{"id":1307,"date":"2010-08-19T11:06:55","date_gmt":"2010-08-19T10:06:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/?p=1307"},"modified":"2010-08-19T11:21:57","modified_gmt":"2010-08-19T10:21:57","slug":"cut-throat-contracts-sink-%e2%80%98social-responsibility%e2%80%99-claims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/2010\/08\/19\/cut-throat-contracts-sink-%e2%80%98social-responsibility%e2%80%99-claims\/","title":{"rendered":"Cut throat contracts sink \u2018social responsibility\u2019 claims"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

CORPORATE IRRESPONSIBILITY Multinationals like Samsung do not always welcome criticism of their safety and environmental record.<\/p><\/div>\n

Are the policies paraded by brand name companies, proclaiming their virtuous factory floor to shop floor operations worldwide, really worth the paper they are written on?<\/p>\n

The occupational cancer<\/a> and suicide<\/a> scandals that have hit microelectronics firms operating in Asia are the latest to cast doubt on the supply chain oversight employed by multinationals to police labour, safety and environmental standards.<\/p>\n

The \u2018corporate social responsibility (CSR)\u2019 policies of companies\u00a0such as\u00a0Apple and Samsung<\/a> are not delivering in many of the Asian factories actually producing the goods, says global safety campaigner Garrett Brown.<\/p>\n

The multinationals are acutely aware of the need to be perceived as caring companies. Samsung\u2019s website<\/a> notes: \u201cWe have designated economic, environmental and social responsibilities as the key elements of our sustainable management.\u201d<\/p>\n

And Apple\u2019s investor relations assurances<\/a> are equally uncompromising. The introduction to its \u2018Responsible supplier management\u2019<\/a> webpages notes: \u201cApple is committed to ensuring the highest standards of social responsibility in everything we do. The companies we do business with must provide safe working conditions, treat employees fairly, and use environmentally responsible manufacturing processes wherever Apple products are made.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the high road commitments of Samsung, Apple and a slew of other high tech multinationals are called into question with a worrying frequency \u2013 and Garrett Brown suggests troubling questions will remain while contractors in low wage economies produce the goods sold by western household names.<\/p>\n

Writing in the US-based\u00a0Occupational Health & Safety<\/a> magazine, Brown notes the codes of conduct promoting worker well-being\u00a0fall foul of \u201ctheir contradictory business model, and the near-zero participation by workers in factory health and safety programmes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown, who co-ordinates the US-based Maquiladora Health and Safety Support Network<\/a>, claims the \u201cstandard features\u201d of these global supply chains \u2013 low pay, long hours, high production quotas, piecework and harsh management regimes \u2013 \u201chave produced high levels of workplace stress, significant occupational illnesses, and traumatic injuries.\u201d<\/p>\n

CSR programmes will continue to fail while suppliers compete on price to attract business from multinationals, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe top-down, management systems-focused CSR programmes of international brands and their contract manufacturers have failed to bring significant, sustained improvements to the actual factory floor. No matter what the codes of conduct call for, monitoring of them is \u2018gamed\u2019 by both contractor factory managers and \u2018independent, third-party\u2019 auditors, and actual conditions have only marginally improved over the last decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe promises of CSR programmes \u2013 now a $40 billion-a-year business globally \u2013 have been fatally undermined by the \u2018iron triangle\u2019 of lowest possible per-unit price, highest possible quality, and fastest possible delivery times. Contractor factories, not provided with financial support for CSR policies required by the brands, instead face slashed profit margins and additional costs that can be made up only by further squeezing their own labour force.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the \u201csocial\u201d element of CSR programmes is barely in evidence, as workers in the giant Asian factories \u2013 some are the size of towns \u2013 \u201chave been completely left on the sidelines in plant OHS [occupational health and safety] programmes when they could be playing critical roles in conducting inspections and accident investigations, verifying hazard corrections, and providing peer training to co-workers.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo effective OHS programme can built without the active participation of informed and empowered workers in China, or Korea, or anywhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are the policies paraded by brand name companies, proclaiming their virtuous factory floor to shop floor operations worldwide, really worth the paper they are written on? The occupational cancer and suicide scandals that have hit microelectronics firms operating in Asia are the latest to cast doubt on the supply chain oversight employed by multinationals to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[243,245,244,246,247,161],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1307"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1314,"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1307\/revisions\/1314"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hazards.org\/greenjobs\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}