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“Over the next three years, hundreds of IBMers from around the world will work together in small, diverse teams, as part of IBM’s Corporate Service Corps. These future leaders will learn the skills to be global citizens and professionals, while collaborating with communities in emerging markets on their economic development.”



This sounds good, doesn’t it? This statement comes from the 2007-2008 IBM Corporate Responsibility Report. This is fabulous to work with local communities and foster economic growth. But what about human rights? Is it not the duty of a “responsible corporation” to respect them?



The answer seems to be yes, of course as long as we don’t come to the right of creating and joining a union. Our colleagues at IBM Turkey who have recently been fired for no other reasons than being unions’ activists have experienced it.



In the introduction of the report, IBM’s CEO Sam Palmisano says his company will do everything to solve some of the major problems our world is facing today. These are very diverse and include wasted energy, gridlocked traffic, inefficient supply chains, wasteful food chains, unhealthy healthcare, unmanaged climate systems and eroding water supply.



We then learn in chapter one that the company wants to equip its employees for success as global professionals and citizens. IBM wants to find new ways to connect employees to opportunities and learning experiences. The firm also states it wants to promote employees’ health and well-being. After that the report pleads for a diverse workforce reflecting IBM’s customers. On a community side, the enterprise declares it will identify the major social and environmental problems and empower people with the necessary skills for the next century.



Later on we discover IBM will promote the social responsibility of its suppliers along the chain. In the final chapter the firm says it will integrate diverse stakeholder perspective into its decision-making process and maintain the highest standards of ethics and corporate governance wherever it operates.



Each and every unionist in the world would applaud and agree with all the statements above. But one question will still be in our minds: why, if we agree on almost all points unions are never mentioned in the report?



The fact is it becomes very hard to believe in statements such as those when they come from a firm that adopts so anti-union policies and fires union leaders. UNI Global Union thinks the time has come to let unions operate in multinationals in order to check whether these good intentions are respected on a labour side as well. It is far too easy to declare good behavior but it’s far more difficult to act so, it seems.