Various measures of student and faculty sentiments have demonstrated that a licensing code of conduct is a top concern of the University community. In the fall of this year, a survey conducted by Greg McLauchlan named a licensing code as one of the top five concerns of the faculty. This March, students voted with a three-fourths majority in ASUO elections for the UO to join the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC).
The WRC is a monitoring group that would act as the intermediary between universities and the workers who produce university apparel. The WRC seeks to review conditions in the apparel industry and respond to the needs of the workers manufacturing licensed products for collegiate institutions. The WRC is one of two monitoring associations available to universities. Its alternative, the Fair Labor Association (FLA), has neither sufficient standards with its monitoring, nor an effective monitoring system. Documented violations have been ignored by the FLA since its inception last June, and several universities are re-evaluating their membership in it based on its uncorrected inadequacies. The University of Pennsylvania was one of the first universities to join the FLA, and this February it became the first to withdraw. The UO has the opportunity to take the lead among PAC-10 universities by joining the WRC. Other PAC-10 conference members, including Arizona University and University of California-Berkeley, have already adopted strong codes of conduct and are actively considering joining the WRC. The other universities in the PAC-10 will likely follow the UOs initiative in joining the WRC.
Currently, there is an administrative ad hoc committee formed by President Frohnmayer charged with recommending a licensing code of conduct. As of yet the ad hoc committee has not purposed a full licensing code of conduct but has called for full disclosure of all manufacturing locations of licensees, which the President acted upon in December 1999. Joining the WRC is the next logical means of action for monitoring the once unknown manufacturing facilities. This resolution provides for the first official impute on this matter by UO Senate. Unfortunately none of the members of the ad hoc committee were in the end appointed through the UO Senate. This is an incremental step toward using the influence of the University to positively impact working conditions around the world. The final step would be to ratify the actual UO licensing code of conduct purposal from the ad hoc committee latter this spring.
Financial impact statement
Membership fees in the WRC will be financed by royalties from UO trademark
licensing contracts. According to the WRC charter document: Member colleges
and universities will fund the Consortium with a percentage of licensing
revenue. For a college or university that collects royalties from a licensing
program, initial dues shall be 1% of its previous year's licensing revenues
(but in no case less than $1,000 and with each year's dues payment capped
at $50,000 for any individual college or university). In FY99, the UO earned
over $450,000 gross in royalties from the sale of licensed goods.
Based on these figures, our membership in the WRC would be approximately
The motion is properly phrased and submitted. There is no procedural errors in its format, although there are a series of minor typos in the document (for example, it refers to itself as Motion 00-11). The web version is cleaner. As it is currently stated, the motion calls for a voice vote of the Senate in support of a decision by the ad hoc committee o join the WRC. Since the ad hoc committee is not a Senate committee, this motion can not take the form of a resolution to the committee, and serves only as a statement of our opinion in the matter.
The fiscal statement is clear and its impact is minor. Since this
is not a resolution of Senate policy, in fact, the fiscal impact is zero.
given the following news report, the Senate Rules Comm officially withdraws its ruling that US9900-10 has minor fiscal impact
* NIKE INC. moved Thursday to terminate its contract to supply
sports uniforms and equipment to Brown University. The company said
it would not comply with a code of conduct, pushed by student activists,
that requires monitoring of so-called sweatshops only by outsiders
and excludes manufacturers from the process. While the action applies
only to Brown, it sends a warning to other colleges that are
thinking about joining the nascent Worker Rights Consortium,
which has added more than a dozen institutions in the last wo weeks.
--> SEE http://chronicle.com/daily/2000/03/2000033103n.htm
I hope you had an enjoyable and restful break. As of last night it has come to my attention that the Human Rights Alliance has asked me to withdrawl US9900-11 from the Senate floor. It is my understanding that President Frohnmayer's Ad Hoc Committee voted unanimously to support the UO joining the WRC (Workers Rights Consortium). Action from President Frohnmayer either way, I imagine will be made by our April mtg. Nevertheless I would still suggest that we provide updates due to the fact that the Univ. Senate has had very little impute on this significant matter.
I apologize to you and the members of the Rules Committee who put work
into this resolution. Thanks you, and as always please fell free
to contact me anytime (913.1883). Jereme