Sweatshop Watch and Global Exchange have developed a model Code of Conduct for University Trademark Licensees, which was recently endorsed by United Students Against Sweatshops. The Code is intended to prevent labor abuses of workers making university apparel and other merchandise. University-licensed products generate $2.5 billion in sales each year. Your involvement in the growing movement on campuses to end sweatshops is sending a message to companies that your school will not be stained by the sweat of workers.

Sweatshop Watch and Global Exchange are working to improve labor conditions in the global garment and shoe industries, and are members of the United Coalition Against Sweatshops--a University of California, Berkeley coalition of students, faculty and community members working to improve the University's existing Code of Conduct. While workers' ability to organize continues to be fundamental to eliminating sweatshops, Codes of Conduct can be an educational and organizing tool for both workers and advocates.

Over the years, as more and more companies have adopted their own Codes of Conduct, we have used those Codes to hold corporations accountable. Sweatshop Watch teamed up with the 70 Thai immigrant workers from the infamous slave sweatshop in El Monte, California to win back wages from the manufacturers and retailers whose clothes they sewed. Global Exchange recently influenced Nike's decision to increase the wages of its Indonesian workers. We are continuing to pressure the White House Apparel Industry Partnership to commit to paying workers a living wage. Without a living wage, any Code of Conduct entrenches even more deeply the poverty wages that pervade the apparel industry. We also hosted a Living Wage Working Summit in July 1998, and are continuing to research the issue of living wages to provide resources to campaigns like the "sweat-free" campus campaigns. Please let us know if your university is interested in conducting a research project on living wages.

This model Code of Conduct goes further than Codes that have already been adopted by incorporating several improvements, including:

• provision for a living wage, including a working formula for calculating a living wage

• provisions for worker organizing, including freedom of association, collective bargaining, union organizers having free access to workers, and licensees recognizing the union of the workers' choice

• provisions for women's rights, including prohibition of pregnancy testing and involuntary use of contraception

• requirement that workers be notified of the Code

• requirement that workers have the ability to enforce the Code

• provision that licensees assure that their pricing system allows their contractors to cover production costs and also enforce the Code (e.g. pay a living wage) and make a reasonable profit

• provisions for public disclosure, including the publishing of compliance reports on the University's web site and a requirement that information provided by licensees be considered public information

• provisions for public accountability, including a requirement that students, faculty, staff, and community members be involved in the verification of the Code

We hope that this model Code will be a useful resource in your work on campus. It will continue to evolve as it is implemented and as we receive your feedback. We are also developing monitoring procedures for the Code, which will focus on internal monitoring by licensees, independent external monitoring and adjudication of worker complaints. As we develop further resources on monitoring, living wages and pricing issues, we'll post them on this web site.

Please contact us with your questions and suggestions, and good luck in your work!