Tag Archives: severance

PT Kizone Workers Win Right to Intervene in UW v. Adidas Lawsuit

By Melissa Horsfall and Lingran Kong

After months of legal wrangling, the Dane County Circuit Court in Wisconsin has ruled that the union representing former Adidas garment workers has the right to intervene as a third party in the ongoing lawsuit between the University of Wisconsin and Adidas. The UW filed suit against Adidas last summer over the company’s refusal to pay $1.8 million in legally owed severance pay to 2,800 former workers at PT Kizone, a shuttered Adidas supplier factory in Indonesia.

After the workers filed to intervene in September, Adidas maneuvered to try to block the effort, but the judge ruled against the company, recognizing that the PT Kizone workers’ union has the right to intervene because it has differing interests, goals, and strategies than the university. This decision will allow the workers to present their case alongside the Wisconsin Attorney General, who represents the UW.

UW-Madison has an $11 million sponsorship agreement that grants exclusive rights to Adidas to outfit UW athletes. Students, along with community allies like the South Central Federation of Labor and the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice have called on UW-Madison to terminate the contract. In November of 2011, UW-Madison’s Labor Licensing Policy Committee recommended that Chancellor Ward cut ties with Adidas, and the Dane County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution this summer supporting the effort.

Since the lawsuit was filed, Cornell University, Oberlin College, the University of Washington, Rutgers University, Georgetown University, and the College of William & Mary have all ended or pledged to end their contracts with Adidas over the PT Kizone violations. The decision by the court to allow the workers’ union to join the suit brings UW-Madison one step closer to joining these six universities in taking a stand to demand accountability and fair labor practices from companies producing collegiate apparel.

Melissa Horsfall and Lingran Kong are students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and members of the Student Labor Action Coalition, a USAS affiliate.

Tell Adidas: Stop Making Excuses — Pay the PT Kizone Workers Now!

Organizations from all over the world are telling Adidas to stop throwing around excuses and finally pay up what they owe the PT Kizone workers in Indonesia. We want Adidas to know that we will not be silenced by empty gestures.

Join the global Facebook action and tell Adidas Nothing Is Impossible!

  • Go to http://www.facebook.com/adidasoriginals and leave your own comments on any of their posts or copy and paste our message:
  • “I’m shocked hear that you are refusing to pay PT Kizone workers the money they are owed — $1.8 million is nothing to you. UNLIKE.”
  • Then, like USAS on Facebook for more actions throughout the week.

Leave your comments, share with your friends, and let the global action begin!

The PT Kizone factory closed in April 2011, leaving 2,800 people out of work and owed $1.8 million in severance. For over a year and a half, 2,800 ex-PT Kizone workers have been fighting for the severance pay they are owed since their boss suddenly closed the factory and fled the country. Over the last six months, PT Kizone workers have been joined by thousands of supporters from across the world who have taken action demanding that Adidas pay up. Despite this, Adidas still insists they will not pay.

The campaign pressure is working: although Adidas continues to deny responsibility, they have tried to deflect criticism by coming up with various schemes to get themselves off the hook, including handing out food vouchers and organizing a summit in Switzerland last month to try to burnish their public image. This is not enough – PT Kizone workers simply want what they are owed and we won’t stop until they get it.

Adidas is feeling the heat, but we need more. We want to show Adidas they can’t ignore us. Together we will continue breathing down Adidas’ neck until the garment workers at the PT Kizone factory are paid the $1.8 million in legally-mandated severance they are owed.

PT Kizone workers protest in Jakarta to demand $1.8 million owed from adidas

On June 11- the kick off of the adidas-sponsored Euro 2012 soccer tournament –  PT Kizone workers and their families took to the streets and marched in Jakarta to demand adidas pay the $1.8 million dollars owed to them in severance pay.

The workers stopped at the German Embassy, calling on them to pressure adidas, which is headquartered in Germany, to comply with their commitments to Indonesian workers. They marched on to the British Embassy, demanding that the money owed, a tiny fraction of the $160 million adidas paid to sponsor the London 2012 Olympics, is paid now. One worker told journalists that “adidas succeeded in becoming a London 2012 Olympics sponsor – why are they leaving workers hanging?”

