Global Mobile
Global Mobile
Mobile phones connect people and places through more than just calls… If you picked your mobile phone apart and traced each part step-by-step back to its beginnings, you'd have some amazing journeys ahead. Discover what and who's involved in making this tiny device, how you can take action or find out more! Originally published by Save the Children. Reproduced with their permission.
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Activities to help discover the global and ethical dimensions involved in the journey of a mobile phone
Contents
The Workers
Your mobile phone's antennae could have been made in a factory in Hong Kong, the circuit board in Malaysia, the tiny speaker and battery in China, the computer chips in Japan or Germany, while the little screen may have come from South Korea or Taiwan, which is also the world's leading key pad producer! The finished phone could have been put together in places like the UK, Germany, Spain or Mexico.
Impact
Many companies produce and assemble mobile phones in Mexican free-trade zone factories, where labour laws are suspended to attract foreign investment. Employees therefore often work long hours for low wages in unhealthy and unsafe conditions. According to Ethical Consumer, Panasonic forced pregnant workers in a Mexican factory to work standing up until they resigned, and Sony has been criticised for trying to stop trade union activity, also in Mexico. In Scotland, more than 3,000 workers lost their jobs this year when Motorola closed a factory there.
Action
Discuss what rights factory workers need to prevent being exploited.
- Should these rights be the same in every country where the company operates?
- Divide the group in half, giving each eight blank cards. Ask them to write one important right related to good working conditions on each.
- Swap cards with the other group, discuss, rank for importance and present back to the other group.
- Who much agreement is there?
- How do the groups' priorities compare with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Core Labour standards, ie. freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining, elimination of forced labour and the worst forms of child labour, freedom from discrimination and so on (visit www.ilo.org for more information)?
The Metals
In the different mobile parts you'll find gold from places like South Africa or Russia, copper from Chile or maybe Papua New Guinea, and nickel that's possibly from Canada. Another metal called tantalum, which is refined from a mineral called columbite-tantalite or coltan, is mainly found in Australia, Brazil and Canada, but also in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Tantalum can cost up to $100 USD a pound.
Impact
The United Nations, Human Rights Watch and the World Conservation Union say fighters in the DRC's three-year civil war, which has cost 10,000 civilians' lives and displaced 200,000 people, are selling coltan to help fund the war. Farmers have been chased off their coltan-rich land, villages attacked, and endangered gorilla populations and elephants driven away or killed. Many people, including children, do dangerous and badly paid work in coltan mines.
Action
Discuss whether companies should buy raw materials from countries in civil war or with repressive governments.
- Do they have a responsibility for the impact of mining on local communities?
- You could also try asking a mobile phone manufacturer what their policy is on buying coltan from the DRC, and what checks they do on who they buy it from (e.g., from businesses linked to armed forces in the region)?
For more information visit
www.globalissues.org/geopolitics/Africa/DRC.asp
You and recycling
Millions of old phones are thrown away every year in the UK. Ever thought about what happens to your mobile after you've finished with it?
Impact
Mobiles contain toxic materials like cadmium, lead and mercury, which are potentially harmful to the environment. Old phones can be recycled or resold in countries where handsets are rare and much more expensive than in the UK, or donated to aid organisations for use in emergencies, for example to help refugees to trace lost family members.
Action
Your old phone can be worth serious cash to the British Red Cross (call 0800 015 3576 or take to any local shop) and Oxfam (take to local shops, send to Oxfam Bring Bring Scheme, Freepost LON 16281, London W5 5BR or call 0870 752 0999).
This Kosovar refugee in a camp in Macedonia in 1999 is using a mobile phone donated to Save the Children by the Carphone Warehouse to help trace lost family members.
The Plastic
Most mobile parts and accessories are made of plastic, which is developed from oil. The world's largest oil reserves are in the Middle East, but it can be found all over the world, from Indonesia, Colombia and Angola to Norway, Russia and the USA.
Impact
Several big oil companies, like BP, Shell and Premier Oil, have in the past been criticised for causing harm to people, the environment and even whole economies. In some countries, small, powerful elites use the oil money for their own private gain, to buy arms or stay in power, instead of funding basics like health and education which benefit the whole population. This would be much harder if oil companies published how much money they pay governments. BP is leading the way by recently agreeing to publish the payments for its operations in Angola. The challenge is whether other oil companies will follow suit.
Action
Oil companies bring lots of money to the governments of the countries where they operate, but they don't necessarily benefit the local community.
- List positive and negative effects oil can have (try searching oil company and news websites and www.corporatewatch.org.uk/resources/industries.html.
- Based on your list, try role-playing a discussion of whether to build a new oil plant between an oil company executive, a government official, an international banker, an environmental activist, a local trade union leader, a land rights campaigner, a UK consumer, and so on.
- What are their different concerns?
- What decision do they reach and why?
The Companies
Mobile phone companies could be involved in things you wouldn't always agree with.
Impact
According to Ethical Consumer's buyers' guide to mobile phones, Sony invests in countries with oppressive regimes and Siemens builds nuclear power stations and is involved in controversial projects like the Narmada River dam in India. Ericsson makes radars fro combat aircraft, Nokia manufactures anti-aircraft systems, and Samsung and NEC make rocket and missile guidance systems for the military. BT has been criticised in the past for not printing phone directories on recyclable paper and Orange for not being environmentally responsible.
For more information visit
www.ethicalconsumer.org or call 0161 226 2929
Action
- What would stop the people in your group buying a mobile from a particular company? Make a list.
- Ask smaller groups to propose four rules companies could follow to avoid investments or practices the groups find problematic.
- After each group presents their rules, vote on the four overall best.
- Why not share them with a company, for example by using their website feedback pages?
- And remember: there is nothing wrong with asking questions about company investments or workers' rights when deciding which mobile to buy.
