PHA-Exch> Food for shareholders thought

[Claudio Schuftan]

Human Rights Reader 190 [No.1 of 3 in a short series on non-actors in the
human rights arena].



*CORPORATE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY DOES NOT REVOLVE AROUND HUMAN RIGHTS
CONCERNS OR CHARITABLE INTENTIONS; IT REVOLVES AROUND BUSINESS INTERESTS.*



"There is one and only one social responsibility of business --to use its
resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long
as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engage in open
and free competition without deception or fraud". (Milton Friedman)



1. Beware: corporate social responsibility (CSR) is not just another
buzz-word and it does have relevance in human rights (HR) work.  CSR is to
be understood as a branding strategy.  More often than not, it represents a
series of initiatives by some of the global giants to deviously position
themselves as labor-friendly and as environmental stewards. Accordingly,
corporation leaders are prone to say nice things about social and
environmental matters, only to, then, carry-on business as usual. In al
truth, the ultimate relevance of CSR still really is to please the
shareholders who are the ones who (in principle) call the shots.

[In Coca Cola's I. Neville's words: "Governments can enforce accountability,
but they cannot engender responsibility. Responsibility is a choice, and CSR
standards allows us businesspeople to make that choice".  …Indeed, it would
seem that it is high time for Coca Cola to make that choice].



2. There is thus often reason to doubt honest commitment to CSR. More often
than not, the social responsibility standards set by Western-based
transnational corporations remain unconvincing --and if those are
unconvincing, so are the HR principles they purport to espouse. Voluntary,
vague and unenforceable, in last instance, social responsibility standards
are not a step towards a more fundamental reform of corporate structures in
the direction of the respect of HR; instead, they are distraction from it.
Only exposing and rejecting these standards for what they really are is a
step towards addressing the abuse of corporate power.



3. The question that this leaves us with is: Are more sinister corporate
interests camouflaged through 'CSR-talk' making
host-communities-where-corporations-operate believe that their interests
coincide with those of the respective corporation?



4. It is simply not enough for corporations to engage in 'make-believe',
sometimes making deceiving (or 'half-baked') commitments to its workers and
the communities they are drawn from. Fancy brochures in which companies
congratulate themselves on such achievements cannot be trusted to the word.
The CSR-card should thus not be allowed to play itself out as a, in our
case, HR public relations card, particularly in the case of corporations
with spotty records on labor rights and on the rights of nature.



5. In any case, CSR standards make a series of pledges, most of which, one
may believe, are self-evident to any responsible person. Moreover, they
often promise action will be taken 'where appropriate' and 'over time'…
Therefore, for practical purposes, these standards are meaningless.



6. For even a pinch of credibility, the certification of CSR actions must,
at the very least, be carried out by external auditors (…but when auditors
announce they will be coming-by to inspect, you can imagine what happens at
the industrial plant beforehand…). (M. Busse) Therefore, only bottom-up
initiatives from local communities are a guarantee of autonomously monitored
adherence to CSR principles.



7. Furthermore, having stated CSR documents from many companies must not
result in local authorities relinquishing their responsibilities in the area
of monitoring social responsibility, the compliance with labor rights and
other human rights, i.e., situations in which CSR initiatives purport to
compensate for local governance failures in this area.



8. For us in HR work, if CSR is to make sense, it must genuinely and
sustainably contribute to the fight for HR, for dignity, and against
poverty, hunger, abuses in the workplace, despair and destitution.

Otherwise, at best, CSR programs will achieve little islands of improvement
in oceans of HR abuses.



Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan at phmovement.org

[All Readers can be found in www.humaninfo.org/aviva  under
No.69<http://www.humaninfo.org/aviva%20%20under%20No.69>
]

_________________________________

Adapted from D+C, 34:4, April, 2007 and D+C, 34:12, December 2007.
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