Protesters in Jakarta were joined by activists across Europe, including in Austria, Spain, Denmark and the UK , who organised a variety of actions outside adidas stores in major cities to highlight the plight of Kizone workers and to demand that adidas pay up.

PT Kizone workers reject adidas’s insulting “food voucher” proposal.

Just days after the demonstrations took place adidas asked to meet with both the district level union, which represents the majority of PT Kizone workers, and the factory-level union. This is the first time adidas has agreed to meet with the union body that the majority of workers have chosen to represent them. At the meeting, which took place on June 12, adidas presented a plan to provide food aid worth approximately US$86,000 too all of the Kizone workers prior to Eid al-Fitr, a key holiday in the Muslim calendar, which this year falls in mid-August.

Both unions rejected this as an inadequate response, and demanded that adidas ensure workers receive full severance. In fact workers had already made clear that food vouchers were not sufficient to resolve this dispute. In a letter sent to adidas the previous week they stated;

“While we are desperately in need of any form of financial support for our families we are insulted by the idea that adidas needs to “assess” who among us is in “true need.” We earned this severance and we can assure you that our families need it. Our children are hungry but food vouchers will not keep our children in school or our families in our homes. We call on adidas to ensure we receive all the money we are legally owed and that we earned making adidas products…”

Following the meeting one worker stated that “This [offer] is not compensation or genuine care from adidas; rather, this is an insult to all of us.”

 adidas is admitting that the workers who sewed their apparel for our Universities are literally starving. Last week, adidas entered mediation with the University of Wisconsin, who is considering severing their multi-million dollar sponsorship agreement with adidas over adidas’s refusal to pay PT Kizone workers. Take action here and demand UW Chancellor David Ward stand up to adidas and cut the contract for violating the code of conduct and refusing to pay the $1.8 million legally owed to workers.

Learn more about the case here: Solidarity with PT Kizone workers in Indonesia

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

USAS at the University of Washington Pressures Adidas to Pay PT Kizone Workers

Originally posted in The Daily at the University of Washington, May 11, 2012 

By Jillian Stampher

As of Friday, May 11, 2012

A large blue check for $1.8 million sits in UW President Michael Young’s office after being presented by members of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) on Friday afternoon.

The check, signed by members of the UW community, was meant to remind Young to present a letter of final notice to the adidas Group, with which the university has an apparel contract. The $1.8 million refers to the money adidas allegedly owes its workers in Indonesia, after their severance. This would be a violation of the UW’s code of conduct.

The UW is not alone in facing these student demands — Georgetown University is investigating labor violations and the University of Wisconsin ended its contract with adidas due to the alleged violations in February of this year.

Earlier this year USAS demanded Young end the contract with the company. To reiterate this, the group sent a letter to the president with its demands. Janis Marks, Young’s scheduler, said he received their letter but she doesn’t know his current status on the response. Young was not in his office during the presentation of the check.

“It’s in the works and that’s rather broad and I don’t know enough to get any more narrowed in on that,” Marks said.

USAS member Grace Flott said the group did not expect to speak directly with Young, but members are hoping for a quick response.

“He’s already been given this recommendation and we hope that having that check in front of him will just serve as a reminder that the student body is really upset about the situation with Adidas,” Flott said. “We hope that he will take that consideration seriously and put him on notice by the end of the week.”

Reach reporter Jillian Stampher at email hidden; JavaScript is required. Twitter: @JillianStampher

Want to end sweatshop abuse and help build worker power in the global economy? Join USAS’s Anti-Sweatshop Campaigns Committee!

 

USAS joins with Clean Clothes Campaign to Demand Adidas Pay $1.8 M Owed to Indonesian Workers

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 On Day of Adidas AGM, US, Europe Anti-Sweatshop Advocates Demand $1.8M Owed Indonesian Workers

 Teresa Cheng, International Campaigns Coordinator, United Students Against Sweatshops, email hidden; JavaScript is required, 925-330-4449

Lars Stubbe, Urgent Appeals Coordinator, Clean Clothes Campaign Germany, email hidden; JavaScript is required, +49 (0)30 42 08 202-52

THURSDAY, MAY 10 –  Today, as adidas-Group shareholders gather for adidas’s Annual General Meeting in Fuerth, Germany, the two leading anti-sweatshop groups of North America and Europe publicly urge the company to pay the $1.8 million unlawfully withheld from 2,800 workers at its supplier factory in Indonesia. Despite posting first quarter net profits of $375 million and facing pressure from U.S. universities demanding Indonesian workers. adidas’s top three executives earned a total compensation of $14.5 million in FY 2011, more than six times the sum owed to the 2,800 Indonesian workers. United Students Against Sweatshops, the largest student campaign organization in the U.S., has joined with the Clean Clothes Campaign, a European alliance of organizations advocating better working conditions for garment workers, to ensure adidas’s shareholders address the dire conditions facing the company’s Indonesian workers at their Annual General Meeting today.

