Human rights

Our goal is to provide a safe, healthy, and stimulating workplace where human rights and positive values are protected and promoted.

Disclosure on management approach

HR1, HR4, HR5, HR6, HR7

Our commitment to human rights underlies our entire management approach. As one of the first companies to sign the UN Global Compact, we are committed to advancing human rights within our sphere of influence. We support the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all other international human rights standards, including the draft 'UN Norms on the Responsibilities of Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Regard to Human Rights'. For a full description of our management approach, including human rights policy statements, see our website. References are made to our management approach throughout this section.

Overview of performance in 2005

Internal management systems

In 2005, we focused most of our attention and resources on reviewing and revising the human rights indicators in our internal self-assessment tool beSTick as part of our revised overall framework for implementing corporate responsibility. We revised these thoroughly in 2005, changing many and introducing an additional 20–25 indicators on human rights (including the supply chain). These indicators are already in use and will progressively be used by all major sites as a gap analysis tool, both to identify issues and risks relating to human rights and to ensure that a robust management system is in place with evidence to support its existence and effectiveness.

Stakeholder engagement

In 2005, we maintained our strong relationships with two international human rights NGOs: Amnesty International (French Section) and The Rights Practice, based in the UK. We consulted them about the continuing development of our policies and management systems for human rights, and kept them informed of our progress, especially in areas where they had expressed concern. In October 2005, we attended the annual 'Club des Affaires' meeting organized by Amnesty International French Section. Having suggested forging stronger links between French companies working towards improved human rights performance and the Business Leaders in Human Rights (BLIHR) working group in the UK, we were pleased that the BLIHR group had been invited to speak at this annual meeting.

We also maintained our contact and relationship with the Institute of Contemporary Observation (ICO), a Chinese NGO based in Shenzhen, where our Chinese manufacturing site is located. In November 2005, we organized a stakeholder engagement session with the ICO and the China Labour Bulletin, another Chinese human rights organization based in Hong Kong. The aim was to learn more about relevant socio-cultural trends in China and the work of these organizations in supporting companies wishing to continuously improve their human rights performance. Managers from our manufacturing site in Shenzhen, our sales office in Hong Kong, and from regional HR management in Singapore joined in the talks.

Non-discrimination and fair treatment

See the 'Our people' section of this report for results on diversity and equal opportunities. Local sites are responsible for dealing with cases of non-compliance with company policy in this area.

Fair wages
	2005
STHR1a*: Percentage of employees with wages above the national legal minimum wage or collective bargaining agreement, whichever is higher	100%
STHR1b*: Percentage of employees paid above 105% of the minimum salary required by law or collective agreement, whichever is higher	85%

See the 'Our people' section for more indicators related to fair wages within a wider human resources context.

Working time and conditions

In 2005, our sites continued to meet our human resources standards, which state that every employee must have one day of rest for every seven days worked and that regular working time must not exceed 48 hours per week. This year, none of our production sites exceeded the regular working time of 44 hours. We have selected these two as key indicators of our human rights performance because we feel they reflect the balance that must be struck between productivity on the one hand and basic employee well-being on the other. The average overtime of our employees has continued to drop for the third year running. In all our sites the standard working hours are equal to or lower than those required by local legislation or collective agreements. Overtime is maintained at a reasonable level and is always on a voluntary basis.

Freedom of association and collective bargaining and participative management culture

Working time			%
	2003	2004	2005
STS35: Employees having at least 1 day off every 7 days	100	100	100
STS36: Employees with regular work time less than 48 hours per week	100	100	100*

STHR7: Overtime hours
	2003	2004	2005
Average overtime per week (hours per employee)	2.20	1.79	1.29

STS38: Working time lost to strikes			%
	2003	2004	2005
Ratio time lost to strikes/time worked	0.04	0.05	0.15*

STHR4*, STHR6*: Working time in selected countries
Hours, per employee, per week in selected countries

	Standard working time	Overtime
Morocco	43.64	0.37
Malta	40.00	2.00
Italy	37.27	1.00
France	36.67	0.41
Singapore	40.00	2.24
Malaysia	38.70	3.30
China	40.00	2.80
North America	40.00	3.90

LA3; STHR5

Considering that all of our European sites are covered by the European Works Council, and a number of sites outside Europe (e.g. Morocco and Singapore) also have formal systems for collective labor negotiations, we calculate that in 2005, as in 2004, over 75% of our employees were represented by independent trade unions and other officially recognized representatives, or covered by collective bargaining agreements.

LA4

See the section on our restructuring activities in 2005 for information on consultation and negotiation with employee representatives regarding significant changes in the company.

See Employee empowerment and engagment for more details of our systems for participatory management and engagement of employees.

Child labor

There were no cases in 2005 of non-compliance with our company ban on hiring staff aged under 16.

Forced labor

In 2005, three forms of forced labor were identified as potential risks to be monitored and managed by selected sites in Asia: the retention of passports, payment of agency fees, and 'bonded training'. Under the latter, employees have to reimburse high overseas training fees if they leave the company, a requirement that potentially amounts to a restriction to leave the company of free will. Three indicators were subsequently integrated into the beSTick self-assessment tool. See page 26 of this report for details of how Singapore's Sustainable Excellence Steering Committee is dealing with these issues.

Regarding the payment of agency fees in China, our Shenzhen site has found a solution to the problem by recruiting workers directly through existing employees (their friends or relatives).

Information and training on human rights has been integrated into our Corporate Responsibility Awareness campaign for deployment to all employees in 2006. More detailed training will be incorporated into the training programs used to deploy the Principles for Sustainable Excellence in 2006 and 2007.

Human rights in the supply chain

In 2005, we integrated a number of new indicators into our beSTick self-assessment tool covering standards set out by the new Electronics Industry Code of Conduct (EICC), which includes human rights. This is a first step towards monitoring the social standards of our suppliers as part of our internal processes. Many of our sites check routinely on social performance when they perform quality audits, and we are working to make this a formal company-wide procedure. We are not yet ready to report against the relevant GRI indicators.