Chancellor John Wiley’s (via special assistant Lamar Billups) recent announcement that UW will enter into an agreement with the Workers Rights Consortium to demand of all companies producing UW licensed apparel full disclosure of all wages paid to laborers in factories across the world.

As a result of this decision, UW will become the first school in the nation to require absolute disclosure of worker’s wages at the factories of all contractors and subcontractors for licensed apparel and other material.

Prodded by student unrest to join the Workers Rights Consortium under the reign of Chancellor John Ward in 2000, the university currently pays an affiliation fee equal to 1 percent of revenue garnered from licensing deals and in exchange receives the assurance that licensees abide by a code of conduct stipulating workers must be treated legally, decently and fairly by the standards established in the countries of export. UW brings in approximately $1 million in revenue annually from licensing deals. The WRC currently acts as a first responder to workers’ complaints in countries around the world, performing investigations on factories and other worksites.

Last fall, we encouraged the university to enter into a contract with Nike to produce licensed apparel for this university because of the possibilities for economic benefit that a merger between two recognizable logos — the ‘W’ and the Swoosh — could bring to this campus. Nike stands to profit greatly from this marriage, as Adidas and hundreds of other apparel producers do now.

Workers Rights Consortium already audits Nike, Adidas and other licensees of the UW logo to ensure that their labor standards are up to international snuff. This is laudable work, ensuring licensing companies are treating their workers humanely and meeting at least the minimum wage in every country in which they have factories.

But once such licensing agreements are made, Bascom must realize that the manufacturing work in question is no longer being done by employees under the tight public scrutiny of the Wisconsin government but rather by those of the private sector, accountable to the public’s eyes only to the extent which their companies comply with the laws of the lands which they operate. Just as UW has the right to affiliate with licensee sponsors it deems unacceptable, so too do companies have the right to disassociate with licensors deemed too intrusive.

Billups said in a statement to The Badger Herald that “the current code of conduct that all licensees have adopted requires that wage data and other financial records be available to monitoring organizations, licensors like universities and the Collegiate Licensing Company. I suspect that realistically, different companies’ capacity to report may vary from place to place, but the data should already be there. So I don’t expect any major changes in revenue.”

Should this prediction hold true, Wiley’s decision to require wage disclosure could prevent a potentially damning “Kathie Lee Gifford” situation from occurring here and is a bold move toward assuaging the public-relations nightmare such an incident would induce with few negative consequences.

As an agent of the state, this university has a public obligation to uphold the same standards in its consumption of consumer goods as it follows when employing its own unskilled labor force — one that is very well compensated. In an age of globalization, steps to ensure this university is not actively engaging in the oppression of foreign workers and instead supports responsible economic growth and legal treatment of workers is commendable.

However, no firm plans to implement the disclosure plans are currently in place. Billups said he and the university’s subcommittee for licensing plans to sit down with representatives of the WRC in hopes of working out a feasible arrangement for wage disclosure.

Adidas-Saloman, UW’s sideline apparel sponsor and one of the chief companies set to be affected by Wiley’s decision, was made aware of the decision. “The chancellor’s office has invited us to participate in forum discussions about the issue and the policy next month,” wrote Anne Putz of Adidas. “Many of our stakeholders welcome our openness, transparency and honesty and have supported our existing policies and approaches. As with all our stakeholders we strive to communicate in an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect.” We sincerely hope Adidas will live up to its professed word. However, Putz went on to speculate that Adidas feels the measures they already undertake are indeed enough to guarantee compliance. UW’s decision to monitor the situation could work to the benefit of the university’s public relations.

This disclosure decision is, as characterized by John Lucas of University Communications, indicative of UW’s effort to lead the nation on this issue. But we urge the administration to remember that trade standards are the province of the U.S. government, not Bascom Hall, and so long as each country’s humanitarian standards are being met, UW-Madison should make its licensing decisions based on what is of broad economic and political interest of this university. At this point, we trust that they are doing so.