2,800 workers from the now-shuttered PT Kizone factory, a disclosed adidas supplier until January 2011, sewed adidas apparel for $0.60 an hour, and were left without their $3.3 million in legally-owed severance pay when the factory closed in April last year, according to the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), an independent labor rights watchdog organization. While the other companies that placed orders in the factory have paid a portion of the severance, Adidas is the only major buyer that has refused to contribute a penny, creating a crisis for former PT Kizone workers who have had to withdraw their children from school, are barely able to afford two meals a day for their families, and are mired deeper and deeper into debt.

Renowned U.S. universities have demanded that adidas end the crisis for former PT Kizone workers., including the University of Wisconsin and the University of Michigan, where adidas provides uniforms and sports equipment for university athletes as part of a $60 million contract. Instead of agreeing to abide by these universities’ labor codes of conduct, adidas has flown to campuses across the country defending its stance. At the University of Wisconsin, the company has even threatened to take legal action against the University should the school sever their sponsorship agreement with adidas in response to the company’s refusal to comply with the University’s labor standards.

Facing mounting criticism from universities with lucrative apparel licensing contracts with adidas, the company’s position has shifted from entirely shirking responsibility to notifying Universities they may potentially offer some workers food vouchers, which universities and students critique as inadequate and distracting.

“adidas’s sweatshop abuse is outrageous,” said Teresa Cheng, International Campaigns Coordinator of United Students Against Sweatshops. “adidas’s refusal to pay PT Kizone workers conforms with their shameful track record of abandoning its Indonesian workers, after years of their hard work in helping adidas make record profits.”

“As a sponsor of the Olympic Games adidas is becoming untrustworthy due to its reaction in this case”, said Lars Stubbe, Urgent Appeals coordinator of the Clean Clothes Campaign Germany. “A company that publicly supports the Olympic ideals of fairness and respect should not systematically violate workers’ rights.”

adidas’s track record is dismal: over 10,000 workers from other closed adidas supplier factories, including at PT Spotec and PT Dong Joe, were never paid the severance they were owed, and six years later, the company has failed to ensure that a majority of them are rehired. adidas has also been under fire this week for failing to address extensive workers’ rights violations in Olympic production sites, see: http://www.playfair2012.org.uk/2012/05/fair-games-human-rights-of-workers-in-olympic-2012-supplier-factories/#more-2521

 

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U Michigan USAS demands President Coleman cut Adidas!

Originally posted in the Michigan Daily, April 13, 2012 

Protesters urge University to cut ties with Adidas

By SABA JAVADI, For the Daily
Published April 12, 2012

A crowd of students gathered in front of the Cube by the Fleming Administration Building yesterday, anxiously awaiting for the moment they would bring their sealed message and large pair of scissors to University President Mary Sue Coleman’s office — symbolizing their desire for the University to severe sponsorship rights and license athletic apparel agreements with Adidas.

United Students Against Sweatshops — a student organization that works to prevent Fortune 500 companies from abusing their workers — started their criticism of Adidas when the company inexplicably shut down one of its factories in Indonesia without compensation for their laborers last April. The action violated Adidas’ contract with the University because the company disregarded the University’s pre-established code of conduct that requires that all workers must be compensated.

LSA junior Tessa Fast, a USAS member who helped organize the event, said Adidas made $13 billion in revenue in 2011, which included the severance it failed to pay its Indonesian workers.

Fast added that the company made an additional $1.8 million by ignoring severance payments.

According to Sioban Harlow, chair of the President’s Advisory Council on Labor Standards and Human Rights, the University’s code of conduct is a principle adopted to ensure that companies the University works with meet human rights standards.

