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Public prosecutors in Brazil have begun legal action against the South Korean electronics giant Samsung, alleging that it has been infringing labour laws at one of its factories.

According to Reporter Brasil, a Brazilian news agency that reports on labour issues, the lawsuit was filed after the Ministry of Labor and Employment carried out two inspections at a Samsung factory in the city of Manaus, where some of the company's smartphones are assembled.

Prosecutors accuse the company of making its employees work long, tiring shifts without sufficient breaks. Media reports cite one worker who reported packing nearly 3,000 phones a day.

In a statement, Samsung said it would analyse the process and fully co-operate with the Brazilian authorities: "We are committed to offering our collaborators around the world a work environment that ensures the highest standards when it comes to safety, health and well-being," the company has stated.

The news follows recent allegations against fellow technology giant Apple concerning worker rights violations at Chinese factories of one of its suppliers, the Pegatron Group. Both Apple and Pegatron are currently investigating the allegations. "Apple is committed to providing safe and fair working conditions throughout our supply chain," the company said in a statement.

The European Federation of Pharmaceutical Industries and Associations (EFPIA) and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) have strengthened their commitment to enhancing public health by endorsing joint “Principles for Responsible Clinical Trial Data Sharing: Our Commitment to Patients and Researchers.”

 “Companies routinely publish their clinical research, collaborate with academic researchers, and share clinical trial information on public websites,” said Christopher Viehbacher, president of EFPIA and ceo of Sanofi. “By endorsing the Principles, biopharmaceutical companies commit to enhance these efforts by making additional information available to the public, patients who participate in clinical trials, and to qualified researchers.

Under the new commitments, biopharmaceutical companies will dramatically increase the amount of information available to researchers, patients, and members of the public.

For example, patient-level clinical trial data, study-level clinical trial data, full clinical study reports, and protocols from clinical trials in patients for medicines approved in the US and the EU will be shared with qualified scientific and medical researchers upon request and subject to terms necessary to protect patient privacy and confidential commercial information. Researchers who obtain such clinical trial data will be encouraged to publish their findings.

“The commitments recognize the importance of sharing clinical trial data in the interest of patients, healthcare and the economy. Imperative to the success of this initiative are safeguards that ensure patient privacy, respect for integrity of regulatory systems worldwide and greater incentives for more investment in medical innovation,” said Robert Hugin, chairman of PhRMA and Chairman and ceo of Celgene Corporation.

The Principles are available here. The commitments will come into force from January 2014.

Picture credit: © Lori Martin | Dreamstime Stock Photos
 

As England’s Premier League prepares to kick off this weekend, new research from the Carbon Trust has unveiled the ‘carbon bootprint’ of watching football.

The research finds that when watching on your own then the lowest carbon way to watch football is by using a smartphone or tablet connected to broadband internet. Emissions for this can be as much as eight times lower than watching on television, mostly due to the smaller size of the screen.

Thanks to advances in technology more fans are choosing to follow their team live on computers, smartphones and tablets. In the UK 27% of smartphone owners, and 63% of tablet owners, are now using their device to watch live TV. For the upcoming season both Sky and BT are offering apps that allow football to be watched on personal devices.

But the research reveals that when it comes to impact on the climate, then streaming on a personal device can also be the highest carbon way to watch the broadcast of a game. If mobile data is used then this increases the carbon bootprint of watching the game by at least ten times compared to a broadband connection. Mobile data transmission can be very energy intensive - watching a whole game could have the same associated emissions as driving ten miles in an average petrol car.

In general sharing a television screen with multiple people, either at home or in the pub, remains the lowest carbon way to watch football per viewer. Different devices and screen sizes can vary greatly in energy consumption. With televisions LED screens are most energy efficient, followed by LCD and then plasma. Watching on a plasma screen could result in lifetime emissions a third higher than a similar sized LED television. Similarly a laptop could result in less than half the emissions compared to watching on a desktop computer.

Going to see a game live at the stadium is the most carbon intensive way of watching football - particularly for an away game – due to the impact of transport. But food and drink consumed during a game can still make a significant contribution to an individual bootprint, depending eating and drinking choices.

