Holding corporations liable for human rights abuses
"Organisations representing businesses are opposed to the element of compulsion - they say voluntary mechanisms are the best way to get firms to behave better."
The BBC reports that a draft UN code of conduct would lead to large corporations being monitored and inspected for human rights abuses. It’s way too early to start talking about specifics; what I’m interested in is the matter of compulsory regulation vs. self-policing.
Now, I think everyone agrees that we should have the most efficient system possible, and if we can use market magic, with maybe some government hedging for extreme cases, to solve problems, then we should. If the market can help us enact policy, and if we can make sure it doesn’t do something perverse and evil, then that’s good: we’ve avoided spending lots of money on a huge hulking government bureaucracy.
In the web hosting business, which I’m in, self-policing is considered a good thing: not all potential clients are that concerned about how good a company’s customer support is, or what their reliability is like; or rather, they might be concerned about that, but be more concerned about price. They might be prepared to accept a trade-off. So applying a uniform blanket policy isn’t something that’s going to work: pointing the finger at low-cost bucket shop companies, protesting that they’re cheap and don’t give good support, isn’t going to get much of a reaction from those people who are primarily looking for a good deal. Conversely, setting up a kite mark scheme, funded by those companies that qualify for it, is effectively a marketing scheme, and presumably cost-effective on those grounds alone.
The point is: self-regulation works only if a) people are happy to buy, in full cognisance, from companies that fail the regulatory tests, or b) if no company can survive once it has failed the tests, because of the PR backlash.
Nike never mentions sweatshops. They’re not part of its corporate message, nor are they ever significantly mentioned by its rivals. But, nonetheless, Nike’s usage of underpaid Third World labour in perilous conditions is a valid motive for objecting to the company, and if market forces will not provide us with a way of registering that dissatisfaction, we have to turn to Government.
Of course, what I’m maybe trying to say is that boycotts don’t work. (Although, now that we have blogs, maybe we can make boycotts successful again. Hmmm.)