China's labour rises in protest

China's labour market is showing signs of change. Labour strike at car manufacturer Honda's factory in China indicates that multi-national companies' over-reliance on China's cheap labour to stay competitive may not be a good business strategy. The strike also indicates rising tensions in China due to increasing disparity in wages and earnings.
This New York Times story on Honda strike says the strike is a wake up call to Japanese exporters.

Workers of Honda factory are on strike protesting low pay and poor working conditions. Such strikes are usually illegal in China. But in this case, even the state media gave a wide coverage to the strike and workers' demands in the initial few days of the strike. Then suddenly all content was removed from the state media sites. State media's initial coverage indicates the Chinese government's growing impatience with a low wage economy and a new desire to move up the wage ladder.

This analysis by a labour group concludes that "the reverberations from the strike by a relatively small number of Honda workers are just an indication of the political and economic ramifications of any broader upheaval of the Chinese working class."

String of suicides by workers of Apple's supplier factory in China

A couple of months ago, technology giant Apple was praised for disclosing supply chain issues in a candid annual report. The report included violations such as child labour that Apple discovered during 2009 audits of supplier factories.

What Apple did not disclose was that workers of its biggest supplier in China have been killing themselves inside or outside the factories. Foxconn, a Taiwanese-owned electronics supplier in Shenzen, China, produces iPhone and iPad for Apple. Foxconn is also the world's largest contract manufacturer for electronics products and has been in news for a spate of suicides by workers.

The media reported the 10th suicide by a Foxconn worker last week. Human rights activists blame harsh working conditions in the factory that push workers to commit suicide. Two other workers have made unsuccessful attempts to commit suicide in recent months. Last year in July a worker had committed suicide after being interrogated by the factory management over a missing iPhone prototype.

Other customers of Foxconn include Intel, Dell, Zoostrom, HP among others.

Activists point out to stressful working conditions in Foxconn factories.

Foxconn has said it regrets the incidents of suicides by its workers. The company is taking unusual steps to stop the spate of worker suicides. A media report says that the Foxconn management is asking "workers to sign letters promising not to kill themselves and even agree to be institutionalised if they appeared to be in an "abnormal mental or physical state for the protection of myself and others"."

A New York Times has quoted Foxconn executives as saying that the "company is planning to hire psychiatrists, counselors and monks, and intends to bring in 2,000 singers, dancers and gym trainers to improve life on its two sprawling campuses in Shenzhen."

Foxconn is also building tall fences at its dormitories to prevent workers from jumping to their deaths.

Here is another report on the suicide incidents involving Fixconn workers.

Last month, a National Labor Committee report alleged sweatshop conditions in a Microsoft's supplier factory in China

Palm oil giant under tax fraud probe

Media has reported that Wilmar International, the world's largest palm oil company, is facing a tax fraud probe by the Indonesian authorities. When the news of the probe broke pout, Wilmar's shares dropped 7%, one of the biggest one-day drop for the company.
It has been reported that the authorities are investigating a possible evasion of $393 million in taxes.
In a statement, Wilmar has denied of any wrongdoing.
In an interesting twist, a group of Indonesian lawmakers is asking to curb the powers of the tax office. They are saying that companies such as Wilmar should take legal action against the tax office if they are treated unfairly during the investigation.

In an unrelated report last week, San Francisco based campaigner CorpWatch, said accused ADM of complicity in forest destruction and child labour in palm oil operations. The report also mentioned ADM's linked with Wilmar pointing out that ADM has 16% stake in Wilmar.

Google discloses government requests for censorship, minus China

Brazil tops the list of countries for making highest number of requests to Google for removing content or seek information about users. Brazil made 291 requests between July and December last year.

Germany, India and United States are the other countries ranking high on the list. Surprised?

Unsurprisingly, Google does not disclose how many requests were made by China. Doing so would attract regulatory action for violating China's state secrecy laws! But we thought Google has said it would not succumb to China's repressive demands.

