BRAVO - AT LEAST SOME PROGRESS - I HAD TO SHARE IT WITH YOU

Very Best Regards
Rol@nd

-----Original Message-----
From: CCG News
Sent: Wednesday, June 14, 2006 10:03 AM
To: CCG News
Subject: Stalking High-Tech Sweatshops

JUNE 19, 2006
BusinessWeek

SOCIAL ISSUES

How HP's Bonnie Nixon-Gardiner spurred the industry to police worker
conditions

Bonnie Nixon-Gardiner certainly knows how to throw her weight around. She's
only a middle-level manager at Hewlett-Packard Co. and stands at just 5
foot 3. But the top brass snapped to attention last year when she showed up
in Long Hua, China, to inspect working conditions at a massive electronics
manufacturing complex owned by a key HP supplier. Executives from Foxconn
Electronics, a unit of Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., tried to whisk her
into a conference room for a PowerPoint presentation. But Nixon-Gardiner,
46, said bluntly that she wasn't interested.

Instead, remembers Grover Thurman, Foxconn's senior director of social and
environmental responsibility, she demanded full freedom to walk around the
200,000-employee complex, the waste-treatment center, and the dorm rooms
where workers live. When her hosts resisted, she sat them down for a
talking-to. "Look, this isn't going to work unless you're totally
transparent with me," she told the officials. Within minutes, she was off,
a line of nervous, suit-clad executives in tow. "[We] were pretty uptight
when she took a left turn when [we] wanted her to go straight," recalls
Thurman.

Foxconn had reason to balk. A non-Chinese speaker was wandering around
among 250-ton metal-cutting machines that churn out parts for computers and
cell phones. Perhaps of greater concern was Nixon-Gardiner's potential
impact on the bottom line, despite her unimpressive title of program
manager for HP's Supply Chain Social & Environmental Responsibility.

A big chunk of Foxconn's $25 billion in sales come from HP, which buys $67
billion worth of electronics every year. So, a lot was riding on whether
she gave the thumbs-up. On a bigger stage, Nixon-Gardiner has been a key
behind-the-scenes catalyst for an ambitious new effort by the high-tech
industry to improve working conditions at suppliers like Foxconn
around the globe. "HP has taken the lead on this, and Bonnie did a lot of
it on sheer passion," says Kevin O'Mara, vice-president at consultants AMR
Research.

Back in 1999, as HP and other tech companies began outsourcing production
of printers, motherboards, and laptops to the same low-wage countries that
make Nike shoes and T-shirts sold at Wal-Mart, she began setting down
strong anti-sweatshop policies for HP suppliers. By 2004, Nixon-Gardiner
and her counterparts at Dell, IBM, Intel, and other companies had
agreed to create the Electronic Industry Code of Conduct. The EICC sets out
basic labor and environmental standards for the industry's contractors.

Modeled broadly on other industrywide groups such as the Fair Labor Assn.
(FLA) founded a decade ago by Nike and other footwear and apparel
companies, the EICC is a first for the tech industry, which is rarely
associated with sweatshop issues. Still, it only goes so far. Unlike the
FLA, for instance, the EICC isn't an independent body and to date doesn't
conduct random inspections of member companies' overseas factories. The
EICC simply spells out abuses -- from child or forced labor to excessive
overtime -- that the companies agree are unacceptable on the part of their
contractors. It
leaves the inspection and enforcement of these standards to each member
company.

Still, just getting hypercompetitive tech companies behind a unified effort
is an accomplishment, say some. "It's too early to assess [the EICC's]
success, but they've developed an industry approach that makes sense," says
David Schilling, director of the corporate accountability program at the
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility in New York.

JUMPING ON BOARD
Nixon-Gardiner isn't waiting for the perfect solution. A New Jersey native
raised by a single mom, she grew up with a strong social conscience. At HP,
she has set up a 70-auditor system that has inspected 200 factories owned
by 150 key HP suppliers -- more than any other EICC member. HP says
allegations of labor problems contributed to its decision to break
with three suppliers that didn't make the grade, including South
Korea-based Trigem Computer Inc. Trigem says it wasn't aware of this issue.
She is also trying to educate local suppliers. On June 1, HP announced a
new training program to help Chinese manufacturers prevent labor and
environmental abuses; Brazil, Malaysia, and India could be next. "My
10-year vision is for [consumers to know that] when you touch a technology
product, you are guaranteed it was made in a socially and environmentally
responsible way," she says.

HP's workplace crusade began in 1999, when workers at a printer unit in
Vancouver, Wash., that had been sold to a supplier raised concerns that the
new owners weren't upholding HP's worker safety policies. HP tapped
Nixon-Gardiner, then a consultant, to benchmark how other corporations kept
tabs on suppliers. By 2002, HP had rolled out sweeping rules for suppliers.

Then, in 2004, the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development, a human-rights
watchdog group, issued a withering report, alleging "dire working
conditions" by overseas contractors serving the computer industry. That
gave her an opening to sell other companies on a common code as a way to
avoid confusion among suppliers producing for several buyers. By June,
IBM, Dell, and five large contract manufacturers had formed the EICC, and
Intel, Cisco, Microsoft, and Sony jumped on board soon after.

Clearly, HP's activist has moved social responsibility up the high-tech
priority list, even if the changes are taking place one plant at a time.
During that first Foxconn audit, Nixon-Gardiner decided that the machinery
was too loud. So Foxconn bought employees some flimsy orange earplugs. Not
good enough. Six visits from Nixon-Gardiner later, the company
had spent tens of thousands of dollars to put enclosures around the gear,
change the blades, and give workers top-of-the-line ear protectors. Now,
says Thurman, employees are complaining about how hot their ears get.
Dealing with Nixon-Gardiner, he says, "is like being kissed and slapped at
the same time. It can make you psychotic -- but it needs to be done." That
message is sinking in with the rest of high tech, too.

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