Wisconsin First to Cut Nike Off Over Labor Concerns

Concerns over Nike’s overseas labor practices moved the University of Wisconsin to cancel its contract today with the sportswear giant. The school is the first in the US to do so, though the move will cost it $50,000 a year. “Nike has not developed, and does not intend to develop, meaningful ways of addressing the plight of displaced workers and their families in Honduras,” the school’s chancellor tells the Capital Times.

One monitoring group says Nike owes workers at two factories, closed last year, some $2.2 million in back pay. “It’s a huge deal that UW-Madison was the first university to cut the contract,” says one approving student. “We won’t be the last, for sure.”
(More University of Wisconsin stories.)