Here is the complete list.

Palm oil producers' profits up

Aggressive campaigns led by Greenpeace against palm oil industry's alleged unsustainable practices have not hurt the bottomline of top palm oil producers.

At least two major palm oil players listed on Singapore Stock Exchange have reported a jump in their profits. Golden Agri Resources said last week that its first quarter net profit surged 10-fold on year to $88.5 million.

The company said it expects demand for crude palm oil from the renewable energy sector to continue to grow in view of the increasing push by governments to expand renewable energy capacity.

Global Agri Resources operates a planted area of 427,000 hectares, as well as 34 palm oil processing mills, three refineries and six kernel crushing plants in Indonesia.

During the same week, Wilmar International, the world's largest palm oil producer, declared a better than expected 6% rise in first quarter profits. The first quarter earning of the company stood at $401 million, up from $380 million in the same period last year. The company's first quarter revenue however climbed 36% to $6.8 billion.

Early this year, Wilmar had reported a record profit of $1.88 bn for the year 2009, up 23% over the previous year. Pre-tax profit from plantations and palm oil mills grew 41% to $122.2 million.

Another top palm oil producer Sinar Mas which was recently suspended by Nestle following a Greenpeace campaign reported that its first quarter operating income more than doubled compared with the same period last year. The company operates 134,770 hectares of palm plantations in Indonesia.

Greenpeace takes the sustainable palm oil campaign back to the fields

After hugely embarrassing Nestle with a multi-media Kit-Kat and social media campaign, Greenpeace has taken the sustainable palm oil campaign back to the ground, literally.

Greenpeace organised a press conference in Singapore coinciding with the annual general meeting of Sinar Mass, one of the largest oil palm plantations companies and a key palm oil supplier for Nestle. It has been reported that Nestle has canceled its direct contact with Sinar Mas after being attacked by Greenpeace. Earlier, Unilever had stopped buying palm oil from Sinar Mas.

Greenpeace campaigners presented in the press conference what they call a fresh evidence of forest destruction in Indonesia by the palm oil industry. Greenpeace has also released a new report Sinar Mas-Rainforest and Peatland Destruction based on recent research on the ground.

The report says that a comparison of satellite images from 23 February 2010 and 19
November 2009, confirms that peatland and forest clearance continues in PT ALM concessions, owned by Sinar Mas. The report says that satellite images also show that approximately 2,300 hectares (of the 6,252 hectares identified as HCV in 2006)iv, has been cleared by PT ALM.

This is the second report on Sinar Mas in five months. Last December, Greenpeace had published Forest Clearance and RSPO Greenwash: Case Studies of Sinar Mas accusing the group of rainforest destruction.

An hour ago I received news that Spanish energy giant Abengoa has sacked Sinar Mas as palm oil supplier. Abengoa buys palm oil to be used as bio-fuel to produce energy.

Greenpeace has been campaigning to put pressure on the European Union to ban the use of palm oil as bio-fuel.

Cargill also under attack
Rainforest Action Network, published a report Cargill's Problems with Palm Oil last week which said the commodities giant Cargill was destroying rainforests in Indonesia to expand its palm plantations. Cargill has denied allegations.

CSR Talk goes to INSEAD

Looking forward to making the next CSR Talk presentation at INSEAD Singapore tomorrow evening on "Corporate Responsibility for Competitive Advantage" to be attended by mainly Executive MBA students.

CSR Talk is a 30 minute power packed interactive session that is designed for those executives and leaders who want a quick, and really deep, insight into the strategic importance of corporate responsibility.

If you are interested in hosting this session, this is free for the time being, contact me for more information. Write on: rajesh.chhabara@csrworks.com

Updated on the 10th May 2010:
We had a fantastic session at INSEAD. The budgeted time for the entire session was only 30 minutes including the Q&A. But we ended up discussing well beyond 100 minutes! There was so much of interest from the participants and they had so many questions.

