China, and its booming economy, is one of the principal topics at this year's WEF in Davos. One of the corporations that has discovered the "locational advantages" of the country is the mobile telephone manufacturer Nokia. The "Chinese economic miracle" is based on the exploitation of rural migrant workers.

Nokia, like other firms, has moved production facilities to China in recent years. Nokia's factory workers in China are migrant workers from rural areas that stream into booming coastal cities to work as cheap labor under miserable working conditions. In 2003, 57% of Chinese workers were migrants from rural areas, of which 60% were women. In the electronics industry there are currently 3 million migrant workers; 2.5 million of them are young unmarried women. It is in effect these women who are the "economic miracle" in the "world's factory" and who provide the cheapest possible workers.

Nokia adorns itself with a Code of Conduct that is however neither obeyed nor enforced, according to a November 2005 study by a Finnish NGO. That is, Nokia does not comply with international labor conventions of the ILO (International Labor Organization) nor with Chinese labor laws, both at its own factory as well as at its suppliers in Guangdong province. Workers are discriminated against, they are forbidden from organizing, and in some cases they are not paid the minimum wage required by law, not to mention an existence wage.

This example demonstrates that voluntary mechanisms of corporate responsibility are inadequate, and that only internationally-binding rules can guarantee compliance with human rights laws, as well as social, ethical, labor, environmental and peace-promoting norms. Furthermore, a single individual is in charge of the "Human Rights Policy" within the Nokia corporation, a clear signal of how little value it places on human rights.

Tero Ojanpera, Finnish Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of Nokia Corporation, is attending this year's WEF. It is unlikely, however, that he will address truly relevant subjects like labor rights in his factories and suppliers, and the publicly-financed "incentives" offered to his corporation by developing countries. He prefers to take part in a panel about the future and potential of video games.

Koni Kuhn +41 (0)76 377 44 11

Sources:

Day and Night at the Factory: Working conditions of temporary workers in the factories of Nokia and its suppliers in southern China. (Institute of Contemporary Observation, FinnWatch, Finnish ECA Reform Campaign). 2005. www.eldis.org/cf/search/disp/docdisplay.cfm?doc=DOC11651&resource=f1csr Whose miracle? How China's workers are paying the price for its economic boom. Workers' Voice @ WTO. (International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, ICFTU). 2005. www.workersvoiceatwto.org/www/pdf/WhoseMiracleChinaReport.pdf