Letter sent by Chanellor David Ward to Collegiate Licensing Company
October 12, 1999
William R. Battle, III
Bruce Siegal
The Collegiate Licensing Company
Suite 102
320 Interstate North Parkway
Atlanta, GA 30339
Re: Modifications to UW-Madison Licensee Contracts
Dear Messrs. Battle and Siegal:
For almost two years, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has worked continuously with your organization as well as other colleges and universities, collegiate licensing consortia, licensees, and a variety of governmental, human rights, labor and manufacturing organizations to develop effective counters to sweatshop abuses believed to affect the collegiate licensing market. These efforts are on-going, and reflect a shared perception of this university's administration and its students, faculty and staff: it is repugnant to have the university's logos and marks appear on articles possibly produced under hostile and abusive working conditions, and safeguards against such practices must be instituted and enforced.
The UW-Madison now requests your assistance in formally notifying all of its licensees that, effective no later than January 1, 2000, they will be required to comply with labor standard provisions of the draft CLC Code of Conduct dated November 30, 1998 (see attached) and, in addition, the separate Agreement dated February 12, 1999 reached between myself and concerned students (see attached). We will work closely with you to ensure minimal confusion for our current licensees, but we would like you to inform them of the required changes to their existing licenses, and to inform all new licensees of these additional requirements. As you perform this service on our behalf, I would ask you to bear in mind a few points of interpretation.
Wherever terms of the February 12, 1999 Agreement appear to be inconsistent with or more expansive than the CLC Code of Conduct, the terms of the Agreement should be considered controlling. This caution applies most particularly to the requirement of full public disclosure of manufacturing and assembly sites, and, in addition, the several enumerated rights for women that should be considered to amplify the prohibitions on harassment and discrimination that already appear in the CLC Code of Conduct. The UW-Madison is also committed to examining William R. Battle, III and Bruce Siegal the relationship between workers' wages and basic needs, as noted in both the Agreement and the CLC Code of Conduct. As more information becomes available regarding this relationship, perhaps through the Living Wage Symposium that we are sponsoring in November, or through related, spin-off symposia that might follow at other institutions, additional changes to UW-Madison licensing agreements may be requested.
As you are aware, the UW-Madison is participating in efforts to develop an international monitoring system that will allow for announced and unannounced inspections of work sites by persons and organizations expert in workplace issues, safe and confidential interviews with employees, and other measures that will help to ensure compliance with these requirements. We will ask your assistance in keeping our licensees notified of all pertinent developments as they occur. In this regard, we appreciate your assistance in putting together the pilot monitoring initiative in which we are presently engaged with Duke, North Carolina, Boston College and Georgetown, through which we hope to gain information about code compliance that will be useful to both licensees and the schools and colleges with whom they work.
The Collegiate Licensing Company has been a steady partner in our efforts to bring effective, forceful change to the global incidence of sweatshop labor. We look forward to your continued assistance.
Sincerely,
David Ward
Chancellor