Helsinki (04.11.2002 - Juhani Artto) At the end of 2001 almost 4,000 enterprises based in Finland had factories, offices and/or other representation abroad. These enterprises had a total of 749 subsidiaries in foreign countries. How well do they respect core labour standards and other ethical principles overseas?
The information needed to answer this question is not immediately to hand in all respects. This was the starting point for SAK, the largest trade union confederation in Finland, and several other organisations when recently establishing FinnWatch to monitor the foreign units of Finnish enterprises.
"The purpose of FinnWatch is not to defame enterprises, but to make them more conscious of the consequences of their operations," explains Turo Bergman, international affairs secretary of SAK, who continues: "and if problems exist, then FinnWatch will encourage these enterprises to improve their activities."
The FinnWatch project became public last month when its first employee was appointed. The work is financed by SAK and the other organisations represented in the project steering group, and by the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs.
FinnWatch will work closely with the Swedish SwedWatch and the Norwegian NorWatch, both of which have already been working effectively for some time.