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	Corporate social responsibility ? by Damien Carrick ABC Radio National   Feb 2008   While we"re all part of one globalised economy, we haven"t yet created a matching global legal system. So when Asian factory workers are denied a living wage, basic work safety conditions or freedom of association, what can they do? And what can you do?   Damien Carrick: Today, globalisation: the good, the bad and the ugly.   Last week in India, the settlement of a legal dispute between an Indian manufacturing giant and western NGO, has focused attention on the rising power of corporations based in the developing world.   Those companies are pumping out the cheap consumer goods that now fill our homes. They"re part of an export miracle that is lifting millions out of poverty in countries like India and China.   But amid all this material plenty, spare a thought for the workers who toil in the Asian factories, those who create our fashionable new clothes, our shiny toys and our latest high-tech electronic gadgets. In southern China, millions of low paid workers live in grim factory complexes.   Apo Leong: the factories and the dorms are surrounded by walls. You can say a barracks, or I"d put it, concentration camp. The workers live there, eat there, and work there, and about eight to ten put in a cubicle in a multi-storey building, and then they can go to work and off to work, and in many cases they are forced to work overtime because the security guards will not let them out.   Damien Carrick: How many millions of people would live in these sorts of conditions, these sorts of barrack-factories, as you"ve described them.   Apo Leong: It"s around 20 million workers, but there"s no official statistics, you know. Many of these workers are migrant workers from the provinces, so employers need to provide dormitories, entertainment and work spaces.   The cheap manufactured goods in our stores are there thanks to a globalised economy of low tariff barriers and free-flowing investment. But while we"re all part of one global economy, we haven"t yet created a matching global legal system or global regulatory system.   So when those Asian factory workers are denied a living wage, denied basic occupational health and safety standards, denied freedom of association or other basic freedoms -- well, frankly, not much can be done.   In the past, consumer-driven campaigns against companies like Nike have pressured brand-name corporations into improving conditions in the hundreds of factories which supply their branded products.   BBC Newsreader: ... Nike know that consumers are asking more questions about where products are sourced. International human rights organisations are demanding more information about factory conditions in developing nations. Nike acknowledges that there are issues to be dealt with at some suppliers, that some staff were working more than 60 hours per week and were under pressure to work overtime. At others, there were health and safety questions raised...   Damien Carrick: In response to consumer campaigns, like the one against Nike a few years back, we"ve seen the emergence of the Corporate Social Responsibility Movement, known as CSR.   To ensure workplaces comply with certain minimum standards, the brand-names send auditors who inspect the factories and quiz the workers.   Apo Leong is the director of the Asia Monitor Resource Centre, a Hong Kong based NGO that focuses on worker rights. He"s sceptical about this auditing process.   Apo Leong: Most of these audits are announced visits, so the employers get the notice; they will prepare to get the clean-ups so it is what we call cosmetic measures. In many cases the workers have to double up their efforts to clean up the factory, the toilets and all that to please the auditors, and they have to remember, to memorise the right answers, or else their employers will go after them to fine them.   Damien Carrick: So if people speak out and talk about real problems, they"ll face repercussions from their bosses once the auditors have left the building?   Apo Leong: Yes. The worst is that this is done in public. The auditors should interview the workers off the site, in the dorms or nearby so that they have credible information. But the workers information is exposed by the management, so he will be fired, or downgraded or face the consequences.   Damien Carrick: Now the auditors, who are these auditors? Who are these people who come and audit the factories? Are they reputable, independent people?   Apo Leong: No, to my knowledge these are not reputable people. These are companies of three kinds of people: one is Western auditing companies, one is local companies. The third is like the NGOs, you know, will visit the factories, and the standards vary a lot. And many of the auditors are not properly trained in labour rights.   Damien Carrick: And do you think that the auditors always do their job professionally? Are they interested in getting to the truth, and providing a correct assessment, a real assessment of the factories that they visit?   