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The report, published today by the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC), reveals Deutsche Telekom has failed to meet key measures of its commitment to human and labour rights laid out by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), which is considered the “gold standard” of corporate responsibility.



“Deutsche Telekom gives itself an A+ on its corporate responsibility but with so many holes in the report, we’d give it a D+,” said UNI General Secretary Philip Jennings. “Tomorrow is International Human Rights Day and we are calling on Deutsche Telekom to make a real commitment to human rights and labour rights by providing full information on its global practices and observing international standards for workers’ rights.”



Along with overstating its compliance with global standards and failing to offer adequate information to satisfy reporting requirements, the report details the company’s overemphasis on practices in its home country of Germany while it fails to disclose many practices in other countries. DT also focuses on reporting its policies for management while making scant reference to its policies for tens of thousands of non-management employees.



The lack of consideration of most of its global workforce seems to be emblematic of the company’s view of corporate responsibility. According to the report, only one of DT’s 17 reported sustainability “Key Performance Indicators” relates to workers at all.



“When you look at the information they provide in their reports, there are big holes in the data supporting their claims,” said Pierre Habbard, Senior Policy Advisor to TUAC and author of the study. “The company has failed to meet the GRI standard disclosure requirements about labour and human rights and it has also failed to have any information it does provide verified by an outside source.”



The report finds that the company has overstated its compliance with 15 core labour and human rights indicators in the GRI. The company says it meets full requirements for 14 of the standards and partially meets requirements on one standard. TUAC found the company fully meets requirements on two standards, partially meets seven of the standards and doesn't meet the requirements on six standards at all.



Labour rights have long been recognized as core human rights. The recently adopted Guiding Principles for the Implementation of the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ Framework place an obligation on business to respect human rights and the responsibility to act with due diligence to identify and account for the impact of their business on human rights.



When describing its compliance with requirements to disclose where freedom of association or collective bargaining rights might be at risk, DT specifically refers to its employees in the United States, where management have waged a well-documented anti-union campaign against workers who want to form a union. The company maintains that it complies with US law, without any further analysis to determine whether its conduct satisfies international standards. As the UN Principles make clear, compliance with national law is not enough to guarantee that a company has met its international human rights obligations.



The UN Global Compact and the GRI use the same standards for evaluating social responsibility. Deutsche Telekom is a participant in the Global Compact with a level of “advanced”. The matter has been brought to the attention of the Global Compact.



UNI has formed a global coalition with the International Trade Union Confederation, German union ver.di and US union Communications Workers of America and US trade union centre AFL-CIO to press Deutsche Telekom to fulfil its responsibility to respect workers’ rights around the world. The coalition filed an OECD complaint against the company for anti-union practices in the US and Montenegro earlier this year.



For more information about the coalition’s campaign go to: www.weexpectbetter.org



The full report on TUAC’s assessment of Deutsche Telekom’s Corporate Social Responsibility can be found here: http://www.tuac.org/en/public/e-docs/00/00/0A/42/document_doc.phtml



The 2010-2011 Deutsche Telekom Corporate Responsibility Report can be found here: http://www.cr-report.telekom.com/cr/backstage_11/documentpool/en/en.pdf