Congratulations to the students at Duke, Georgetown and other campuses across the U.S. for taking action to ensure that workers who make their college gear are treated with fairness.

Below is a New York Times article about Duke's amazing take-over of the president's office on Friday (1/29) to protest the proposed code of conduct by the Collegiate Licensing Company (CLC), who manages licensing agreements for 160 universities. Students have been demanding that the CLC and their universities include payment of living wages and public disclosure in their codes. Through this weekend's actions, students won a victory for disclosure. However, we must keep up the pressure.

What You Can Do:

• Please organize solidarity actions on your campuses this week: tabling, leafletting, rallies, sit-ins.
• Please write letters to the editor, especially to the New York Times and other papers who've covered this issue, to show support for a living wage and public disclosure.
• If you're a student, alumnus or parent of a student, please write or call your university to ask that they adopt a code of conduct which includes living wages and public disclosure

New York Times
January 31, 1999
by Steven Greenhouse

Students at Duke University and Georgetown University held raucous protests on Friday against a proposed code of conduct for apparel makers that they say does too little to ensure that products bearing the name of their schools are not made in sweatshops.

At Duke, 100 students held a rally and then about 30 staged a sit-in at the president's office -- with many students even sleeping there -- to demand that the school not sign the code of conduct. At Georgetown, more than 100 students demonstrated and several got into a noisy argument with the dean over the code, developed by a licensing company.

The students at Duke and Georgetown, two traditional basketball powers whose names are best sellers on sports gear, attacked the code for not requiring disclosure of the names and addresses of all factories making products bearing the schools' names. The students insisted that such disclosure was needed to enable independent monitors, like human rights groups, to determine whether factory conditions were adequate.

Duke has about 700 licensees that make T-shirts, caps and other apparel at hundreds of plants in the United States and in more than 10 other countries.

"It's important for us to know where the factories are because then people will be able to monitor them to make sure they're not sweatshops," said Kyle Crafton, a Duke senior who is a member of Students against Sweatshops.

The protests are directed at the code being developed by Collegiate Licensing Co., an Atlanta company that helps more than 100 schools license their names for apparel. Collegiate, the nation's largest school-licensing company, is working with universities to develop a consensus code that sets minimum rules for licensees' factories, like a maximum 60-hour workweek.

"We're very proud of the work we're doing, and we have no apologies to make to anybody," said Bruce B. Siegal, the licensing company's general counsel.

But Benjamin Smith, president of the Georgetown Solidarity Committee, which organized the protest, criticized the code for not requiring factories to pay workers a living wage that is sufficient to support their families.

"It's not enough to pay the minimum wage in these countries," Smith said, "because the minimum wage is often set very low to attract investment and often is not adequate to meet the nutritional needs of workers' families."

The code has become an emotional issue at Duke because last March the university adopted the nation's strictest code for licensees, with students applauding the university's president, Nannerl O. Keohane. But the new code, which the school is under industry and peer pressure to accept, is not as strict and would supersede Duke's code.

The Duke code calls for disclosing the names of factories and for paying a living wage. The new code requires no such disclosure, although it sets up a monitoring system for factories. And it calls for paying whichever is higher, a country's minimum wage or the prevailing industry wage where a factory is located.

Siegal defended the code, saying apparel companies strongly oppose making them disclose the names and addresses of the factories they contract with to make apparel. The companies fear that identifying their factories will enable competitors to use their favored factories and maneuver to end their longstanding relationships with their factories.

Duke officials were puzzling over how to handle the sit-in, especially if it continued through the weekend. Nonetheless, John F. Burness, Duke's senior vice president for public affairs, said the school respected its students' commitment.

"President Keohane has consistently said that we believe the code is not as strong as we would prefer, particularly in regards to disclosure and wages," Burness said. "We believe, as President Keohane reiterated to students on Friday, that in effect getting part of the loaf is better than getting none of the loaf and that the revised code, with its recognized weaknesses, is better than having no code at all."

Duke officials said they hoped that after signing the code, they could work with other schools to improve it.

But Tico Almeida, the senior who led the protest, said: "It's disheartening that Duke is settling for the weaker code. We understand that there are times to compromise, that it's OK to compromise when you're getting the good instead of the great. But this code is too flawed. It's not even good."