Of all the challenges posed by globalization, regulating abusive corporate practices has long been particularly difficult. From Asian sweatshops supplying brands like Nike and Apple, to the oil giant Shell polluting and abetting violence in Nigeria, recent decades have been rife with tales of multinationals harming communities in which they operate – usually in low-income, [...]

Global giants including Apple and Google will be forced to reveal how much tax they pay the federal government, under a plan to name and shame firms seen to be dodging their responsibilities by using tax havens. The proposed crackdown, announced today, would also clear the way for the government to publish more detail on [...]

It’s been a year since we’ve heard any news about the allegations of widespread no-hire “gentleman’s agreements” between Silicon Valley’s top companies. Twelve months and nearly 200 legal filings later, the case is moving forward, and Judge Lucy Koh is saying that internal emails reveal executives believed the agreement would bring real financial benefits to [...]

You may have heard by now that Samsung is the latest target of labor rights groups who have shifted their focus on multinational activity in China into overdrive. The proximate cause of this increased activity is, of course, the success of these groups with Apple and its supplier Foxconn. As I’ve written about several times, [...]

Chinese tech hub and boom town Shenzhen is set to increase the minimum wage of workers there by 13.3 per cent in early 2013, causing a few sweaty palms in the technology supply chain. Shenzhen and the wider Pearl River Delta area in southern China is one of the most concentrated technology manufacturing hubs in [...]

Apple and Foxconn are yet to make significant changes to labour practices that see Chinese workers work unpaid and excessive overtime,endure bullying and work in unsafe working conditions, according to not for profit group Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM). SACOM levelled the accusations in its Sweatshops are good for Apple and Foxconn, but [...]

Apple has recently made changes to its policies of withholding any information about the environmental impact of its factories in China. That’s largely thanks to Ma Jun, who this week won the Goldman environmental prize for his work. As the founder of China’s Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs (IPE), former journalist Ma Jun spearheads [...]

The US anti-sweatshop movement was born the day we discovered how our Nikes were stitched together. Two decades later, we are discovering how our cherished iPhones are made, giving Apple a ” Nike moment” of its own. Worker suicides at Apple’s main Chinese supplier, Foxconn, in 2010, followed by reports of forced overtime, child labor, [...]

Apple has told prominent environmental activists in the U.S. and China that it will soon allow independent environmental reviews of at least two suppliers’ factories in China, the activists said. The reviews come as Apple (AAPL) faces rising criticism about toxic pollution and factory injuries at overseas suppliers’ factories. Environmental examinations would be separate from [...]

Nokia recently raised its voice on the issue of conflict minerals by publishing a policy that spells out its stand. The Finnish phone maker joins other consumer electronics companies in the corporate responsibility of avoiding conflict minerals in their supply chain. “We are concerned about the link between illegal extraction and trade in natural resources, [...]