Part of the code of conduct between the University and Adidas requires that the company must pay its workers. However, Public Policy senior Joe Varilone, a USAS member, said Adidas officials argue that they did not personally shut down the factory, thus making the company unaccountable for any negative effects on the workers.

Varilone said that regardless of the fact that Adidas did not intentionally shut down the factory, it is responsible for paying the workers under stipulations of the code.

“When we spoke with (Adidas representative) Gregg Nebel he acknowledged that the workers have not received $1.8 million, but believes it is the factories responsibility,” Fast said. “They openly admit that these people have not received their money, but they will not pay.”

Upon entering the office of Gary Krenz, special counsel to the University president, USAS members began reading paragraphs of their letter aloud to Krenz, who followed along with a straight face.

Krenz waited until the end of the recitation, after which he asked, “We do share your concerns, how do we achieve the ends?”

According to USAS members, their goal is to inspire the University to pressure Adidas to pay the $1.8 million in severance by releasing a public statement condemning Adidas’s failures to respect the basic labor rights of the workers who make Michigan apparel. So far, the University’s committee of human rights has reviewed the issue, confirmed that the workers have not been paid and is working toward a strategy to compensate them.

“Adidas talks about how they are giving humanitarian aid to the workers but that is really bogus because what they are giving them is hardly anything compared to what they owe them,” Varilone said. “Some people have called it cutting off someone’s leg and giving them a band-aid.”

 

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Want to help end sweatshop abuse and build worker power in the global economy? Join USAS’s Anti-Sweatshop Campaigns Committee!

U Wisconsin Students Speak Out Against Adidas

Originally posted in The Badger Herald, March 27, 2012 

 

Students speak out against Adidas

By Kaylie Duffy
Tuesday, March 27, 2012 9:41 p.m.
Updated Wednesday, March 28, 2012 1:32:59 a.m.

 

The Student Labor Action Coalition hosted an informational session Wednesday evening to discuss Adidas’ alleged labor violations in Indonesia.

According to SLAC member Taylor Marx, colleges including the University of Wisconsin have contracted with owners of sweatshops whose workers are not getting rightfully paid. One such incident involves an Adidas-contracted factory in Indonesia, called PT Kizone, which shut down more than a year ago without paying 2,800 workers.

In 2001, UW signed on with Worker Rights Consortium, an independent labor rights monitoring organization that ensures universities are avoiding contracting with sweatshops.

Nike reported that PT Kizone was shut down in January 2011, and the owner had fled the country. In November, Adidas announced its relationship with PT Kizone was terminated 10 months before the factory was shut down. However, WRC found that workers’ rights issues with the factory started in 2010.

Nike and other companies have since compensated the unemployed workers of PT Kizone, but Adidas has refused to pay them, he added.

“Workers were still owed $1.8 million,” Marx said. “We as a university should make sure the WRC codes of conduct are followed.”

WRC discovered last November that 32 workers were yet to be compensated for severance pay.

Marx said Adidas should be held responsible for the workers’ pay.

“Either Adidas didn’t know these things were happening, or they didn’t say anything about it,” Marx said. “That would be terrible.”

ASM Shared Governance Committee Chair Beth Huang said interim Chancellor David Ward has refused to listen to students’ voices on the Adidas matter and continues to work with the company in a mediation period.

SLAC member Sarah Blaskey said the mediations have not been effective. She said the discussions take place behind closed doors, and Adidas has already made several public announcements they will not pay PT Kizone workers.

“It’s been a year since these workers have not been paid, and people are still sitting behind doors talking about it,” Blaskey said. “To me, that doesn’t seem right.”

Madison’s Labor Licensing Policy Committee has recommended UW place Adidas on notice because it was clear Adidas had violated Wisconsin’s code of conduct. She said the chancellor has to comply with LLPC or explain himself to the Associated Students of Madison.

“Ward rejected LLPC’s decision to put Adidas on notice and did not give them reasons why,” Huang said. “If we let the university say our student decisions are just advisory, we lose our voice.”

According to Blaskey, the organization wants UW to establish a 90-day notice of breach of contract.

Huang said SLAC is engaged with worker justice, and the organization realizes the use of sweatshop labor reflects the integrity of UW as an institution.

Blaskey said UW’s self-sustaining athletic program gives the university flexibility in a lucrative market. Many companies want to contract with universities, she added.

“We need to hold the university accountable,” Blaskey said. “We need to stand up for workers without a voice.”

