News

If you are a journalist, we look forward to hearing from you. We can keep you updated about labour rights in the global electronics industry.

Press contact: Harriet Edwards hedwards@electronicswatch.org

You can subscribe to our newsletter here.

 

Image: Pamantik-KMU
2021 May 20

Electronics Watch Condemns the Killing of Dandy Miguel

Electronics Watch has released a statement condemning the recent killing of Dandy Miguel, a young trade union leader in the Philippines. He was shot dead on 28 March while riding his motorcycle home from work. Attacks against unionists, activists and critics have escalated during the Duterte regime and the pandemic. Last year the Philippines was ranked among the ten worst countries for violations of workers' rights.

Read more
Curtin University
2021 May 5

Electronics Watch Expands its Reach to Australia

Curtin University and Electronics Watch celebrate the first affiliation in Australia. Electronics are recognized as being in the top five imported products in Australia at risk of modern slavery with a combined import value of nearly $10 billion.

Read more
Dataport
2021 Feb 9

Dataport Affiliates to Electronics Watch

Dataport, the IT service provider for municipal government organizations in six German states: Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Schleswig-Holstein, has affiliated to Electronics Watch for an initial period of six years.

Read more
iPhone
2021 Jan 29

Nordic Cities Demand Fair, Circular Smartphones

Major consumers of smartphones, the cities of Malmö, Oslo, Copenhagen, and Helsinki, with the support of Electronics Watch, ICLEI and the Procura+ European Sustainable Procurement Network, have launched a challenge to companies to provide fair and circular smartphones by 2025. The demand calls for fair and safe working conditions across the supply chain, from raw materials through manufacturing and disposal, improved transparency, and verification through certification and worker-driven monitoring.

Read more
Image: ICLEI European Secretariat
2021 Jan 25

European public buyers share good practice on how to Make ICT Fair

A leading group of European public authorities, guided by Electronics Watch and ICLEI (Local Governments for Sustainability), have piloted socially responsible public procurement of ICT hardware. The group includes Electronics Watch affiliates Barcelona City Council, Municipality of Haarlem, APUC Scotland and Region Stockholm as well as the City of Stavanger. From market dialogue to contract management, the five public buyers took critical steps towards fairer electronics supply chains.

Read more
Ecolabel
2020 Dec 16

New EU Ecolabel for Electronic Displays Introduced

On the 30th of November, at the first day of the Electronics Watch OHS Summit, Candela Vidal-Abarca Garrido of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission introduced the brand new EU Ecolabel for electronic displays. Established in 1992, the EU Ecolabel promotes products and services with a lower environmental impact throughout their life cycle.  The new Ecolabel blends environmental and social criteria with a strong verification process.

Read more
OHS speakers
2020 Dec 14

OHS as Lens to Understand and Combat Exploitation

In the first week of December, 180 people from 33 countries participated in the Electronics Watch Summit ‘ReWORKing Health & Safety: Protecting Workers and Promoting Resilient Public Sector Supply Chains’. Thirty-three expert speakers led participants on a journey of presentations, interviews and discussions across eight topics, including transparency and the right to know, migrant workers, women workers, and mining, focusing in each case on possible solutions and the role of public procurement. You can watch recordings of the webinars here, and a summary of the whole event here.

Read more
OHS
2020 Nov 26

Electronics Watch to Launch OHS Advisory Panel at Next Week’s Summit

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.

Read more