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ARGENTINA:
NGOs Call for
Partnership, Not Philanthropy
Marcela
Valente
BUENOS AIRES, (IPS) - Many
corporations have transformed
social responsibility into a
marketing tool, to boost sales
and improve their image. But
today in Argentina, an alliance
of civil society groups is
advocating a paradigm shift, to
replace philanthropy with a new
business culture.
The Argentine Platform of Civil
Society Organisations for
Corporate Social Responsibility
was created by a coalition of 17
non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) dedicated to the
environment, the fight against
corruption, and labour, gender
and consumer rights issues.
Forerunners to the Argentine
Platform include a campaign
against sports clothing
manufacturers that employ
children and adolescents in
their factories, carried out by
the American Federation of
Labour-Congress of Industrial
Organisations (AFL-CIO), and the
European Union's Green book on
corporate social responsibility.
But the local initiative stands
out as the first to emerge from
such a broad-ranging alliance of
civil society groups.
The Platform is based on
principles that have been agreed
by the United Nations, the
Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development
(OECD) and the Organisation of
American States (OAS).
But its main reference point is
the U.N. Global Compact, a world
web of over 2000 companies along
with U.N. agencies and labour
and civil society groups aimed
at unifying corporate policies
and practices and ensuring that
they are in line with universal
ethical values agreed by
consensus.
The Global Compact, which was
officially launched in 2000, was
announced by U.N.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan in
1999 when he challenged business
leaders to assume an ethical
commitment to nine principles
relating to human rights, labour
and the environment, which were
later expanded to include a
tenth principle against
corruption.
"We are convinced of the need
for a change of paradigm in
terms of corporate social
responsibility, to promote
changes at the very core of
companies and not only in their
communications or public
relations departments," said
Virginia Lencina of Poder
Ciudadano (Citizen Power), a
local NGO.
The Platform is open to
adherence by new groups and
companies, although an agenda of
concrete issues has yet to be
defined. "This could include
collective public actions,
requests for reports, or
monitoring of the most
controversial companies," she
told IPS. Nor has the role to be
assigned to the state on this
issue been clearly outlined yet.
To follow up on a company
accused of violating one of the
principles, the modus operandi
could, for example, involve a
specific complaint lodged by one
of the organisations - a
consumer defence group, for
instance - in order to take up
the issue with the rest of the
organisations that have adhered
to the Platform.
The groups agree that it is the
state that must define the rules
and regulations and that has the
duty to monitor businesses and
enforce corporate social
responsibility principles in the
private sector. In that respect,
the activists see it as a
potential ally in pushing for
the corporate culture paradigm
shift.
Definitions of corporate social
responsibility range from the
most conservative position,
which maintains that the only
duty of private firms is to
generate wealth, to the most
progressive, which holds that
companies should voluntarily
donate part of their profits to
philanthropic activities.
But in recent years, the
strategy of using social
responsibility as a marketing
and public relations tool, in
order to attract customers, has
taken strong hold.
None of the definitions have led
to a real contribution to
development, argued sociologist
Álvaro Orsatti, of the World of
Labour Institute, another
Argentine organisation taking
part in the initiative.
Social "organisations want a
fourth model, one that goes
above and beyond the previous
ones, in which the companies
undergo a change in their
culture," Orsatti told IPS. This
vision is new in Latin America,
where business philanthropy is
the norm, he added.
The idea is "to create
citizenship awareness among
business leaders as well," said
the activist.
As an example, a delegate from
the AVINA Foundation - founded
in 1994 by Swiss entrepreneur
Stephan Schmidheiny - pointed
out that the Village Cinema
chain in Buenos Aires is hiring
only "mothers, aunts or
grandmothers" between the ages
of 40 and 60, no experience
required, to work in ticket
offices and other positions that
involve dealing with the public,
for which the chain of movie
theatres also offers training.
That is a concrete case of a
change in business culture, of
"a willingness to include" a
sector that is completely
marginalised from the job
market, said Orsatti.
Argentina's two trade union
confederations are also taking
part in the Platform -
"something that would have been
totally unusual in the past,"
said the activist, who added
that "we can work together on
this initiative."
The Platform emerged last year
out of the dissatisfaction of a
number of organisations that
believed companies in Argentina
had a weak commitment to
sustainable development. They
thus began to work together to
outline a coherent, alternative
vision of corporate social
responsibility.
In the meetings held up to now,
the participating civil society
organisations concurred that
there is a tendency towards a
concentration of wealth and
corporate power, especially in
the hands of transnational
corporations, which are accused
of following one set of
standards in the industrialised
world, and another in the
developing South.
As its first public action, the
Platform is considering issuing
a warning with respect to the
environmental risks posed by two
pulp mills that are being built
on the Uruguayan side of the
Uruguay River, which forms part
of the border between that
country and Argentina. The
cellulose plants have triggered
a loud controversy between the
two countries due to the threats
to the environment..
Lencina and Orsatti said the
Platform sees the case as a
prime illustration of the double
standards of transnational
corporations (the plants are
being built by Spanish and
Finnish firms), which hurt
countries with weak public
institutions like many of the
nations of Latin America, where
the corporations pay lower wages
than in the industrialised
North, hire fewer women, pollute
the environment, and bribe
public officials to a greater
extent.
As an illustration of
Argentina's weak institutions,
the Platform points to the scant
power of the state regulatory
agencies in overseeing public
services that have been
privatised. The regulatory
bodies, for example, often lack
the authority to prevent
privatised companies from
arbitrarily raising the rates
they charge, or to obligate them
to provide services that are
often cut off without any
explanation.
The activists also underlined
the lack of a culture of
standing up for one's rights,
such as in the case of
consumers' rights, in Argentina.
In response to the demands set
forth by NGOs, transnational
corporations often respond that
there is no law requiring them
to address specific concerns,
"and they are often right about
that," said the activists.
The few regulations that are in
place are lax, and governments
are keen on drawing investment,
an enthusiasm that large
corporations are ever-ready to
take advantage of, said the
representatives of the Platform,
who noted that in countries of
the developing South, the firms
engage in practices that are
illegal in their countries of
origin.
Asked about their expectations
and hopes for the new
initiative, Claudia Collado,
with the Argentine Consumers
association, told IPS that her
group was interested in taking
part in the new vision "because
we believe that if we focus on
creating independent consumers,
they will have the power to
reward socially responsible
companies."
Claudia Llantada, with the
Gender and Trade Network, also
believes the Platform can be a
useful instrument for making
progress towards her
organisation's goals.
She observed that despite the
fact that women are playing a
larger and larger role in the
labour market, the conditions
under which that trend is
occurring put them at a
disadvantage with respect to
men. To illustrate, she noted
that women comprise a majority
in the poorest-paid jobs, and in
the informal sector of the
economy.
"Companies are prejudiced
against hiring women because
they fear that the labour costs
will be much greater, even
though it has been demonstrated
that this is not true," she
commented.
Javier Corchera with the
Wildlife Foundation, a local
environmental group associated
with the World Wildlife Fund,
remarked that many companies
"start to worry about the
environment when the fire is
already burning out of control,"
rather than taking measures to
prevent conflicts from breaking
out in the first place.
"Environmental questions should
form part of a company's value
system, which is why we are
calling for a cultural change,"
he told IPS.
"So far, it has been easy for
companies to follow their own
agendas, but they will have to
talk seriously with leading
civil society actors" if the
Platform initiative takes off,
he warned. |
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