I am pleased to join you today to discuss the important topic of codes of conduct for university merchandise.

I wish to applaud the many people at this conference -- Labor Secretary Alexis Herman, college students, and administrators -- for their efforts so far to help prevent universities and colleges from being unwitting partners in the exploitation of workers and children.

As many of you know, Congress adopted my amendment to the Higher Education Act Amendments of 1998 calling on all Universities and colleges to adopt strong codes of conduct for all merchandise bearing the school name or logo. Tomorrow, President Clinton will sign this bill into law.

I introduced the amendment shortly after Duke announced its code of conduct. And I wish to thank Tico Almeida, a Duke Student who spoke to you earlier today, and Jim Wilkerson, the Duke director of trademark licensing, in particular, for giving such life to this growing movement.

And the code of conduct effort really is a movement.

As you see today, it has caught the attention of people across the country. There is not a university or college in the country that has not had to consider this issue at some point. I cannot overemphasize the importance of a university merchandise code of conduct. You know how big the market is -- well over $2 billion in goods sold each year. But the value translates beyond campus stores.

Consumers -- in this case colleges and universities -- are at the core of this movement. And I have long believed that for the anti-sweatshop campaign to succeed, consumers must be involved. That is why I am pursuing legislation, with Sen. Tom Harkin, to institute a voluntary "Child Labor Free" product label to inform consumers about their shopping choices.

By adopting codes, schools across the country are sending a powerful message: They will use the power of their purse!

Because the market for university merchandise, like sweatshirts and baseball caps, is big enough to influence the way goods are made, schools have the power to tell businesses what they will accept and what they will not. Those who want your business will meet your standards.

Without a code of conduct, schools will not know whether they are participating in labor exploitation. And without a strong code, promises made about good labor conduct can be easily broken.

Fighting sweatshops and child labor is tricky business, for everyone involved. It is too easy to say you are clean and to then find out that you are not.

When it was revealed at the hearing I chaired on labeling efforts in 1996 that Walmart's Kathie Lee Gifford clothing line was made by underage workers in Honduras, officials were "shocked" because they said their arrangements with their contractors, and their subcontractors, required adherence to basic labor laws.

What we learned was that the international apparel and footwear system is so fractured by contractors, subcontractors and sub- subcontractors, that the system has a built-in plausibility of denial.

Campus codes of conduct must not succumb to the plausibility of denial.

Schools care a lot about their reputations, just as do personalities, and politicians. For many of us, it is all we really have. So it will be in schools' best interests to make sure their codes are strong enough to get the job done. Because if you think that the publicity is bad when you are found to participate in labor exploitation, wait until it is discovered that you participate in labor exploitation after publicly declaring yourself against such practices. You will then know how cold and unforgiving the world can truly be. In fact, one of the reasons Duke officials adopted a code of conduct was money -- they were concerned that the value of the Duke name on merchandise would be weakened, and cost the school lost revenue, if the name was associated with abusive labor.

But the other reason Duke cited was that it was simply the right thing to do. Morally, Duke officials said, the school abhors abusive and oppressive labor practices.

I encourage all colleges and universities to work to adopt codes of conduct that are as strong as that adopted by Duke University and Brown University, and seek to do everything in their power to make sure that schools of higher learning do not participate in the lowest forms of exploitation.

Remember that when considering codes, the question is not "How little can we get away with?" The question is, "How far do we need to go to get the job done?"

I think the code of conduct movement on campuses today has similarities to another campus movement of the 1980s -- the anti-apartheid movement.

The movement against apartheid sought to dry up a key ingredient from the engine of the racist system of government -- money. And eventually it succeeded.

I believe it will be harder to wipe out labor exploitation than it was to abolish apartheid. Companies can pack up and move without notice. The international field is huge and hard to police. And production patterns are so scattered that it is often hard to trace a product from start to finish. That is one reason why I support including in the code independent monitoring and the requirement to list the specific address of the plant where the university product is manufactured.

Our challenge today, even if harder, is no less important. We must not tolerate products made with exploited labor. Child labor is a scourge that deserves our greatest efforts. Hard working men and women that are trying to support their families deserve respect from us all, and particularly from their employers. They deserve the right to a fair wage with wich they can support their families. They deserve the right to organize and to bargain collectively. They deserve the right to a safe and clean workplace. And children should be in school, not at work earning pennies a day.

1998 is the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. It is fitting that the campus sweatshop movement is growing as we mark this anniversary. The declaration of human rights is often called Franklin Delano Roosevelt's second bill of rights because it clearly establishes that economic rights are human rights that deserve the respect of all governments.

The campus sweatshop movement is one step toward safeguarding economic rights. Just as we affirm our own dignity by recognizing the dignity of workers, so do we disgrace ourselves by trampling on the dignity of others.