The Gritty Reality: Feel It, Think It, Engage It “Consumer Choices and Corporate Responsibility”

1. The Gritty Reality: Feel It, Think It, Engage It “Consumer Choices and Corporate Responsibility” Rev. David Schilling Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility Anna Bradley National Jesuit Committee on Investment Responsibility

2. ICCR Faith-based Investor Coalition Founded in 1971, ICCR is a coalition of 300 religious investors from the Catholic, Jewish and Protestant communities in the United States with a combined investment total of over $100 billion. ICCR has over 50 associate members--socially responsible investment firms, public pension funds, union pension funds, foundations and universities.

3. The National Jesuit Committee on Investment Responsibility advocates for corporate behavior consistent with Catholic social teaching through dialogues with corporations, shareholder resolutions and proxy voting.

4. A Faith That Does Justice • “Serving Christ’s mission today means paying special attention to its global context…we bear a common responsibility for the welfare of the entire world and its development in a sustainable and living-giving way” (GC 35: Decree 2: A Fire that Kindles Other Fires, n 20) • “A more human business culture” (GC 35: Decree 3: Challenges to Our Mission Today, n 28)

5. A Faith That Does Justice • “…there is also increasing awareness of the need for greater social responsibility on the part of business…there is nevertheless a growing conviction that business management cannot concern itself only with the interests of the proprietors, but must also assume responsibility for all the other stakeholders who contribute to the life of the business: the workers, the clients, the suppliers of various elements of production, the community of reference.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, n 40, 2009)

6. Corporate Responsibility to Respect Human Rights ICCR members engage companies as shareholders to adopt comprehensive, transparent, verifiable human rights/worker rights policies for their operations and the operations of their business partners and suppliers.

7. A Case Study in Shareholder Advocacy—Extractive Industry Armed Conflict in Colombia An Oil Pipeline And The Jesuits

8. Worker Rights in Global Supply Chains ICCR members have engaged dozens of companies in many sectors including, agriculture, apparel, automotive, consumer products, electronics, footwear and toys on supply chain codes of conduct, including living wages, freedom of association , non-discrimination, forced and child labor.

9. Foxconn Factory in Shenzhen, China • Apple, Inc, Cupertino, CA http://www.apple.com/feedback/ • Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior, Hong Kong http://sacom.hk/archives/898 • ICCR http://www.iccr.org/news/press_releases/pdf%20files/072210Foxconn.pdf Case Study of Shareholder Advocacy in the Electronics Sector When you buy an iPhone, what are you buying?

10. Confronting Labor Abuse in the Apparel Sector • Gap responded to trafficked children in a sub-contracting factory in northern India through a multi-stakeholder, multi-layered industry-wide approach in 2007. • Worked with Indian Government, a local NGO, and an apparel supplier in Mewat to create a handwork center for embroidery for women.

11. Government of India’s Ministry for Rural Development; Gap Inc. • 350 women have been trained and are earning income that enables them to put their children in schools. • By helping build a skilled workforce and by addressing low employment, poverty and the other social ills that provide a breeding ground for human trafficking, it looks to eradicate the practice.

12. Women participating in Mewat Project who earn enough to sustain their children.

13. By creating employment and addressing poverty, the project directly reduces the breeding ground for trafficking.

14. Multi-stakeholder Initiatives • Examples include multi-stakeholder campaigns coordinated by the Responsible Sourcing Network at As You Sow: www.sourcingnetwork.org • Conflict minerals from the Congo that are used in electronic products • Forced child labor in cotton fields of Uzbekistan

15. Multi-Party Collaborative Approach

16. Uzbek Government-Sponsored Forced Child Labor

17. What You Can Do At your college or university: • Support or create an SRI Advisory Committee to get involved in shareholder advocacy • Get your university to become a member of the Worker Rights Consortium and/or the Fair Labor Association to monitor apparel products sold on campuses

18. What You Can Do Become an informed consumer: • Check websites of companies who make the products you purchase. Do they have human rights policies and procedures to protect workers in their supply chain? • Go to: http://www.slaveryfootprint.org/ and learn how many slaves work for you. • For information on Apple, go to: http://makeitfair.org/documents/apple-campaign/apple-campaign.pdf

19. What You Can Do Stay Informed: National Jesuit Committee on Investment Responsibility www.njcir.org Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility www.iccr.org ICCR’s Social Sustainability Resource Guide: http://www.iccr.org/publications/2011SSRG.pdf Loyola University Chicago Shareholder Advocacy Committee www.luc.edu/sac Responsible Endowments Coalition www.endowmentethics.org

20. THANK YOU!! Rev. David Schilling, ICCR dschilling@iccr.org www.iccr.org ICCR’s Social Sustainability Resource Guide: http://www.iccr.org/publications/2011SSRG.pdf Join us on Facebookhttp://www.facebook.com/InterfaithCenteronCorporateResponsibility Anna Bradley, NJCIR abradley@jesuit.org www.njcir.org