Michael Rea, chief operating officer at the Carbon Trust commented: “We are working with a number of organisations to reduce the carbon bootprint of football. The FA, Manchester United, Newcastle United, Bolton Wanderers have all been awarded the Carbon Trust Standard, as have both Sky and BT. Our work helping teams, broadcasters and the telecoms industry to continuously reduce their environmental impact will in turn help to reduce the impacts of fans when they are watching football.”

Picture credit: © Joy Miller | Dreamstime Stock Photos
 

Activists have demanded urgent action from governments and companies to stamp out the continued use of sandblasting and other unsafe finishing processes in the manufacture of denim jeans.

The call comes in a new report into conditions in six denim factories in the Chinese province of Guangdong, a region responsible for half of the world’s entire production of blue jeans.

The report, Breathless for Blue Jeans: Health hazards in China’s denim factories, finds that sandblasting is still widespread in China in order to give jeans a worn or ‘distressed’ look, despite most Western brands banning the practice three years ago because of its link to silicosis, a deadly lung disease that has already caused the deaths of many garment workers.

One worker interviewed said: “In our department, it’s full of jeans and black dust. The temperature on the shop floor is high. It is difficult to breathe. I feel like I’m working in a coal mine.”

The new research, based on interviews with workers in the factories themselves, also revealed that workers are exposed to other dangerous finishing techniques to distress denim, including hand sanding, polishing, dye application and spraying chemicals such as potassium permanganate, with limited protective gear and inadequate training in the proper use of equipment.

The report was produced by IHLO, the Hong Kong Liaison Office of the international trade union movement; Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM), also based in Hong Kong; the global network Clean Clothes Campaign; and the workers’ rights pressure group War on Want, based in London.

The Kyoto Protocol’s clean development mechanism (CDM), the international market-based tool that incentivizes greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction projects in developing countries, has passed the 7,000 registered projects milestone. The 7,000th project will capture and destroy biogas created at two livestock (pig and chicken) farms in Cebu, Philippines, reducing annual emissions by 48,000 tonnes; the equivalent of removing 10,000 passenger cars from the road each year.

The project will also reduce air pollution and odour, reduce instances of mosquito-borne illnesses, such as dengue fever, and increase job opportunities for the local community.??“Despite unfavourable market conditions, the CDM continues to provide a mechanism for real emission reductions and real sustainable development for those who wish to use it,” said Peer Stiansen, Chair of the CDM Executive Board. 

Jaguar Land Rover has been crowned Business in the Community’s 2013 Responsible Business of the Year, taking over the mantle from British high street stalwart Marks & Spencer.

The luxury car manufacturer was praised for its investment in new technologies including engine efficiency, lightweight materials (that mean vehicles need less power) and hybrid vehicles, to reduce tailpipe emissions. It won recognition through its school and work-based activities that have enabled 2m young people to improve their skills and learn more about engineering and technical careers. More than 200,000 young people from 50 schools have participated in its Inspiring Tomorrow’s Engineers programme.

Building contractor Lakehouse, won the Santander Responsible Small Business of the Year award. Over the past year, it has invested more than £600,000 in new apprenticeships and trainee schemes, as well as £350,000 in community projects. The company’s work has helped to recruit and retain staff and win new business, including contracts with homelessness charity Thames Reach.

Milk producer Diary Crest won two awards on the night receiving both the Sustainable Supply Chain and the Marketplace Sustainability Leadership accolades.

The Education Award to Gentoo Group, which through its partnership with Academy 360, an independent academy for pupils aged four to 16 in Sunderland, the housing and social care group has invested £1m in a school which serves one of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country.

Other award winners on the night were: Marks & Spencer (Workwell Award); GI Group Recruitment (Workplace Talent & Skills) Star Pubs & Bars (part of the Heineken Company, Enterprise Growth Award); Wates Group (Work Inclusion Award); Jobsite UK (Inspiring Social Action in Young People Award); East of England Co-operative Society (Rural Action Award ); B&Q (Customer Engagement on Sustainability Award) and The Body Shop (International Award).

2degrees, the online network for sustainability professionals, also announced the winners of its inaugural Sustainability Champions Awards 2013 last month.

The awards selected and voted for by members of the 2degrees community, recognized the best examples of sustainability practice from across a range of sectors, with 34 shortlisted entries challenging for the top prize across 12 categories, from energy management, to buildings and property, to supporting players.