Apo Leong: Well to me they do it professionally by what we call tick, tick, tick, according to the questionnaire. They will not bother the issues beyond the questionnaires provided by the brands or the parent companies. Because they are paid auditors, they"re not paid union officials or government officials.   Damien Carrick: So these auditors, they"re paid by the factory owners, they write their reports, they send those reports back to the corporations who outsource to these factories, and presumably those corporations look at the reports and they"re happy. Do those reports ever filter back down to the factory floor? Do they have any impact on the way the factory works?   Apo Leong: To a certain extent they cannot deny. Like for example there is to be one more fire extinguisher, better ventilation... But what about the freedom of association and collective labour rights? These are important instruments for workers, but usually the audit service, the companies will not take that very seriously.   Damien Carrick: Those things are important. People die in factories and all the rest of it, so it"s extremely important to have those occupational health and safety changes made.   Apo Leong: Yes, but we demand the right to know the substance that they daily encounter, like toys, you know, are they harmful? So who will tell them? I don"t believe the auditors will tell them or the company will tell them. So the NGOs, the trade unions at the local level should be able to tell them, unless transparency, the companies disclose all the toxic hazardous processes, which is required by law, but in most of the cases again, they don"t do so.   * Visit the link below to access the complete report. Visit the related web page
	Girls sold as indentured labour in Nepal by Som Paneru IRIN News Nepal   Feb 2008   Punita Chaudhary was barely eight when her impoverished parents sold her for US$ 50 to a local middleman who worked as an agent finding domestic servants for families in Kathmandu and other Nepalese cities.   Chaudhary ended up with a family in Kathmandu where she had to work for 18 hours a day and was allowed just a few hours sleep. “I did all that for the sake of my family and now I regret it,” Chaudhary told IRIN in Kathmandu.   For nearly six years, Chaudhary, 16, had to endure verbal abuse, mental torture and physical abuse at the hands of her employers, a married couple who were working as teacher and doctor, said Chaudhary. She also had to work for dozens of her employers’ relatives and friends in different houses, she said.   “One day I decided to flee and now I am safe,” said Chaudhary, who is now going to school with the help of local non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like Nepalese Youth Foundation (NYOF) and Friends of Needy Children (FNC). NYOF and FNC are involved in rehabilitating indentured domestic workers through their Indentured Daughters Program (IDP).   According to NYOF, there are over 20,000 indentured domestic workers, also known as Kamlari.   The Kamlari system originated nearly 50 years ago when poor families belonging to the Tharu community, an indigenous ethnic group in southern Nepal’s Terai region, provided daughters as domestic servants in exchange for cash.   The practice is still prevalent and activists have started to call it “internal trafficking” of girls who are literally sold off by their parents with the help of local middlemen.   The young Tharu girls, aged 6-10, are taken mainly from the districts of Dang, Bardiya, Kanchanpur, Kailali and Banke, all about 600km west of the capital.   Most of the girls are brought to households in Nepal’s cities and towns where employers include politicians, bureaucrats and government officials, according to NYOF.   “This is a dreadful practice and we should help to rescue as many girls as possible,” said NYOF’s executive director, Som Paneru, who initiated the plan to rescue and rehabilitate the indentured domestic workers.   In the last eight years, NYOF and FNC have helped to rescue over 4,000 girls, all whom have now joined schools or informal education programmes.   Besides the labour exploitation, the girls also suffer from sexual abuse, rape, physical torture, starvation and neglect of education, and there are also many cases of the girls being trafficked for prostitution both in Nepal and to India, according to FNC. In addition, many girls also disappear once they are purchased by the middlemen.   “It’s difficult to rescue most of these young girls as their whereabouts are mostly unknown and most of the time the parents do not cooperate,” said Man Bahadur Chettri from FNC. He explained that NYOF and FNC have filed court cases against the agents and the parents to successfully get them to cooperate.   Nepal has laws against employing children under 16 but they are yet to be strongly implemented, said NYOF’s Paneru.
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