The Student Labor Action Coalition is once again pressuring UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley to end the university’s exclusive contract with adidas for athletic apparel.
The long-running dispute stems from treatment of former workers at the Hermosa factory in El Salvador, which closed in 2005 while owing 260 workers about $825,000 in back pay and severance funds. Sixty-three workers who were union members protested and were blacklisted and labeled as troublemakers, the students say.
There are also allegations that the owner of the Hermosa factory, which had made clothing for adidas, embezzled some employee funds.
“With four months left in his tenure as chancellor, Wiley has one last chance to redeem himself by taking decisive action in support of workers by cutting the UW’s exclusive contract with adidas. If he doesn’t act, students will forever remember him as the Sweatshop Chancellor who sold out UW-Madison to corporate interests,” said coalition member Phoebe Taurick.