Telefonica O2 UK, SC Johnson and Unilever won in the Internal Engagement, Energy & Carbon Management (long term) and Supply Chain Management categories respectively. Molson Coors Brewing Company came top in Water Management for its water stewardship work, while the Pop-Up-Foundation waved the flag for small business enterprises in Solution of the Year, for their initiative to design and develop sustainable solutions for our urban world. In personal categories rewarding people’s exceptional work behind-the-scenes Daniella Vega from Sky was voted the Sustainability Champion of the Year and Lucy Findlay from Social Enterprise Mark Company recognized as the Supporting Player of the Year.

Martin Chilcott, founder and ceo of 2degrees said: “From projects being published on 2degrees, to a unique judging process entirely based on votes from peers, to the ceremony itself – the awards encouraged and realized a plethora of creative stakeholder engagement opportunities for nominees’ success stories. Overall, we were overwhelmed by the sheer quality and number of entries that came through.” 

Recycling is the subject of America’s first public service advertising campaign for 40 years. The “I Want To Be Recycled” campaign will target the 62% of Americans who are not avid recyclers.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American produces 4.4 pounds of refuse a day, and on the whole the US produces over 250 million tons of rubbish a year. However, only about 35% is currently recycled.

The “I Want To Be Recycled” campaign from the Ad Council and Keep America Beautiful is targeted to motivate Americans to recycle every day and shows that recyclable materials can be given another life and become something new if someone chooses to recycle.

The campaign directs audiences to IWantToBeRecycled.org, a new website with a localized search tool allowing users to find where to recycle either at their curbside or their nearest recycling centre. The website illustrates the recycling process through an interactive infographic and offers detailed information on what materials can be recycled, how they should be recycled and what products they can become in the future.

To address this national concern, the Ad Council and Keep America Beautiful (KAB) today launched a public service advertising (PSA) campaign designed to raise awareness about the benefits of recycling with the goal to make recycling a daily social norm. 

An unexplored territory to many, Keith Crane looks at how foreign companies are approaching CSR programmes in China and discovering that businesses need to ‘reverse the support circle’ to make things work.

China’s new president, Xi Jinping, didn’t waste any time in creating a phrase to sum up a view for his next 10 years in office – achieving the China, or Chinese dream. It has inevitably been discussed as to what it actually means; can you can compare it to the American Dream, and how do Chinese people themselves see it.

Vast improvements in lifestyles, poverty reduction and education have been made in China in the three decades since Deng Xiao Ping opened up the country to reform, and western investment. So where is the country heading under its 12th five year plan, and its new leadership?

There’s also one thing to make clear, while China may have a new leadership, its policies have also been agreed collectively well in advance… China plans its future 10 years at a time. And while President Xi and Premier Li may be taking over, they inherit plans already agreed for 2011 to 2015.|

Many commentators in the west are fraught at the fact China’s growth has slipped to single, but still impressive figures. But they miss the point – that’s what the Government has decided, for a more sustainable future. It wants a more balanced, customer-led economy.

So where does CSR fit in with all of this? Key experts from the British Chamber of Commerce and British China Council addressed the issue in a forum earlier this summer.

They were led by Clare Pearson, a China veteran of eight years who leads DLA Piper’s corporate responsibility, and Daniel Wang, publisher of Charitarian Magazine. To say they work closely together is an understatement. They’re more like a double act, second-guessing each other’s next sentence as they describe where the country is now, and where it’s going.

So if the economy is slowing, does CSR have a future, when budgets are tight and margins are slipping? The message is clear. Companies that want to succeed in China need to think about CSR – but differently from the way they do in The West. NGOs and government have to work together. First the government oversees about 90% of the economy, and has a built-in resentment of overseas intervention.

Reversing the support circle
Pearson has reversed the circle how companies offer support. Rather than a bank say, writing a cheque and asking their Beijing office to spend it, say on a school, that may be built in the wrong area and ultimately closes, you need to ask the government where they need help, and fill in the gaps they can’t meet. That means identifying the areas the government can’t reach, which these days mean bringing the western inland regions up to the standard of the highly developed east coast. Wealth redistribution, narrowing the income gap, is this government’s key priority, and if you work with it, you will shine out Pearson says.

“Start with the ‘Five year plan’, and select a social issue that is of current concern such as unemployment, climate change, education or health care. If you tackle one of their priority issues, they will ensure your profile, as the government is the media.”
Daniel Wang says companies need to be aware of what is happening in the country, with regards to the increase in income, and reduction of poverty across the China.