As I had expected, the quality of their questions was very high touching from the strategic aspects of CR to the spiritual side of CR and the future of capitalism and in between relating to hard realities on the ground.

Truly a fulfilling evening!

Palm oil players taking the sustainability route to IPO

Palm oil producers seem to have started recognising the reputational benefit of sustainability. You know this when their Initial Public Offering (offering shares to public in order to get listed on a stock exchange) advertisement mentions their commitment to sustainability.

Global Palm Resources Holdings Limited, a little known palm oil company with operations in Indonesia, has taken out IPO advertisements in newspapers as it seeks listing on the Singapore Stock Exchange.

The IPO ad has a banner headline which reads: "Benefiting People and the Planet." Then the body text has two main parts: "Investment highlights, and Our Environment Policy."

The environment policy section states that the company adopts a zero burning policy in clearing land for planting, it's moving toward zero waste management, has proposed co-composting method of treating empty palm fruit bunches and the mill effluent to reduce methane emission, and has applied for membership to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

Their website has a CSR link which tells you that the company has applied for membership to RSPO on 11 March 2010. Now that is about six weeks before their IPO opened for sale on the 22nd April.

A press release from the company on the IPO has this headline: "Global Palm Resources Holdings Limited, a palm oil producer with a focus on environment and community,to list on SGX Main Board"

However, the company does not mention if its CSR claims are substantiated by any independent audit, verification or certification, or if there is any endorsement by respectable stakeholders or NGOs.

The company says it plans to double the size of palm plantations with the money raised from the IPO.

Elsewhere, Greenpeace activists dressed as Orang-utans descended on Nestle annual general meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, protesting against the chocolate-maker's alleged role in the destruction of Indonesia's rainforests by not committing to buying palm oil from sustainable sources.

When the devil runs Prada

Fashion industry has often been suspected of widespread sexual harassment. The Italian fashion brand Prada is now at the receiving end in Japan where employees are accusing the senior company executives of perpetrating sexual discrimination and sexual harassment in the name of "brand image." Read it here.

But workplace sexual harassment in Japan does not make headlines even though it is suspected to be widespread and acceptable. The mainstream Japanese media has by and large ignored the Prada lawsuit. The Japan Times, an online news portal, though had this detailed coverage.

Workplace sexual harassment is quite common in Asia. But businesses don't recognise this as a problem. Most Asian countries either do not have legislation or do not enforce laws to address workplace harassment. In recent years, the issue has received increased attention due to campaigning by women rights organisations. But businesses as well as governments have not shown any eagerness to respond.

We did a story on workplace sexual harassment in Ethical Corporation magazine in October 2oo8. See the report here.

Aware, a Singapore-based women rights organisation, has developed a training programme for companies to create awareness about the problem of workplace sexual harassment and ways to prevent and address it. In a couple of hours from now, the programme will be launched in a seminar. I will be attending it as a panelist and will be sharing corporate responsibility perspective on workplace sexual harassment. Their training information can be found here.

Climate inaction can reverse China's economic progress, says new report

Three decades of social and economic achievements in China can be reversed if the country does not address the negative impacts of climate change and environmental degradation, says the latest China Human Development Report. The report was commissioned by UNDP in partnership with Renmin University of China.

“Most of the energy-consuming assets needed between now and 2020 have yet to be built,” concludes the report. “China’s success in moving towards low carbon development will be shaped by the types of investments, choices of technologies and organizational decisions that are made in the near future.”

The report says that China’s low carbon policies should include accelerating the phase-out of obsolete production, equipment, industries and products and aggressively expanding low carbon energy such as wind, biomass and solar energy. The report suggests that the priority should be given to energy-saving in production and construction.

China needs to make greater efforts in training, institution building, R&D and oversight in the low carbon field, according to the report.

The report calls for “setting the stage for the introductions of a cap and trade system in the medium and long term, based on a national carbon intensity target, and an enhanced system for monitoring and enforcement.”

