One of the more serious and endemic occupational health and safety problems in the global electronics industry has long been worker exposure to a wide range of toxic chemicals, used today in Asia even though they may be banned in Europe and other parts of the world. This and other health hazards require technical expertise to prevent worker exposure and introduce adequate industrial hygiene measures. Electronics Watch is developing our capacity to meet this need with a new OHS Advisory Panel whose members have expertise in occupational health and safety, chemical use and safety and medicine.

Electronics Watch is entering its next phase of monitoring in the mining sector by extending its pilot monitoring project in the Philippines and launching similar monitoring projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Bolivia.

In the case study 'Using procurement in Catalonia to strengthen workers' rights in electronics supply chains' (Making Socially Responsible Public Procurement Work), the EU has highlighted the collaboration between Electronics Watch and affiliate ACM (The Catalan Association of Local Authorities, which comprises over 1000 loval government entities), as a good practice case for the ICT sector.

Electronics Watch is delighted to announce that registration for our first virtual summit is now open:

ReWORKing Health and Safety - Protecting Workers and Promoting Resilient Public Sector Supply Chains.

30 November – 3 December, 2020

Former migrant workers and forced labour victims at Possehl Electronics in Malaysia who returned to their home countries after Possehl severed ties with their employment agency have now received compensation for the cost of their travel home thanks to collaboration between Electronics Watch and the Responsible Business Alliance (RBA). The JS Global Services agency had confiscated their passports, delayed wage payments for months, made illegal deductions from their wages, and violently threatened the workers when they asked for their wages.

On September 8, more than 60 people participated in the Electronics Watch webinar "Public Procurement in Times of Crisis and Beyond: Resilience through Sustainability." Twelve speakers ­– experts in public procurement, monitoring and social auditing from nine countries – contributed their ideas on how to strengthen social and environmental responsibility in public procurement, conduct effective supply chain engagement, and support meaningful worker participation.

Based on extensive consultations with monitoring and auditing experts, this Guidance standardizes and explains the Electronics Watch worker-driven monitoring methodology step by step. It is intended to ensure Electronics Watch monitoring everywhere follows the same high standard and can drive the change that is needed on the ground.

Electronics Watch has just released the new assessment tool 'Human Rights Due Diligence and Covid-19 - Assessment of Public Buyers' ICT Supply Chains'. It supports public buyers in their efforts to ensure human rights due diligence in their supply chains in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic. The tool consists of questions public buyers can pose to their suppliers about occupational health and safety, labour rights, and other supply chain issues that Covid-19 impact. Public buyers can use the tool as a self-assessment questionnaire for suppliers and/or a guidance for human rights due diligence.

Electronics Watch has released a new tool that will allow affiliates to track the performance of companies in their supply chains. Developed with critical input from affiliates, the Company Performance Tracker (CPT) evaluates company performance of their contractual obligations to protect the rights of workers in electronics supply chains. The tool also takes into account comments from industry representatives.

On May 7, 2020, toxic Styrene gas leaked from the LG Polymers Chemical plant, a unit of South Korean LG Chem, near Visakhapatnam in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, India. The gas leak has killed 12 persons and sickened more than 1,000 people and has been covered widely in the media in India and globally as a tragedy reminiscent of the Bhopal gas tragedy 36 years ago. Electronics Watch and Cividep, our monitoring partner in India, support the calls of the local community and others for full remediation for the victims, and for a thorough investigation by the relevant authorities to discover and publish the causes of this tragedy.