New Requirements for UW-Madison's licensed manufacturers

• Chancellor David Ward announced that he has mailed a letter (dated October 12, 1999) to the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC) outlining UW-Madison's new requirements for its licensed manufacturers, effective January 1, 2000 (attached).

• The requirements are full public disclosure of manufacturing locations; the protection of female workers from discrimination and harassment; and the provisions of the Collegiate Licensing Company draft code of conduct (attached). The public disclosure and women's rights guidelines are outlined in the February 1999 agreement between Chancellor Ward and concerned students (attached).

• The CLC manages trademark licensing for 180 colleges and universities, including UW-Madison. The CLC will ensure that the new guidelines are included in all current, pending and renewed UW-Madison licensing agreements.

• Companies that want to sell products displaying UW-Madison's trademarks and logos generally must apply through the CLC, which is based in Atlanta. The CLC forwards the applications to UW-Madison, which approves all licenses. Until now, licensees did not have to disclose manufacturing locations.

• UW-Madison is one of very few universities nationwide to impose these requirements on its licensed manufacturers, which totaled 448 as of October 1, 1999. The others we are aware of are Arizona, Duke, Georgetown, Michigan and North Carolina.

• The new requirements help to erase the concerns the university raised when it joined the Fair Labor Association (FLA) in June 1999. The FLA has given colleges and universities the authority to implement its own standards for licensed manufacturers and to pursue desired variations in monitoring.

• UW-Madison is also committed to the study of living wages and is sponsoring a national symposium on living wage research Nov. 19-21. The La Follette Institute of Public Affairs is organizing the symposium, with assistance from the UW-Madison CLC Task Force Advisory Committee. As new data becomes available concerning wages, these details may be included in the guidelines for our manufacturers as well.

Implementation of UW-Madison International Pilot Monitoring Project

• UW-Madison announced August 23, 1999, that it would test-monitor workplace standards among manufacturers of licensed university products. The implementation of the project is now moving forward, Chancellor Ward announced. Boston College, Duke, Georgetown and North Carolina-Chapel Hill are also participating.

• Verité, a respected non-profit global monitoring firm, will conduct the inspections at a MJ Soffe factory in Costa Rica, a Zephyr Graph-X factory in Korea and a College Concepts factory in Mexico. A very large licensee is also considering taking part in this pilot monitoring project.

• Verité inspectors in November will personally visit the factories and conduct on- and off-site interviews with workers. Follow-up inspections will occur in January 2000, and Verité will issue its report to the university in March or April 2000.

• UW-Madison is contributing $10,000 to the cost of the monitoring project.

• The following is a description of Verité from its web site (http://www.verite.com): "Verité is a non-profit organization established in 1995 to eliminate labor and human rights abuses from the supply chains of U.S. companies using global outsourcing models of production. Verité helps companies assure the public that goods sold under their trademark are produced under acceptable conditions."

• UW-Madison is also considering implementing a domestic pilot monitoring project. The details are still under development, but the project would likely review the workplace standards of some licensed manufacturers with factories in the United States. Proceeds from the sale of apparel monitored under this project would go to undergraduate scholarships.

Further Study of Monitoring Standards

• Chancellor Ward announced that UW-Madison and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill are the only institutions of higher education helping draft guidelines for international monitoring and the certification of monitoring inspectors for the Fair Labor Association (FLA). Casey Nagy, special assistant to Provost John Wiley, is the university's representative.

• In addition, UW-Madison is one of only 11 colleges and universities represented on the FLA's University Advisory Council, and the university's representative, Casey Nagy, sits on the advisory council's executive committee.

• The FLA's proposed monitoring guidelines should be completed in the near future.

• The UW-Madison CLC Task Force Advisory Committee, which the chancellor created in February 1999, will undertake a comprehensive examination of the FLA monitoring guidelines and a monitoring proposal expected to be announced by students sometime in the near future.

• The CLC Task Force Advisory Committee agreed yesterday (October 12, 1999) to create a subcommittee that will spend the next several weeks examining the pros and cons of the two monitoring proposals. The subcommittee will report back to the full advisory committee in early December.

• After the CLC Task Force Advisory Committee reviews the two proposals, it will sponsor a public hearing on the UW-Madison campus to receive feedback from the university community and others on the monitoring proposals.

• The FLA is a non-profit organization created by the Apparel Industry Partnership, a combined effort of the White House, apparel companies, consumer and human rights organizations, religious groups and labor unions.

• UW-Madison is one of 122 colleges and universities who have joined the FLA. The FLA will accredit independent monitors to inspect factories, determine whether companies are complying with its workplace standards, oversee an outside complaints procedure, and issue public reports so consumers can make informed purchases.

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