It also recommends “establishing a credible and robust system for GHG accounting and statistics as a basis for policy-making as well as for monitoring and enforcement.”

See full report here.

Microsoft accused of abusive working conditions in China supplier factory

Two weeks ago I wrote on this blog how eager Microsoft was to expand buisness in China taking advantage of Google's decision to exit. This week is about activists discovering substandard working conditions in a Microsoft supplier factory in China.

The National Labour Committee, a US-based labour rights campaigner, said in a report last week that it found abusive working conditions in KYE Systems Corp, a Taiwanese-owned factory in Dongguan, China. KYE factory has been making products for Microsoft, its largest buyer, since 2003 including Microsoft Life Cam VX-7000; Basic Optical Mouse and Wireless Notebook Laser Mouse 6000, according to the report.

Other customers of KYE include Hewlett Packard, Best Buy, Samsung, Foxconn, Acer, Wi/IFC/Logitech and Asus-Rd.

The NLC report resulted from a three-year investigation into working conditions in the factory which also produced a number of pictures secretly shipped out from the site.

The report alleges that:
KYE recruits hundreds of "work-study" students 16 and 17 years of age, who work 15-hour shifts, six and seven days a week making webcams, mice and other computer peripherals. Some of the workers appear to be just 14 or 15 years old.

Along with the students, KYE prefers to hire only women 18 to 25 years old, who are considered easier to discipline and control.

Workers report that before the recession, they were at the factory 97 hours a week, while working 80 ½ hours. In 2009, workers were at the factory 83 hours a week, while toiling 68 hours.

Workers are paid 65 cents an hour, which falls to a take-home wage of 52 cents an hour after deductions for factory food.

Workers have to report early, unpaid, for military-like drills. Management controls every second of their lives.

The work pace is grueling as workers race to complete their mandatory goal of 2000 Microsoft mice per shift. During the long summer, factory temperatures reach 86 degrees and the workers are drenched in sweat.

Security guards sexually harass the young women. Workers are prohibited from talking, listening to music or going to the bathroom during working hours. Freedom of movement is restricted and workers can only leave the factory compound during regulated hours.

Fourteen workers share each primitive, dirty dorm room, sleeping on narrow bunk beds. To "shower" workers fetch hot water in a small plastic bucket for a sponge bath. Workers report that the food is awful.

See the full report here.

Microsoft, embarassed by the expose, has said it is sending factory auditors to investigate the matter. The factory owners have denied all allegations.

Hope the episode will result in Microsoft taking some solid steps to prevent such allegations in the future. The company will need to be completely transparent about what it finds during own investigations at the factory and how it plans to fix the problem.

Promoting sexting?
The week was tough on Microsoft, really. Apart from being accused of abusive working conditions in China, the technology giant was attacked by another set of activists who said the advertising campaign for the company's just launched Kin line of phones was promoting sexting among young people. See the promotional video here which has offended people.

Microsoft was quick to say it was withdrawing the ad.

Condom responsibility

Lamprecht AG, a Swiss condom manufacturer, has launched smaller sized condoms for young teenagers. The company says the new product is in response to increasing incidence of teenage pregnancies and spread of sexually transmitted diseases in Switzerland.

A local NGO -AIDS Hilfe Switzerland- dedicated to promoting AIDS awareness persuaded the company to start manufacturing smaller condoms. Currently, these kiddy condoms- named Ceylor Hotshot Condom- are for sale in Switzerland only.

Teen pregnancy rates and sexually induced diseases have been on the rise in many countries. There have been reports that kids as young as 12 years old are becoming sexually active. Blame it on the internet, influence of movies and TV serials and sexy advertisements that children are exposed to from the young age.

Sex education from even younger age is becoming necessary. Teaching kids abstinence is something parents and educators must do. But is that enough? Perhaps not. How about teaching safe sex? Religious leaders and moralists don't like this idea. But rationalists would advocate abstinence as the first choice followed by practicing safe sex if the first choice is not made. Condoms obviously will play a crucial role in ensuring safe sex.