One of his first slides showed the Gini-co-efficiency scale, comparing the GDP per capita across the country. While Shanghai and the Yangtze Delta may still be leading, the inland cities of Chengdu and Chongqing are increasingly important to overseas employers as labour costs in The East rise. They’re building factories there and increasingly building sub-headquarters, or even moving lock, stock and barrel.

He also addressed who benefitted after the last five year plan, and is confident, that while yes, the rich have got richer, farmers, still from a very low base, have benefitted from recent government policies, including the removal of taxes, new subsidies and pension rights.

I checked this with a Chinese friend, whose father farms in north-western Shanxi province, and himself is one of the rural migrant workers now in the capital, Beijing, if he agrees? He does. Does his father have any complaint with the government? No.
So, where you may ask, does CSR come in?

One of Pearson’s pet projects, now in its sixth round, is E3, equal education for everyone, in conjunction with Nord Anglia and working with the British School of Beijing , which trains 100 teachers a year from rural areas of China about modern study methods.

“This project helps the rural teachers to broaden their horizons, receive new and advanced education ideas and gain exposure to different teaching methods. It also helps to balance the education standards between the city and the countryside. One teacher can influence the future of 10,000 rural children,“ Pearson says.

But it’s the approach that matters, she stresses.

“It’s all about training people without them realizing they’re being trained. We want them to feel comfortable. It’s not the British school telling them what to do – it has to be seamless.”

That means participatory events of getting to know each other, and just getting down to basics, where the UK head teachers sit down and paint, play ping-pong, alongside their Chinese colleagues. Creating former President Hu Jintao’s “harmonious society”, without ever mentioning the word ‘harmonious’. But it’s not always so, as Pearson demonstrated at the forum which showed a situation probably unique to China.

Taking the teachers around Tian’anmen Square proved less than harmonious as their photographer, a former paparazzi, noticed they were being followed and videoed.

They were stopped and asked to produce their papers by the ever-vigilant Chinese plain clothes security personnel – another reason Daniel Wang’s presence was essential.

“You need a local face. I didn’t believe it when he told me, but then we got stopped. And we needed Mr Wang to show them we had the right papers and were not doing anything wrong.”

Mr Wang is Pearson’s local face. They work hand-in-hand, as Pearson says, they need to.

“You can’t just come into China and tell people what to do. It’s the complete reverse of The West.”

So her CSR cycle begins with asking the government what needs to be done and filling the gaps it can’t do.

And while people in The West sit at computers and wait for meetings, the Chinese are far more active.

Need for action
The forum was held just weeks after western Sichuan suffered its second major earthquake in five years (but thankfully without the severe loss of life in 2008). Disaster response is one of the areas the government has identified for CSR, but western firms need to react quickly, there’s no time to wait for a board decision.

“Look at the earthquake response… the Chinese were on their mobiles straight away, they weren’t sat at a desk on a computer, waiting for a decision miles away, they were getting things done standing up. These are people who have been through hardship and complete change in their lifetimes, they don’t need to go through a change management programme, they’ve already been there, done it.”

She highlights the philanthropy now of China’s millionaires and billionaires, who, like Bill Gates now see their roles as giving something back.

“They’ve seen hunger and hardship, and we wonder why they want to make a fortune? They’re less interested in raising flags now, more in raising awareness.”

And this is where companies need to focus, she says, not in major banner-waving of projects, but ones that get to the grassroots, ones that make the most difference to the most people.

“Foreign firms count less than immediate social priorities to the Chinese government. They must literally give away some intellectual property to help the rural regions. Look at Microsoft. Millions of poor students copy their software but it doesn’t go after them, but it will certainly sue corporate offenders. Instead it focuses on computer training for unemployed migrant workers.”
So, back to where we started, where does all this fit in with the Chinese Dream?

Pearson frets a little about the future. “I think the world is at a tipping point, it’s going to be a complicated century, as everywhere becomes more urbanized, with climate change and potential water shortages, how can you deny people access across borders if they have no water?

“But China is trying to do things that have never been done before, but in a very pragmatic way. As it becomes a superpower it will have a huge influence on individualism and collective responsibility. Just by the sheer number of Chinese, how they grow up with each other means they have a second sense of knowing what’s going on around them, which means they’re not so combative on the international stage.

