The University of Florida is the number two selling brand of university athletic apparel in the country, behind only the University of Texas, and its value keeps increasing. In the last four years the Gators won two national championships in basketball and two national championships in football. Going into the 2009-2010 season the Gator football team is the consensus pre-season #1 and is led by the Heisman favorite, Tim Tebow. Gators also have the top-ranked outdoor mens track team, are still in the running for the men's College World Series, and just lost in the championship series of women's softball (congratulations Washington Huskies).
The University of Florida just cut its ties to Russell Athletics, revoking its license to sell Gator apparel. Union busters, you see, are Gator Bait.
Russell employed 1800 workers in Honduras, in a factory making university apparel. You might note the use of the past tense "employed," rather than "employes." In Feburary of this year Russell shut down its factory after the workers in the SITRAJERZEESH union won the right to unionize.
Florida is the latest university to cut its ties with Russell. For a while, it had been a hold out, something Russell actively touted. The University got a report from the Fair Labor Association, a labor monitoring group, that reported the closing was not union-related, but was a "business decision." Then the Association sent a labor expert down to Honduras to do an investigation, and it found that union workers were victims of threats and discrimination. Florida cancelled its license.
Many schools used an alternative labor monitoring group, the Workers Rights Consortium, which made an earlier finding the closure was union related, which might explain why the Gators revoked the license a little later than the others.
Whenever they did it, the action by the University of Florida will bite harder and deeper than most given the value of the license.
Go Gators!
