Monitoring Policy Making at the United Nations |
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Global Policy Forum - List-Serv: May 1-5, 2000
GPF List-Serv
May 1-5, 2000GPF List-Serv May 1-5
Greetings from Global Policy Forum!
In 1992, responding to an intense campaign by the International Chamber of Commerce, Secretary General Butros-Ghali shut down the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, ending nearly two decades of extensive UN monitoring and reporting on TNC’s. Member states also soon ended their long negotiations to create an international code of conduct for TNCs. Since then, TNCs have grown more important than ever, but the task of monitoring them has entirely fallen to citizen organizations and trade unions. Corporate Watch in San Francisco is a leading TNC monitor with a fine web site. So we were pleased recently to welcome Corporate Watch staffer Kenny Bruno to the GPF office, where he filled us in on their current program of work.
Corporate Watch has monitored corporate funding of the United Nations and was a key organizer of the NGO protest of the corporate partnership program of the United Nations Development Programme. Corporate Watch has also alerted the public to the corporate partnerships of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and other agencies. We were especially interested to hear about their new Citizen Compact on the UN and Corporations, a document that establishes ground rules for how the UN might interact with TNCs. The key demand is that “a legal framework, including monitoring, must be developed to govern their behavior on the world stage.” The Compact also insists that the UN should not describe its relationship with the TNCs as a “partnership” and that it should not take funds from corporations in a field where they have an active business interest. Obviously, this Compact is intended to complement and extend the Global Compact that Secretary General Annan announced at Davos earlier this year, which assumed that corporations will adopt socially and environmentally friendly policies voluntarily. Corporate Watch believes, reasonably, that self-policing will not produce results and instead will only delude the public.
It is time, we think, to start talking about “blue wash” – how corporations seek to hide their negative behavior behind a positive image created with the help of “partnerships” with the United Nations. UNESCO, another financially hard-pressed UN agency, has taken the road of corporate partnerships in hopes of garnering a few extra dollars for its programs. The January 2000 UNESCO magazine “Sources” provided some examples. In one case, UNESCO has teamed up with Rhone-Poulenc, a large French company, to restore the Taj Mahal of India, one of the world's most important monuments that had begun to deteriorate due to air pollution. The program will also improve the environmental conditions in city of Agra. Rhone Poulenc is one of the largest French TNCs and it is under fire for its agro-industrial and genetic research activities. By investing $237,000 in the Taj Mahal project, it was able to generate a lot of good publicity and gain benefits for its shareholders.
As Caty Forget, representative of the Rhone Poulenc Foundation says, it gives the company a better image that has to do with “high values, such as respect for the other, heritage conservation, the value of a culture, and identity." She also stresses the building of morale within the company itself, whose employees are informed about this project. “It makes them proud,” she said. This information was reported in the UNESCO magazine. UNESCO, whose main responsibility is to promote education, is now educating the public to consider “bluewash” as a natural and even a laudable outcome of their program.
Trade unions are more likely to understand the problematic nature of TNCs and the need for a critical perspective. In March, union leaders from 22 countries gathered in Washington DC to coordinate efforts on one especially important and successful TNC – General Electric. Sponsored by the International Metalworkers Federation, the meeting provided an opportunity for exchange of information and strategizing among unionized workers in some of GE’s most important production centers. “We really need to have worldwide collective bargaining,” said Edward Fire, of the International Union of Electric Workers (IUE), the union which will be negotiating with GE for a new three year contract in the United States at the end of June.
GE, which combines extensive manufacturing with financial services, produces a wide array of products from light bulbs to medical equipment to high performance aircraft engines. It may be the first corporation in the world to earn more than $10 billion in profits (1999), a figure that is more than the total UN-system budget. GE has a global workforce of 300,000, of which about 150,000 in the United States, 30,000 in Mexico, 15,000 in India and as many as 10,000 in China. Jack Welsh, CEO of GE, received $164 million in salary, bonuses, benefits and stock options for 1999, more than the wages of all 30,000 GE workers in Mexico.
If you have been wondering about the GPF list-serv, it's true that we have not been publishing in recent weeks. We've been short-handed in the office, so please accept our apologies.
The spring GPF intern team has departed. Rahul Rao returned to Bangalore where he is a student at the National Law School of India University. Rebecca Culley is heading off to China, where she will be continuing her studies. Alice Gibbons has plans to work in Latin America. We also bid farewell to Yuko Suzuki of NYU and Christian Kaufholz of NYU, both of whom served GPF for a long time. They all did excellent work and deserve our greatest thanks. We shall miss them all.
We welcome Giji Gya of Melbourne, Australia, a GPF alumna who becomes our new Assistant Director. Also newly arrived is Anthony Mak, a student of the University of Hong Kong, who will be with us for the summer.
