ANN ARBOR—The University of Michigan today (The code will apply to all new licensing contracts as well as those up for renewal. The University also will ask all current licensees to adopt the code’s provisions “expeditiously.”

“We believe firmly that workers in this country and abroad who help produce licensed goods bearing the insignia or name of the University of Michigan should be treated humanely and fairly and should work under healthy and safe conditions,” the code states.

U-M President Lee C. Bollinger said the far-reaching, comprehensive code will serve as “a national model for ensuring ethical business practices, particularly in our provision for full disclosure of the location of manufacturing facilities. Disclosure of locations will enable monitoring of the facilities to ensure compliance with the code.”

“We believe that workers should receive wages that at least meet their basic needs and respect their basic human rights,” the U-M president said. “Human rights is a concept that we highly value as an institution.”

The code’s provisions include ensuring compensation standards, humane limitations on required work hours, limitations on child labor, and a safe and healthy work environment.

The U-M code has grown out of the University’s participation over the past year in a national, intercollegiate task force charged with creating an anti-sweatshop code. University officials also have been working with a U-M group, Student Organization for Labor Equity (SOLE), to address the group’s concerns about the use of sweatshop labor to produce apparel bearing U-M logos.

The students staged a sit-in in Bollinger’s office Wednesday (March 17), where they remain today (March 18) in a peaceful demonstration. The University has no plans to remove the students, officials said.

Marvin Krislov, U-M vice president and general counsel, who has been meeting with the students, say they deserve credit for raising the level of public awareness on this issue.

“We agree with the students on virtually all points of the code, except the ability to commit to a particular ‘living wage standard’ at this time. We cannot commit to a standard that has not yet been defined. It is very important that we have a policy that we can abide by and enforce,” Krislov said.

“The students and the University are working toward the same objective, and we have agreed to study this issue carefully with the goal of ensuring that workers will receive wages that will meet at least basic human needs.”

Provisions of the code include appointment of a joint faculty-student-staff anti-sweatshop advisory committee, full public disclosure of the location of manufacturing facilities, and protection of women’s rights. The code also provides for joint research with other universities and with government entities “to determine if guidelines can be established and to suggest such guidelines that would create compensation standards.”

The U-M code complements and goes beyond recommendations of the national task force to the Collegiate Licensing Co. CLC is the licensing agent for the logos of more than 160 colleges, including the U-M.

Among the schools that publicly report royalty sales, the U-M is the number one seller of licensed goods in the country. Royalty revenues were $5.7 million in 1997-98, the year that the U-M won national championships in football and hockey.