Enriched by high oil prices, Chevron Corp. will spend up to US$15 billion buying back its own stock _ a commitment that pleased shareholders and rankled critics clamouring for bigger investments in projects that might help lower energy costs. The…
Drugmaker Merck & Co. plans to donate enough doses of its cervical cancer vaccine, Gardasil, to inoculate 1 million women in some of the world's poorest countries. Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck announced the gift today at the third annual Clinton…
More than 416.000 children under the age of 18, of which almost 225.000 younger than 14, are involved in (often bonded) child labour in India’s cottonseed fields. Most of them are girls. They work in the states of Andhra Pradesh,…
Last year, the Church of Norway asked the Norwegian Government Pension Fund to consider divesting the fund's holdings in Caterpillar Inc. The reason: Caterpillar was selling the Israeli army bulldozers that were being used against Palestinian civilians. Given the avalanche…
Inside the ‘parks’, within each factory, a carefully calculated use of imported machines and local labour in finely calibrated proportions, is designed to maximize returns for the investor. It is not difficult to figure out why for certain orders, specific…
During the talks to renew IBM’s Italian internal collective agreement, an employee group asked for a salary increase, prompting IBM to cancel their “productive results benefit”, resulting in a loss of more than $1300 / year per employee. This prompted…
Many Western companies are waking up to the importance of going green. Boeing is one such company that has undergone an image makeover and gone green. The Boeing 787, which is scheduled to enter service in May 2008, is twenty…
Cisco Systems and the City of San Francisco are looking to technology to battle climate change. San Francisco is one of three cities initially selected by the San Jose-based networking giant to take part in its Connected Urban Development Initiative…
In 2006 and 2007, UNI Finance conducted a survey on finance companies' commitments to Principle 3 of the UN Global Compact, "Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining". 35 major…
In the last two decades the corporate sector has started to play a growing role in the international development. The separation between business and the United Nations has become less significant. One expression of this evolution is the United Nations…
