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The inaugural report is located at http://www.usps.com/green/report/2008/welcome.htm. The Postal Service also has a page with more information about their green efforts at http://www.usps.com/green/welcome.htm

In this guest column in the University of Maryland student newspaper, the writer recounts a successful campaign on the University of Maryland campus to get the University to end its contract with an athletic apparel company that was violating workers’ rights. She now suggests a “a broader solution that will encourage fundamental change.” Read the article here.
Excerpt:

This year, we have already learned about violations at two Nike factories that produce collegiate apparel in which fired workers have been denied owed pay. We cannot stand by as more workers lose their jobs because they stood up for their rights. But we cannot simply cut individual contracts and expect industry-wide reform. We successfully punished Russell’s labor violations last semester, but now we need a broader solution that will encourage fundamental change. We have the power to ensure no university clothing supports unethical policies that harm workers; we just need a way to use it more effectively.

The solution is the Designated Suppliers Program, a plan that would use the licensing power of this university to provide incentives for companies to respect workers’ rights. The DSP would help prevent companies from deserting unionized factories by requiring apparel companies to send a certain percentage of their orders to factories with fair labor practices.

Read more…

Read the article here.

Excerpt:
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The three major credit ratings agencies gave mortgage-backed securities unjustifiably high ratings in return for lucrative fees, losing at least $457 million for five Ohio public employee pension and retirement funds, the state’s attorney general alleged in a lawsuit filed Friday.

Ohio is the second state whose public pension funds have pursued credit rating agencies, after the California Public Employees’ Retirement System sued the agencies in July alleging they caused it more than $1 billion in losses.

Ohio Attorney General Rich Cordray said Friday evidence showed that Moody’s Investors Service, Fitch Ratings, and Standard & Poor’s knew that mortgage-backed securities — in which mortgages were sliced and packaged into securities for investors — were much riskier than the top ratings they gave them.

But because those seeking the specific rating could shop around until they received that rating, rating agencies had a significant financial incentive to give the highest rating so they wouldn’t lose market share, Cordray said.

Read more…

Global Post has assembled a five-part investigation of supply chains that produce many of the world’s most popular tech products. Read the article here.
Excerpt:

Embarrassed companies have vowed to do better. They’ve drafted “codes of conduct” for their Asian suppliers, and promised more factory audits to catch abuses.

But here’s the problem, say activists: While such codes may be great public relations, they’re not working to fix the problem. Worse, the codes permit the big brands to pat themselves on the back, even as workers continue to be exploited in the shadowy world of Asian electronics supply chains.

“These codes of conduct and audits are new tools that every brand will have, and they feel so proud of themselves,” said Jenny Chan, a labor rights activist formerly with Hong Kong labor rights group Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM). “But the codes have limits. To see fundamental change, you have to get labor groups involved and gain the trust of workers. Otherwise it’s just a cat-and-mouse game between auditors and suppliers.”

The problem is compounded by a lack of transparency. Asian electronics supply chains are notoriously murky. Contractors shift orders across borders and between factories and subcontractors, and many major brands treat their supplier list as top-secret information.

That makes it difficult to pin down who’s making what for whom and, therefore, difficult to fix blame when allegations of abuse come to light. When a factory catches flak from labor rights groups and negative media coverage, the big customers often cut orders or sever business ties — a surgical strategy that activists say fails to address underlying, systemic problems in the industry.

Read more…

So, is this ethical? Read the article here.
Excerpt:

Investment funds are buying billions of dollars’ worth of home loans, discounted from the loans’ original value. Then, in what might seem an act of charity, the funds are helping homeowners by reducing the size of the loans.

But as part of these deals, the mortgages are being refinanced through lenders that work with government agencies like the Federal Housing Administration. This enables the funds to pocket sizable profits by reselling new, government-insured loans to other federal agencies, which then bundle the mortgages into securities for sale to investors.

While homeowners save money, the arrangement shifts nearly all the risk for the loans to the federal government — and, ultimately, taxpayers — at a time when Americans are falling behind on their mortgage payments in record numbers.

Read more…

Read the article here.
Excerpt:

A new report alleging corruption in Morgan Stanley’s China operations has sullied the firm’s aspirations to be a good example of corporate social responsibility.

Reuters has published a damning article that alleges Garth Peterson, a former employee at Morgan Stanley in China, is suspected of violating the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act by engaging in bribery with Morgan Stanley’s government and business contacts in China. The article states Morgan Stanley conducted its own internal investigation and already submitted those findings to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Peterson was apparently fired in December 2008.

Read more…

Read the article here.
Excerpt:

During the talk, Al Iannuzzi, Senior Director of J&J’s Worldwide Environmental Health & Safety unit, told a story of his early days as an environmentalist in the 1970s who believed that “corporations are evil.” He resisted working for big corporations until he read J&J’s Credo–which upholds its responsibility to its employees, the environment and communities–and found an interesting job within the company. He’s been with J&J now for nearly 30 years and wants everyone to know how J&J is using business for good.

“If we’re not saying anything, people assume we’re not doing anything,” said Iannizzi. So J&J wants people to know what their doing–but they don’t want to greenwash, either.

Read more…

Read the article here.
Excerpt:

But in summary, Becker’s view of corporate morality is that the only ethical responsibilities of business executives are to obey the law, adhere to contracts (really just a subset of the first rule), and, most critically, to maximize the price of their companies’ shares. The first coherent statement of this moral view came from the economist Milton Friedman in a full-throated defense of capitalism with the brilliantly blunt title, “The Social Responsibility of Business Is To Increase Its Profits.” Now the bogeyman of creeping socialism that Milton worried about 40 years ago is long gone, as is Friedman himself, who died in 2006, but his contentious and now ossified principles live on in the writings of Becker, his most faithful student.

The Friedman-Becker moral theory has three virtues. The first is its simplicity; it reduces the whole tangle of moral issues to a simple bright-line test. The second is that it is able to justify most miserable behavior and even turn the tables on anyone who suggests, for instance, that companies should worry about the treatment of workers in Chinese factories or the fairness of offering subprime mortgages with usurious terms. To care about things like this is not only unnecessary, the theory suggests, but actually wrong because it betrays the interests of the shareholders who are the executive’s ultimate employers.

The third virtue is that it combines supremely well with the idea that senior executives should have pay packages that rely mainly on stock options and reward them for a single-minded devotion to the share price. The combination of the “shareholder value” theory and stock- and options-based compensation creates a beautifully virtuous circle. The profits of the shareholders are the CEO’s own interests, too, so if acting in the best interests of the shareholders (that is, raising the share price) is the CEOs main moral responsibility … well, gee, acting ethically means acting in his own best interest is always the right thing to do.

Read more…

http://www.heinz.com/csr2009/
“This 2009 Corporate Social Responsibility Report details our Company’s performance and progress in Fiscal Years 2008 and 2009 in critically important areas ranging from corporate governance and ethics to environmental initiatives and our positive economic and social contributions.”

MSNBC.COM (Associated Press)
Read the article here.
Excerpt:

Analysis of a dozen published studies testing possible new uses for a Pfizer Inc. epilepsy drug found that reporting of the results was often misleading, indicating the medicine worked better than internal company documents showed.

According to the report, when a company-funded study’s primary finding wasn’t favorable, that result was usually buried and something else positive was highlighted, without disclosing the switch.

Read more…

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