But the problem with condoms is that they come in adult sizes. When kids as young as 12-13 years try to use them, they are oversized for them and easily come off.

Lamprecht AG's teenage condoms are aimed at addressing the size problem. Will or should the condom industry leader SSL International, the UK-based maker of Durex, follow suit? Their decision to produce and market smaller size condoms could potentially prevent pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases among children and young teenagers.

Lamprecht's decision to make smaller condoms has gone unopposed so far. How will the religious leaders and moralists respond if a company like SSL says it will introduce condoms for young boys? Are there any real reputational risks for the company if such a decision is made?

The issue for parents is that should they take into account condom expense in deciding the pocket money for their boys?

Condoms have a history of opposition in their 400 years of existence. But the opposition has increasingly turned into acceptance over the centuries. Should condom manufacturers be afraid of opposition anymore?

Making smaller condoms available however is only part of the issue. Educating youngsters to use condom during every encounter is no easy task. Should condom manufacturers fund NGOs promoting safe sex among kids that includes the use of condoms? A real slippery issue for companies.

China bad for Google, good for Microsoft

China's demanding internet censorship regime has forced Google to shut its search services in China. At least, this is what Google would like us to believe.

Then how is it that the same censorship rules are good enough for Microsoft, Yahoo and other internet companies which are still bullish on China. Within days after Google shut their search services on China site, Microsoft announced an expansion plan for its own search service Bing. Bing unsuccessfully competes with Google for market share in the search business. Google's absence in China can be an opportunity for Microsoft to inch up Bing's market share.

Google wanted Microsoft and other US internet companies to rally behind the exit decision to increase pressure on China. But that has not happened. Now Google is accusing Microsoft and others of putting profit before everything else.

Indeed, Microsoft has openly said they would continue to do business with China and obey the local laws.

Google and Microsoft both are founding members of Global Network Initiative, a non-profit grouping to encourage technology companies to adopt human rights and privacy rights policies. Their opposing stand on China is a bad news for the GNI and raises questions about its future.

Google had said that "Google and more than twenty other U.S. companies had been the victims of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China, and that during our investigation into these attacks we had uncovered evidence to suggest that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties."

None of the other US 20 companies has spoken up. They quitely continue to do business with the Chinese. Do they have human rights policies?

China is a lucrative market. Companies would not like to jeopardise their prospects in China by criticising the government policies or by championing human rights. That does not make business sense. They won't change this approach unless their more enlightened customers in the US and Europe punish them for their China actions.

Another possibility is that the US lawmakers may use the Google saga to introduce a bill that will seek to prevent technology companies from doing business in China if China does not rationalise its human rights and privacy policies.

For now Google is alone in its fight for privacy of users. But, is that the real story? Everyone knows that even after years of trying hard, Google was not able to beat Baidu, China's local search giant. China is the only market where Google is not number one. Observers say that Google's decision to leave China has more to do with its failure to win market share rather than privacy and human rights concerns. Is it a case of grapes are sour?

See here Google's official position on their exit from China.

Sexual harassment at workplace seminar

Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), a Singapore-based rights organisation, is organising a free seminar on "sexual harassment: protecting your organisation" on the 22nd April. The event is to launch AWARE's training programme for companies on sexual harassment.

The event is particularly useful for HR policy makers, corporate responsibility professionals, corporate counsels and anyone with an interest in the workplace harassment issue. For more details, see here.

Aware is the first women rights NGO in Singapore to have developed a workplace sexual harassment training programme for companies after several years of research.

In 2007 and 2008, AWARE conducted a survey of sexual harassment at the workplace. The NGO also gathered information about companies’ sexual harassment practices and policies, and recommendations on legal recourse for victims of workplace sexual harassment.

