ITGLWF - WTO to defend negligent business practices trade
15 Dec '05
5 min read
“When did you last hear of a teenager being taken aside and lauded for tossing his empty coke can in a dustbin rather than in the street or a neighbours' garden?”, he asked. “Or a factory worker praised publicly when leaving the factory without having stolen company property? However, this is happening every day to corporations – congratulated for obeying environmental legislation, commended for paying the legal minimum wage, given awards for not illegally endangering the lives of its workforce”.
“What is known as corporate social responsibility today should be the norm for every business, big and small. Those who can only survive and prosper by law breaking should not be in business. Not only do they endanger and damage their own workforce but they drag down their competitors, locally, nationally and globally.
Pointing to China, just across the border from Hong Kong, where corporations are falling over themselves to invest or source, Mr. Kearney said legislation was pretty good but rarely enforced. “In textiles and clothing twelve to fourteen hour workdays are the norm but are illegal”, he said. “Wage payments below the legal minimum are common with wage arrears now estimated at US$43 billion.”
“It is responses like this which have spurred CSR action and produced more than 10,000 individual codes of conduct. Many are useless – no more than public relations exercises – but still corporations want to be patted on the back."
"The improvements in factories have been limited but many corporations are now embarked on efforts to further lower the bar. These include the leading European retailers belonging to the Business Social Compliance Initiative who have now produced a light version of the standard code of conduct and which weakens provisions on freedom of association, working hours and wage payments and threatens to create 'a race to the shadows' among European buyers."
marketing@alchempro.com
