|
by Marco Procaccini
Vancouver’s corporate-dominated city council may appreciate Wal-Mart, but more and more European nations are turning their backs on the giant retail chain due to its corporate policies.
Norway said last week it had withdrawn more than $430-million (US.) of investments in the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., as well as U.S. copper and gold company, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc., due to ethical concerns.
The Norwegian government said its $240-billion oil fund — one of the world's biggest pension funds — would no longer invest in Wal-Mart due to what it called "serious and systematic" abuses of human and labour rights.
The government also excluded shares in Freeport-McMoRan for environmental reasons. The fund sold its holdings in both firms, which had been worth about $430-million at the end of 2005 — most of it in Wal-Mart stock — by the end of last month, the Finance Ministry said.
Norway has previously ejected companies involved in producing anti-personnel land mines, cluster bombs or nuclear weapons.
The Finance Ministry based the exclusions on the recommendations of the fund's ethical council.
The ministry said the council had found "an extensive body of material"
that indicated Wal-Mart had broken norms, including employing minors
against international rules, allowing hazardous working conditions at
many of its suppliers and blocking workers' efforts to form unions.
It also listed other alleged Wal-Mart abuses including pressuring
workers to work overtime without compensation, discriminating against
women in pay and blocking "all attempts to unionize." It said that
Wal-Mart employees were "in a number of cases unreasonably punished and
locked in."
The council's report encompassed Wal-Mart's operations in the United
States and Canada and at its suppliers in Nicaragua, El Salvador,
Honduras, Lesotho, Kenya, Uganda, Namibia, Malawi, Madagascar,
Swaziland, Bangladesh, China and Indonesia.
The Finance Ministry said Norway's central bank, which manages the
fund, had invited Wal-Mart to comment on the allegations in September,
but the company’s bosses did not respond. The ministry also blamed
Freeport-McMoRan for using a natural river system for disposal of
tailings from its huge Grasberg copper mine on the island of New Guinea
in Indonesia.
Recommend this article... |
Writings 
Subscribe to this comment's feed
