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Swiss newspaper « le Temps », recently, reported about a ranking established by Geneva-based Covalence (www.covalence.ch) who tracks the ethical reputation of multinationals all over the world.



The IT industry is ranked second out of ten sectors worldwide. The branch has a good reputation in terms of environmental impact, waste management, social sponsoring as well as social and ecological products.



But when it comes to China, the story is very different. In fact, the industry falls down to the last position of the classification which is based on the ethical reputation of more than 200 multinationals. Even the oil and chemical industries which are usually the worse sectors in terms of ethical behaviour are doing better than IT in China.



And guess which are the areas where the technology industry does worse? Working conditions and institutional impact (human rights, relationship with politicians, corruption…). The hardware firms behaving worse in China are Cisco, Apple, Nortel, Sun, Dell and IBM while Siemens, HP and Alcatel-Lucent do better.



But the criteria where the IT sector receives the lowest mark is “human rights” which directly concerns software companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! These enterprises are accused to help the Chinese government to monitor and censure the Internet which definitely facilitates the capture of political dissidents.



In other words, we can say that the technology industry does well environmentally worldwide but terribly bad when in comes to social rights in China. In order to change this situation the major actors of the industry need to incorporate human rights topics in their corporate social responsibility commitments all over the world, including China.



Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang already asked the U.S. government to act in favor of Chinese political prisonners and created a fund to help Chinese dissidents. The firm promised it will do something during the 2008 Olimpic games, but can we really trust them?



Will Microsoft, Google and Yahoo! be able to apply a code of conduct when it comes to on-line censure as asked be Amnesty International? Will hardware firms who use Tibetan lithium to produce mobile phones, laptops, iPod and hybrid vehicles address the troubles in Tibet or will they remain silent?



And finally, will Chinese trade unions be able to denounce the violation of labour rights in their country? Maybe the world observing China during Olimpic games in Beijing may change something, who knows?