Coming , under pressure from Washington DC area NGOs, Verizon Communications announced yesterday that it would withhold payments from its contractors who don’t pay their immigrant laborers wages and overtime. As reported by the Washington Post (June 24, 2008: D4), a company spokeswoman said that it would withhold work from contractors found to have acted improperly.
“If it is true that workers are not being paid by subcontractors … Verizon will take the proper course of action,” stated Sandra Arnette, a Verizon spokesman.
Interestingly, a review of the company’s Supplier Code of Contact as it pertains to labor states:
Suppliers of products or services produced in or provided from the United States shall comply with all applicable federal, state and/or local laws and regulations. Suppliers of products or services produced or provided from outside the United States shall comply with applicable laws and regulations of relevant countries. However, regardless of applicable laws and regulations, suppliers must uphold the human rights of workers by treating them with dignity and respect.
Nothing in its Code suggests that exploited workers can be assured that the company will take substantive steps to protect them. The Code itself does not spell out specific steps it will take to address these workers concerns nor does the company spell out what it would consider as evidence of wage and hour violations.
This raises a fundamental question for all companies with respect to how they address supplier conduct vis-a-vis the contractors’ employees. In addition, though a company may have a Code of Conduct, this in and of itself does not fully address the company’s actual practices. In the case of Verizon, putting theory into practice will reveal a great deal.
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