Key survey findings were:

-More than 50% of respondents said they had experienced some form of sexual harassment at their workplace.

-1 in 4 knew of people who had experienced some form of sexual harassment.

-Of those who experienced sexual harassment, 34% of women respondents and 19.2% of men respondents reported being harassed several times.

Singapore companies have shown remarkable reluctance to recognize that sexual harassment is a real issue that needs to be addressed by way of a firm policy and action.

AWARE's new training programme is an opportunity for all companies to make use of the training and introduce long overdue policy on sexual harassment.

NGOs ask IFC to improve standard of its standards

A group of 94 civil society organisations from 38 countries are demanding that the International Finance Corporation should strengthen its environment and social performance standards for loans given to private sector.

IFC, which is under pressure to improve its environmental and social performance standards for project financing, is currently reviewing the standards.

In a joint submission early this month, the civil society organisations describes that IFC's lack of transparency and supervision, failure to recognize human rights, and inadequate climate change policies, undermine IFC's ability to achieve its poverty alleviation mission.

The civil society letter points to a number of cases in which IFC-investments have had devastating impacts on local populations.

"IFC is becoming more like a commercial bank, but failing to incorporate lessons learned from the financial crisis in its lending practices. Standards for its clients are less clear, monitoring and supervision is reduced, and benefits to local communities and countries questionable. This is not how public money should be spent," Anne Perrault of the Center for International Environmental Law, a Washington D.C.-based legal advocacy organization, says.

The letter says that the recent financial crisis underscores the need to provide clear expectations and standards for private sector actors, as well as adequate transparency, due diligence, and oversight procedures to ensure that risks are assessed and addressed fully.

The letter then adds that the approach assumed by IFC in 2006, prior to the crisis, to introduce greater flexibility in IFC standards and to shift monitoring and supervision responsibilities to private sector clients, is clearly inconsistent with new hard-learned lessons about how to deal with financial risks and poses problems for securing strong development outcomes.

The NGOs have also slammed the IFC for approaching only the private sector for feedback on the effectiveness of the IFC environmental and social performance standards.

"The failure of IFC management to interview a single community for the report, despite the opportunity to do so provided by the 182 projects that have been under IFC’s supervision for over a year, is a strong indication that IFC is not, in practice, committed to ensuring that the Policy and Performance Standards are implemented effectively to protect communities and the environment, as intended," the letter says.

Key concerns raised by the organizations include those related to environmental and social due diligence and oversight; accountability; development outcomes; human rights; biodiversity; climate change; financial intermediaries; and disclosure of information.

I wrote a feature on responsible project finance in Ethical Corporation's current issue which investigates the project finance practices, including that of IFC, commercial banks and export credit organisations, and gaps in responsibility.

IFC's own credibility is at stake. It has a good opportunity, while it's reviewing the standards, to honestly consult the civil society organisations and carry out independent impact assessments of current and past IFC funded projects in order to realign the performance standards that truly meet its stated objectives; benefiting the local communities and the environment.

If your are interested in reading more about responsible finance, here is a good resource.

A new break for printer speeds

If you have to choose between Printer A which promises 16 ppm and Printer B that offers 24 ppm and both have the same price, which one will you buy assuming both are equally respectable brands? If you said "B", you may end up with a printer which actually has a ppm lower than 16.

Many consumers were not even aware that several printer manufacturers were fooling them all this while using the ppm trick.

An average printer customer, I include myself in that category, would generally look at the ppm or Page Per Minute speed of the printer for comparison between two makes. Common sense would dictate buying the one which offers the highest ppm so that you can print faster. And how did customers came to know about the term ppm?

Well, ppm was the term that all companies were, and are, using to advertise their printers. And there was a competition to outspeed the rivals by promising relatively higher speed. The trick was to state the "maximum ppm". How did they do this?

