Interim Chancellor David Ward acknowledged Monday that mediation with Adidas is moving slowly. The mediation began because an Indonesian subcontractor, PT Kizone, fired employees without severance pay. Labor activists have been clamoring for the University of Wisconsin to cut Adidas or at least put it on notice for termination.
Before paying severance pay, the owner of PT Kizone, Jin Woo Kim, fled the country. Keyword in this discussion: subcontracted. The university did not enter into a contract with PT Kizone; Adidas did. If there are any contract violations requiring termination, then they will be between PT Kizone and Adidas. Unless, of course, UW’s contract with Adidas includes a vicarious liability clause, something that would hold Adidas responsible for subcontracted companies. But as a correspondence between UW’s legal counsel and Adidas’ shows, that’s not the case. Thus, in its contract with UW, Adidas is not responsible for PT Kizone’s actions.
According to the Labor Code attached to UW’s contract with Adidas, UW could cut ties if Adidas, knowing about the labor violations, continued business. But UW didn’t continue doing business once it found out. See where this is going? Adidas really hasn’t done anything wrong. It didn’t fire those workers. It has no liability for a subcontracted company; Adidas cut ties when it found out. Hell, the company is even going the extra mile and helping find fired PT Kizone employees new employment, 300 of whom have been hired by Adidas suppliers.
Jon Perkins, a member of the Student Labor Action Committee, told The Badger Herald, “Mediation largely operates without input from shared governance groups or the general public, … and it is not mutually exclusive with putting Adidas on notice.” There’s a reason mediation operates without input from shared governance and the general public – typically, they have no clue what the details of the situation are.
Mediation is not mutually exclusive with putting Adidas on termination notice, but it would be an unwise move, considering we’re still in a contract with them. Threatening to terminate our contract would create a hostile relationship with Adidas, and the reality is we probably won’t cut ties with it when the mediation is done. And then there’s the fact that we probably can’t terminate our contract with Adidas. Because, like I said, Adidas hasn’t done anything wrong. As Ward has noted, Adidas could easily sue us if we try. Attempting to terminate our contract with Adidas is akin to firing a CEO because a secretary embezzled money. Adidas would sue and it would win because it did not violate its contract with UW.
Sarah Blaskey, another SLAC member, said “We need to hold the university accountable. We need to stand up for workers without a voice.” First off, what is there to hold the university accountable for? Nothing. It hasn’t done anything wrong. Terminating the contract with Adidas would ensure the fired Indonesian workers wouldn’t get severance pay. Putting Adidas on termination notice would make mediation hostile, decreasing the likelihood of a desirable outcome for all.
Second, “standing up for workers,” in this instance, would mean finding Jin Woo Kim, wherever he is hiding, and making him pay. I agree that workers should receive severance pay, but it’s not Adidas’ responsibility. SLAC continues to place blame on Adidas, and it is simply an attempt to find the nearest scapegoat, regardless of guilt. Yes, the situation sucks, but we shouldn’t resort to blaming a company that did nothing wrong.
The push to blame Adidas is coming only from ignoramuses who are quick to believe that all the facts must support their position, without actually checking them. We leave physics to the physicists and math to the mathematicians, so please, let’s leave law to the lawyers.
Reginald Young ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in legal studies and Scandinavian studies.
