Reinforcing Our Commitment to Social and Environmental Responsibility within Our Supply Chain
HP has a strong history of leadership in promoting responsible workforce practices within our supply chain. Our aim is to be the global leader in advancing worker rights and enabling fair, safe and voluntary work environments throughout our supply chain.
China is an important hub for manufacturing HP’s products, packaging and parts. It’s also a market with distinct legal and cultural issues in the workplace, including the rising use of student and dispatch (i.e. temporary, auxiliary and substitute workers) workers. Today we launched new guidelines and measurement processes related to the use of student and dispatch workers in China— a first for the information technology industry. Our new guidelines set requirements for appropriately and ethically managing these important worker populations. More information on the guidelines can be found here.
These guidelines were developed in collaboration with leading Chinese stakeholders such as China’s Center for Child Rights and Corporate Social Responsibility (CCR CSR) and the Labor Education Services Network (LESN). They reinforce our “beyond regulatory” expectations for suppliers and are a clear recognition of our commitment to treat our workforce as both a resource of today and tomorrow. Several publications featured the announcement, including: New York Times;Bloomberg; CNN Money; and Wall Street Journal.
Alongside the new Social and Environmental (SER) worker guidelines, we also are implementing a new industry standard audit protocol based on the recent EICC provisions that has a “zero-tolerance” policy for the worst cases of nonconformity to working-hours standards.
These initiatives are the latest examples of our efforts to help improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who make products for the IT industry and support our operations at HP. For more information around our commitments to our supply chain, click here.