U Chicago President Zimmer Ignores Adidas’ Labor Violations

When the University of Chicago allows a company to profit from manufacturing apparel with the university logo, we implicitly endorse and directly support the company that produced that apparel. That means that every hoodie, every backpack, every t-shirt with the University of Chicago logo printed on it represents a nod of approval on the part of the school and the school community for the labor practices that went into making that item. Do we, as students, really want to be a part of a system that allows corporations to commit worker rights abuses with no repercussions? In 2005 the student body said no. Students staged a campaign that pressured the University to affiliate with the Worker Rights Consortium, an independent watchdog organization that monitors the labor practices of companies that produce university apparel. As an affiliate of the WRC, the University adopted a Code of Conduct for all companies that produce U of C apparel, holding them accountable for maintaining fair labor practices. Now, that commitment is being put to the test for the first time, but the University has shown no intention to follow through.

The WRC recently contacted its affiliate schools with some news about Adidas. According to the WRC, PT Kizone, a factory in Indonesia, was shut down abruptly and its owner fled the country, failing to pay 2,800 workers at least $3.3 million in legally mandated severance. NIKE, Adidas, and the Dallas Cowboys Merchandising Group were producing logoed university apparel at this factory. For many years, all these brands have profited from the work of its lowest low-paid workers in Indonesia and they owe those workers fair treatment in return. Adidas’ refusal to pay the money owed to workers producing their apparel not only represents a grave violation of Indonesian law, but the University’s Licensing Code of Conduct. The University has in fact already made a commitment to cut the licensing contract with Adidas in response to these labor violations by adopting the Code of Conduct. The agreement has been made since 2005, what is missing now is action.

Adidas’s actions warrant such dramatic action on the part of the University because other companies have shown a willingness to meet their obligations when faced with similar pressures. In response to the WRC contacting its affiliate universities, NIKE came forward and paid the workers in proportion to their production at the factory—nearly half a million dollars. Adidas, however, has failed to pay the workers any of the money that it owes. Student groups at other schools across the country are running similar campaigns to make their schools pressure Adidas to pay its workers. NIKE was, undoubtedly influenced to do this by the past “Just Pay It” campaign, wherein major universities cut their licensing agreement with NIKE in order to pressure it pay workers at a factory in Honduras. The success of that campaign depended on a domino effect beginning with just a few schools, and leading to a wave of cut contracts. By cutting its licensing contract with Adidas, a well-regarded school like the University of Chicago would begin the same kind of domino effect—a series of losses that would push Adidas to correct its labor violations in Indonesia.

Sign the Online Petition

Students Organizing United with Labor (SOUL), a labor rights RSO, has repeatedly asked President Zimmer to cut the university’s contract with Adidas but has yet to see the administration take any action. After sending a message to President Zimmer asking him to cut or suspend Adidas’ licensing contract, we received a flat rejection. The administration asserted that “Adidas has expressed concern about the situation and continues to work with Fair Labor Association (FLA)”. But such a fact should be obvious – Adidas holds a seat on the Board of Directors of the FLA. The school cannot continue to hide behind the clearly biased FLA in order to avoid taking action.

Ultimately, it is up to the members of the University of Chicago community to make sure that President Zimmer lives up to its commitment by requiring Adidas to fix these violations or lose their ability to profit using the U of C logo. The University’s response to our message asking President Zimmer to cut the Adidas contract concluded by saying, “As you know, we share a long-standing commitment to fair labor practices”. Let’s prove it.

Students Cover Nike Lobbyist Office with “Just Pay It!” Flyers

Nike-Govt-Relations_July-13-2010Early this morning, just blocks away from Congress, USAS members and community activists knocked on the front door of Nike’s lobbying headquarters.  The students, armed with handwritten letters from the ex-workers of two Nike supplier factories in Honduras, came to speak with Brad Figel, Nike’s Director of Government Relations.  The workers’ letters emphasized the daily suffering in the past 18 months of the 1,800 workers that Nike owes $2.2 in legally mandated severance.

Mr. Nigel was unavailable, so the students covered the front of the building in flyers to educate Nike’s neighbors and the many pedestrians passing by.

In other news, check out this report in the Huffington Post summarizing the Just Pay It campaign to date: “Student Campaign Takes on Nike Like Never Before”