There was no feeling of guilt as I slid on my Adidas brand shoes this morning. Tying them — a skill I’ve only recently acquired — I didn’t stop once to think about the El Salvadorian child who labored over my cheap pieces of footwear. I guess I must be a monster. After all, these aren’t PF Fliers; they aren’t making me run faster or jump higher. These are just shoes. And I had the audacity to buy them from Adidas, a behemoth company screwing over its foreign employees. It’s not like I didn’t have options. Nikes were one aisle over, and the Reeboks were on sale.
Fortunately, the UW Labor Licensing Policy Committee is working hard to keep Adidas on the straight and narrow. As a major apparel sponsor, the company helps supply the university with necessities like athletic uniforms and shoes. But within the last two years, issues regarding the treatment of employees at a now-defunct textiles factory in El Salvador have led many to question the ethics behind our school’s agreement.
The company is said to, among many things, owe their former employees around $825,000 in pay and benefits, which is a big number to me, but hardly to Adidas. So why doesn’t Adidas just pony up and give people the money they’ve earned, especially when one of their 20 college partners has repeatedly expressed concerns? They haven’t paid because they don’t have to. As much as we’d like to moralize the situation, there is no feasible reason to abandon a company like Adidas for labor violations.
I am not trying to undermine the importance of labor laws. Groups from all along the political spectrum, from the Communist Party to the Catholic Social Teachings, express the importance of the worker. Heck, I wish we could set up a UW committee to investigate the way my mom made me clean as a child.
The University of Wisconsin faces the same problem. Sure, we could abandon our Adidas agreement, but one would be beyond foolish to assume companies like Nike, Reebok or Under Armour are giving their employees vacation time and Christmas bonuses. This is the nature of a very ugly business, and while reform is needed, it must come from a much bigger group than a licensing committee at a state university. Leaving Adidas won’t do us any good unless we find a viable alternative, and while there might be some free-trade, worker-conscious brand willing to step in, I don’t know of it. Besides, I don’t want to see the football team playing in hippie-hemp jerseys. They just don’t breathe well.
Those on the fringe would also suggest nothing will ever destroy a contract like the one between our Badgers and the Adidas people because of the money involved. Just like Coca-Cola and Pepsi engaging in bidding wars to supply a school, apparel companies will shell out some serious cash to have their insignia on a cardinal jersey. Even the shoes on the Barry Alvarez statue outside of Camp Randall are Adidas. Now maybe he really liked the shoes, or maybe the sculptor wanted to capture the essence of his feet, but it feels like a little much.
The University of Wisconsin should not allow itself to be represented by an organization refusing to pay its workers. It’s illegal, unethical and probably not good for karma. But abandoning Adidas will only result in acquiring a new contract with an equally shady company, and like rearranging the seat assignments on a prison bus, it’s not going to change anything. So the next time you put on sneakers with a big-time logo painstakingly sewn into the side by somebody half your age, don’t feel bad. “Just Do It.”
Sean Kittridge ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in journalism.
