October 20, 1999
The university has established a process to carefully review our membership in the Fair Labor Association and the new proposal from students, the Worker Rights Consortium. The UW-Madison CLC Task Force Advisory Committee has agreed to undertake a thoughtful examination of the Worker Rights Consortium and the FLA monitoring proposal, which is expected early next month. It would be premature to withdraw from the FLA when the "sweatshop" advisory committee - comprised of students, academic staff and faculty - has not had a chance to review either proposal.
I welcome the proposal from the Worker Rights Consortium. It represents a viable option for the university to consider as we continue to work to end sweatshops. Following the advisory committee's review of the student proposal and the FLA monitoring standards, the committee will hold a public hearing to receive input from the campus community and concerned citizens.
Let me reiterate what the university is doing to end sweatshop labor. These efforts are consistent with UW-Madison's tradition of providing national leadership on pressing social issues:
- UW-Madison is imposing strict new requirements for our licensed manufacturers as of January 1, 2000. We are one of very few universities to require full public disclosure of manufacturing locations and the protection of female workers from discrimination and harassment.
- The university is implementing an international pilot monitoring project. Verité, a respected non-profit global monitoring firm, will monitor factories of three UW-Madison licensees in Costa Rica, Korea and Mexico. The university is also working toward creating a domestic pilot monitoring project.
- UW-Madison is one of only two universities, along with North Carolina, helping draft the FLA global monitoring guidelines.
- UW-Madison is committed to the study of living wages and is sponsoring a national symposium on living wage research Nov. 19-21 (http://www.lafollette.wisc.edu/livingwage/).