Simple. They defined their own page. So, if a manufacturer defined his "page" included only 15 lines and no images, his ppm would appear relatively higher. If another manufacurer decided to act more ethical and assumed that a typical real world A4 page would have a text of 25 lines and would include at least one chart or a graphic, their resulting ppm speed would appear lower. That would be a competitive disadvantage. This is how a ppm-war started among the printer brands.

But now there is a speedbreaker in the form of a new ISO standard on printing speed. The ISO/IEC 24734 standard defines the ppm and ipm (image per minute) for back and colour prints in a default single sided mode. The ISO standard allows customers to do an apple to apple comparison.

Cannon, Epson, Kodak, HP and Lexmark were the companies that worked with the International Standards Organisation to develop the standard. ISO ppm was finalized last year.

So, when you buy a printer next time, find out if the brand has signed up to ISO ppm and follows ISO ppm guidelines to state the real ppm.

Will Nestle budge?

A Greenpeace campaign is in full swing against Nestle on palm oil sourcing. Greenpeace has released a report "Caught Red-Handed: How Nestlé's Use of Palm Oil is Having a Devastating Impact on Rainforest, The Climate and Orang-utans," which says "Nestlé is using palm oil from destroyed Indonesian rainforests and peatlands in products like PowerBar, Nestlé Crunch Crisp, and Coffee Mate, pushing already endangered orangutans to the brink of extinction and accelerating climate change."

Will Greenpeace succeed in extracting a commitment from Nestle on sourcing sustainable palm oil the way they did against Unilever two years ago?

In early 2008, environmental campaigner Greenpeace targeted Unilever over unsustainable sourcing practices of palm oil. The dramatic campaign, in true Greenpeace style, saw activists dressed as Orangutans and making jungle noises descended on the offices of consumer goods giant Unilever. The campaign coincided with Greenpeace releasing a damning report "How Unilever suppliers are burning up Borneo.”

The campaign brought Unilever on their knees within days. A deal was stuck. And Unilever committed buying all its palm oil from certified sustainable sources by 2015. The consumer goods giant also promised to have all palm oil it uses in Europe from certified sustainable sources by 2012. See the complete report here that I wrote for Ethical Corporation magazine then.

Unilever has since taken a leadership role on moving toward sustainable palm oil. Nestle, another company named in the Greenpeace report then, watched from the fence. Until then, Nestle had not even joined the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, a multistakeholder forum to develop a certification scheme for sustainable palm oil.

After securing a commitment from Unilever, Greenpeace then said they would turn their attention to other companies, one by one. So now it is Nestle' turn, it seems. This time, Greenpeace is using the power of social media to attack Nestle.

While Unilever responded to the crisis with a certain grace, Nestle has adopted a hostile approach. Within hours, Nestle got YouTube to remove the video that Greenpeace had uploaded as part of the campaign. Greenpeace now accuses Nestle of censoring the campaign advertisement.

Nestle' actions will be closely watched in the coming days and weeks. Will they act by committing to sustainable palm oil? or will they create a reputation mess and offer new lessons in mismanaging a crisis?

A word with Prakash Sethi

"Prakash is one of those slightly hidden gems in corporate responsibility," wrote Toby Webb, the founding editor of Ethical Corporation magazine, on his blog last week, referring to Prakash Sethi.

Prakash is president of non-profit think-tank Sethi International Center for Corporate Accountability, Inc. and University Distinguished Professor at Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College/CUNY, New York. He is also advisor to a large number of international organisations and companies.

Toby says he recently spent almost a day with Prakash discussing corporate responsibility, taped a podcast on 'the business case for NGO accountability' and asked him to talk to the class he teaches.

A couple of months ago I had the opportunity to speak with Prakash over the phone for my feature on ethics of takeovers for Ethical Corporation. It was a lengthy conversation, mostly listening to his beautifully articulated and passionate views on the ethical issues involved in takeovers (Kraft's takeover bid for Cadbury was the trigger).

