Earlier this week, I came across an article alleging that Microsoft has been doing business with Chinese suppliers who have been breaking labor laws. Specifically, those suppliers were accused of failing to register workers under 18 years of age and had allegedly forced them to work excessive overtime: 280 hours in a month against a limit of 60 hours per week.<\/p>\n
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How did these violations come into the news?<\/p>\n
It was publicized in a report written by the National Labor Committee (NLC).<\/p>\n
The NLC is an organization whose mission is \u201cto help defend the human rights of workers in the global economy.\u201d In fact, I think you can get a good feel for what they do by reading these excerpts from their Web site\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cTransnational corporations now roam the world to find the cheapest and most vulnerable workers. The people who stitch together our jeans and assemble our CD-players are mostly young women in Central America, Mexico, Bangladesh, China and other poor nations, many working 12 to 14-hour days for pennies an hour. The lack of accountability on the part of our U.S. corporations\u2013now operating all over the world, and the resulting dehumanization of this new global workforce is emerging as the overwhelming moral crisis of the 21st century. The struggle for rule of law in the global economy\u2013to ensure respect for the fundamental rights of the millions of workers producing goods for the U.S. market\u2013has become the great new civil rights movement of our time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Web site goes on to brag that the NLC \u201csuccessfully pressured dozens of companies \u2013 including the Gap, Kathie Lee Gifford\/Wal-Mart, and the Walt Disney Company \u2013 to improve conditions in supplier plants and to respect human and worker rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Are your low cost country suppliers behaving in a way that would draw the attention of the NLC?<\/p>\n
Your answer may be \u201cNo, we audit our suppliers.\u201d<\/p>\n
What may surprise you is that Microsoft may have said the same thing.<\/p>\n
An NLC report on the Microsoft situation assails supplier auditing practices.<\/p>\n
In a section of the NLC report entitled \u201cState and Corporate Factory Audits are a Complete Failure Leaving China\u2019s Workers in a Trap with no Exit,\u201d the report says:<\/p>\n
\u201cConsider for example, a rare local government audit of the KYE factory which happened in 2008. Though the audit was supposed to be unannounced, someone in KYE management was alerted with sufficient time to round up the hundreds of workers who were under 18 years old\u2026The young workers were instructed to gather in the factory courtyard so they could be bused to another location, where they would wait out the state audit and then return to work.<\/p>\n
\u201cCorporate audits of the KYE factory by Microsoft and other high tech companies have also failed miserably over the last several years. At the KYE factory the process of preparing for monitoring visits is somewhat subtle. Management instructs the workers to \u2018answer the clients\u2019 questions very carefully.\u2019 They should say they never work more than 12 hours a day and overtime is less than 36 hours a month. Workers are told to respond they are \u2018very satisfied\u2019 when asked about working conditions, their dorms and meals. To make this sound even more \u2018authentic,\u2019 workers are told to \u2018spontaneously\u2019 mention other factories where they had worked in the past, where conditions were \u2018awful.\u2019 They are more \u2018hopeful\u2019 now that that they are working at KYE.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe asked if factory management has to openly threaten workers to lie. The answer was no. As the workers put it: \u2018They don\u2019t have to as workers get it and know what is going on. Those who break ranks are fired. Workers have heard of others being fired for speaking truthfully. Among themselves, workers talk about this. They know not to tell the truth.’\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe workers did tell us that Microsoft representatives have visited and walked through the KYE factory, always being accompanied by mid and high-level managers. On these walk-throughs, U.S. company representatives hardly ever speak to the workers.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a sidebar, the report quotes the United Nations\u2019 top expert on corporate social responsibility as saying \u201cWe keep hearing now, from just about everywhere\u2026 Monitoring doesn\u2019t work. Just about everyone, at least off the record, will tell you that monitoring doesn\u2019t work because people cheat.\u201d<\/p>\n
So what\u2019s the key to staying above the ethical line when sourcing globally?<\/p>\n
Perhaps it is to set your investigation standards higher than the NLC. If you don\u2019t audit better than they do \u2013 both before and after the contract is signed \u2013 your company is at risk of a public relations nightmare. By virtually defining global sourcing as \u201croaming the world to find the cheapest and most vulnerable workers,\u201d it should be clear that the NLC does not exist to be your friend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Earlier this week, I came across an article alleging that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":4007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-procurement"],"yoast_head":"\n