About ACTL
Consistent with our institutional goal of ensuring the humane and ethical treatment of workers, the UW has acted to uphold workers’ rights in factories that manufacture products bearing the UW’s name and logo.
Along with other U.S. colleges and universities, the UW markets its trademarks through CLC, Learfield’s licensing division. CLC is responsible for ensuring that companies that sign contracts to manufacture products bearing UW’s trademarks (“licensees”) abide by the UW Licensee Code of Conduct. This Code provides standards for working conditions, health and safety, the environment, collective bargaining, and human rights.
In 2001, the UW established the President’s Advisory Committee on Trademarks & Licensing (ACTL) to lead the UW on these issues. ACTL is charged with ensuring that licensees uphold high ethical standards that respect workers’ rights. ACTL reviews and evaluates UW licensees’ corporate responsibility and performance, suggests effective ways to work with those businesses, and recommends appropriate remedial action when violations of the Code of Conduct are identified. ACTL also monitors the work of CLC as well as the UW’s two member organizations—the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) and the Fair Labor Association (FLA)—to support and collaborate with them and benefit from their efforts to improve working conditions in the global production of goods for the marketplace and hold manufacturers accountable to international standards.
ACTL meets at once a quarter, and its membership includes four faculty, four students, four staff, and two administrators. The committee is chaired by Anita Ramasastry, Henry M. Jackson Professor of Law.