“They can work out in minutes somebody’s character, and what needs to be done, and that gregarious environment breeds political and economic empowerment.” But does that empowerment mean more freedoms?

“They’ve grown up through floods, famine, baking hot winters and freezing winters and they’re too busy working to build a successful future to worry, or have time to worry about the things we do in the west, like human rights. They haven’t got to the point of having leisure time yet to think.”

It’s a salutary statement that means no-one should come into China, corporately or personally, thinking they’re on a mission to change. As Daniel Wang reminds us, China is a country which has lifted 600m people out of poverty in 30 years, and now educates 99.8% of primary-age schoolchildren.

So what’s the message? Please do come, but we’ll tell you how we’d like you to help us, thank you, it seems.  

“Coal is a dead man walkin’,” Deutsche Bank global head of asset management Kevin Parker told The Washington Post in January 2011. “Banks won’t finance them. Insurance companies won’t insure them. The Environmental Protection Agency is coming after them... and the economics to make it clean don’t work.” Over two years later a growing number of investors are beginning to exclude carbon-intensive fossil fuels from their portfolios on both ethical and economic grounds.

In April, the Uniting Church in Australia took the step to screen out shares in coal and gas companies – just as a number of investors exclude ‘sin stocks’ in the alcohol, tobacco and gambling industries – to become the first faith group in the world to take such action. Three months later, a group of US protestant churches announced a plan to divest fossil-fuel holdings over the next five years.

The financing of fossil fuel projects too is a big target for environmental campaigners. In Australia, Friends of the Earth offshoot Market Forces is running a campaign to persuade customers of banks ANZ, Westpac, Commonwealth, and National Australia Bank to move their money elsewhere because it is helping the big four banks finance coal and gas projects in the resource-rich country. The campaigners say the banks are complicit in the destruction of national icons such as the World Heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef.

Perhaps sealing coal’s fate once and for all, the powerful World Bank last month said it will no longer fund coal-fired power stations in poor countries because a 2°C rise in average temperatures would leave millions of people trapped in poverty. Evidently there are many ethical reasons to get out of fossil fuels. Now UK-based Impax Asset Management has shown there are some very good economic reasons to eliminate fossil fuel holdings. Taking the MSCI World Index as a benchmark, Impax found that the strategy of excluding fossil fuel holdings yields a small positive return of 0.5%, with a tracking error (a measure of how closely a portfolio follows the index to which it is benchmarked of 1.6%). Importantly, much of the economic effect of excluding fossil fuel stocks could have been replicated with “fossil free” energy portfolios.

While coal is evidently on the way to its own ‘death row’, prospects for clean energy investments have never been better. The outperformance of low-carbon energy investments over fossil fuel stocks in the last seven years tracked by Impax was delivered in an economic climate that is far from conducive to large-scale renewable energy uptake or wider investment in environmental protection. Just think how much better they would have done with a global market for carbon emissions and policy-making tilted away from providing subsidies to polluting fossil fuel companies.

Oliver Wagg is a journalist & leading SRI commentator  

The Institute of Business Ethics (IBE) has appointed a new president. Tim Melville-Ross CBE, Chair of HEFCE, succeeds Sir Robert Worcester, founder of Ipsos-MORI, who has served as IBE President since 2001.

Chris Moorhouse, chairman of the IBE, welcomed the appointment: “Tim has given excellent support and encouragement to the Institute as a member of its Advisory Council. I am delighted that his advice will continue to be available to us in his new role.”

Tim Melville-Ross commented: “I have been involved with the IBE since 1994 and over the years, much has changed. A globalised economy, a diverse workforce, a public more alert to ethical issues has meant that businesses cannot be complacent when it comes to business ethics. Calls for greater trust in business miss the point – trust needs to be earned. A culture change is called for, to educate tomorrow’s workforce so that they consider the ethical dimensions of any business decision. I look forward to working with the IBE team in encouraging greater debate about how trust can be regained.”

Melville-Ross began his tenure as president at the beginning of July. Prior to joining HEFCE, Melville-Ross chaired the Council of the University of Essex and chairs Royal London Insurance and the Homerton University Hospital NHS Trust. He has been a member of the IBE’s advisory council since 1994.