[media-credit name=’BRYAN FAUST/Herald photo’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′]
[/media-credit]The University of Wisconsin Board of Regents passed a new contract with adidas and discussed issues with Gov. Jim Doyle’s executive budget proposal in a meeting Friday.
In a 10-4 decision, the board allowed the new UW contract with adidas Promotional Retail Operations Inc. to pass, despite concern from students about the protection of workers’ rights.
Adidas provides UW with athletic equipment and royalties gained through the use of university insignia and name.
UW students Liana Dalton and Joel Feingold, who are members of the UW Labor Licensing Committee, asked that the contract also allow for public disclosure of records because of concerns with the humanity of worker conditions. However, under the new contract, disclosure was limited to the office of the chancellor.
“It is fundamental these public disclosure mechanisms happen or else we will have no idea what adidas is doing with our good name,” Feingold said.
Feingold and Dalton said they believe disclosure should also be given to the Workers Rights Consortium, a non-profit group that enforces Codes of Conduct created by the organization’s members.
“I work with people who work in this field on a daily basis. Their rights are being systematically violated on a daily basis in the name of UW,” Dalton said.
However, business and finance chair Mark Bradley said if anybody had evidence that there are workers’-rights violations, they could bring them to the UW chancellor.
Chancellor John Wiley thanked the board for passing the resolution and students for keeping the issue in the spotlight.
“Most of what we [are wearing in] this room was made under sweatshop conditions … and that’s scandalous,” Wiley said. “We’ve negotiated the best deal as far as I’m aware.”
Regents also met with the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee liaison Rep. David Ward, R-Fort Atkinson, to discuss some of the concerns the state will attempt to address about the budget and how those will differ from Doyle’s executive budget proposal.
“We’re looking at another deficit … if you’re still behind you tighten your belt and you try and fill the hole,” Ward said.
According to Ward, the Joint Finance Committee’s budget proposal would make serious changes to the governor’s earlier proposal.
“We’re going to tear the governor’s budget apart,” Ward said. “Our goal is to come out of the process [with a budget] that spends less, that taxes less and [that] borrows less.”
While the UW System is a major priority of the state, Ward said there were other objectives the state also had to focus on.
“K-12, shared revenue and then medical systems are three areas we’re most concerned about,” Ward said. “In a perfect world if we had a budget surplus, clearly the UW System would be one of those places we’d want to make a large investment.”
However, Regent David Walsh said he was concerned with how the state was prioritizing the UW System. Walsh said he understood why the UW System was forced to take a $250 million cut two years ago, but now it was time to move forward.