But the conversation left me frustrated. I had a limit of 2,000 words for the feature. I was tempted to include every word Prakash said in response to my questions- what he said was so powerful. But couldn't. If I did, I would have ended up writing a mini-book on takeovers. So I had to reluctantly settle to using only some of his quotes, something that space-constrained mag writers often are forced to do. I haven't apologized to him yet. What a pity!

So, don't miss this podcast with Prakash Sethi. He is a rare thought leader on responsible business.

Indian companies should act on gender diversity

The upper house of Indian parliament has passed the historic Women's Bill which aims to reserve 33% of the seats in the parliament and state legislatures for women. People with any sanity should welcome this. And those who tried to stop the bill should be condemned.

It has taken over 10 years for the bill to reach this landmark no thanks to protests by male-dominated political parties. Now the bill needs to be passed by the lower house before it is sent to the president for signing into a law.

Ruling Congress party and the main opposition party BJP as well as the leftist parties supported the bill. Most likely the bill will see through the lower house.

India already has such quota for women in village councils which has improved the governance of these councils. But women in India face severe discrimination in other spheres of life. Last year, India ranked the 114th among the 134 countries in The Global Gender Gap Index computed by the World Economic Forum.

What it means for businesses?

While politicians have taken the step to bring more women in the mainstream of governing the country, what are companies doing to improve gender equality? Women remain largely unrepresented in the middle and senior management in businesses in India, except, perhaps, in the IT outsourcing industry. Women are rarely included in the governing boards of Indian companies.

Once the Women's Bill becomes law, the focus will be on businesses to introduce policies to ensure gender diversity. With 33% of lawmakers being women, businesses will have to rethink their attitude toward women. Business groups will also need to develop new skills and managers for effectively lobbying with female lawmakers.

If companies don't take proactive measures to enhance gender equality and diversity across organisation and supply chains and vigorously protect women's rights, new women lawmakers may push for a regulation for a similar reservation for women in private employment.

Should companies wait for the government to pass a bill to ensure women are fairly represented in companies' management? Or should they voluntarily, and sincerely, start promoting gender equality and gender diversity at all levels in the company? The choice is theirs. We all know voluntary action is the smart thing to do.

Asia's economy rising but women falling behind

Asia Pacific is rapidly turning into an economic powerhouse with a vibrant growth story in spite of the global recession which has crippled the conventional economic powers in the west. But when it comes to the development of women and protecting their rights, Asia Pacific continues to be at the bottom of the pile, according to a new report by the UNDP.

The report titled Power Voice and Rights: A Turning Point for Gender Equality in Asia and the Pacific , says that discrimination and neglect are threatening women’s very survival in the Asia-Pacific region, where women suffer from some of the world’s lowest rates of political representation, employment and property ownership. Their lack of participation is also depressing economic growth.

The Report focuses on three key areas —economic power, political decision-making and legal rights— to analyse what holds women back, and how policies and attitudes can be changed to foster a climb toward gender equality. Asia, the Report asserts, is standing at a cross-road and by putting the right policies in place now, countries in the region can achieve positive change.

Some of the major challenges women face include lower pay than men for the same work, forced to accept lowly paid jobs that men don't want to undertake, widespread illiteracy, poor representation in politics and legislatures, shorter life expectancy, female infanticide, domestic violence, low ownership of property and inadequate laws to protect their rights.

The report recommends removing barriers to women’s ownership of assets, such as land; expanding paid employment; making migration safe and investing in high-quality education and health to address the problems women face in the region.

While the local governments have to accept much of the responsibility to actively promote the well-being of women and protect their rights, businesses too can play a significant role in the development of women.

Non-discrimination in employment, ensuring gender diversity, protection from sexual harassment, protecting rights of migrant women workers, reasonable maternity benefits, work-life balance policies, training and career growth opportunities and developing women managers are some of the things companies can do to contribute to the development of women.

At the community level, companies can consider actively investing in women education which in turn will ensure more number of educated women are available for jobs.