Ellington

Just a little more than a month ago, the UW celebrated an apparent victory for international labor rights after direct intervention brought about severance payments to almost 1,000 laid-off workers in Guatemala.

Yesterday, some 30 members of the Student Labor Action Project (SLAP) gathered in Red Square before entering Gerberding Hall to ask UW President Mark Emmert once again to protest poor treatment of factory workers producing UW apparel worldwide.

“Two unionized factories that produced logo apparel for the UW for Nike … shut down in January,” said SLAP member George Robertson. “And workers weren’t paid their legally owed severance pay, so $1.5 million is stilled owed to these workers.”

Nike, like all UW licensees, agrees to a code of conduct, a major stipulation of which is that workers get paid all legally mandated benefits. In Honduras, part of that is severance pay for workers when a factory closes.

“The fact that these workers have gone unpaid is a violation of that code of conduct,” Robertson said.

The first step, Robertson said, is for the UW to notify Nike that it has violated the code of conduct and not re-sign the licensing contract with the company — which is set to expire in July — until Nike has at least made a “good-faith move” in getting the workers paid.

SLAP is also trying to make sure these violations happen less frequently by having a student voice at the negotiating table with UW licensees and UW Trademarks and Licensing.

“SLAP has direct contact with workers all over the world,” said SLAP member Amanda Alice. “So bringing a student voice, we would be representing workers as well as our own interests as students.”

Alice said violations, such as the Nike dispute, are a direct result of students and SLAP members not being included in the contract and negotiating process.

However, Director of UW Trademarks and Licensing Kathy Hoggan said the issue is more complicated, explaining that Nike is as powerless to get these workers paid as the UW is.

Companies like Nike work with many different factories around the world, Hoggan said, and with the amount of factories that are closing every day, it would not be economically feasible for Nike to pay the severance of every laid-off worker.

“The factory’s closed; they’re out of business because they have no money,” Hoggan said. “Who are we going to pressure? The University of Washington can’t pay; we can’t keep our own people employed. Nike can’t pay [the severance]; they can’t float the boat for the whole world.”

Hoggan praised the work of SLAP but insisted that there was nothing that could be done. Even if the university decided to threaten Nike, renewal of the contract happens automatically through the Collegiate Licensing Company, which wrote the code of conduct UW uses, if the company is in good standing. Schools can opt out of the renewal, but Nike has never been dropped from any of the approximately 100 schools it licenses with, and Nike’s next six-month contract extension is expected to go through, according to a press release from Nike.

“There’s discussions happening in big government offices all over about ‘What are we gonna do with the economy and the unemployment?’” Hoggan said. “And that’s in every country.”

Reach reporter Morgan Gard at news@dailyuw.com.