SLAC member Jan Van Tol said. "A contract cut would remind Adidas that a multiyear timeline is unacceptable to workers whose lives are on the line."

SLAC member Chynna Haas said the embezzlement of funds and employee blacklisting reveal Adidas’s neglect in monitoring its factories. Now, two and a half years later, many workers still have not received their funds or found additional employment, she said.

"[The workers] are still blacklisted, unable to work and provide for their families," Haas said. "Many are ill and are unable to receive their promised health care, preventing them from getting medications that they need."

The labor licensing policy says when UW licenses companies to manufacture products with the UW logo or name, the company is required to follow a code of conduct to prevent sweatshop abuse. If the company violates this contract and neglects to correct the situation, UW would be entitled to pull the license.

Some issues included in the code are wages, overtime, hours, women’s rights and child labor.

Nebel said Adidas developed a training package outlining proper hiring and firing practices and delivered to factories and labor inspectors in June 2006.

The LLPC will meet again Nov. 16 to further discuss the Adidas contact.

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Anonymous (October 29, 2007 @ 11:23am):

There wasn't actually a vote, and some of the most vocal committee members weren't present. Much of what Nebel said attempted to absolve adidas of their responsibility, blaming everyone from UW students to the workers for adidas' inability to rectify the situation, and came just short of calling both students and workers liars.

Anonymous (October 29, 2007 @ 4:03pm):

To the previous message I would like to respond, "yes, but it should have been obvious from the start". and Why? Mr. Nebel is a representative of Adidas (no matter what his title says about environment or what nots, it's just true), so anything that he would say would of course place Adidas in a positive light. The beaurocratic forces in power never like activists and working class people and will always try to pit them as liars and criminals. That's how they keep on top, that's how Nebel keeps on top. Imagine if he told the truth (heaven forbide); he'd be out of a job; we wouldn't read about him in the paper because a new representative would come forth willing to lie. That's just it.

Anonymous (October 29, 2007 @ 10:36pm):

wow. so it's cruel and unjust to fire workers trying to unionize in el salvador but "economically stable" to do so here in the US....

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