Nokia has always believed that high social and ethical standards and practices should be a right of every worker. We believe in having an open dialogue with all stakeholders and feel that MakeITFair campaign has raised a lot of important issues.

As the world´s largest mobile phone manufacturer we take seriously our responsibility to promote rigorous environmental, ethical and social standards in all of our operations and to our suppliers. Activities that break national laws and Nokia’s global standards are totally unacceptable.

Overtime

Nokia has defined the maximum weekly working time limit as a global rule in it´s factories. This limit is in many countries stricter than the local labour legislation. Temporary deviation to this policy is possible only if there is a collective or other freely negotiated agreement in place between employer and employees stating that employer can require overtime to cover a sudden, short-term business demand. All overtime work is voluntary and paid at a premium.

Living Wage

Fair compensation (wages /salaries) must be provided for all employees (permanent, temporary, apprentices and contract workers). Compensation must meet or exceed local legal and industry minimum standards, for regular as well as overtime work. Nokia provides a set of benefits (e.g. free meals and transportation) and bonuses to its factory workers in addition to basic salary. This total compensation including wages and benefits must strive to cover the basic needs of employees. As there is no existing calculus that defines the level of basic needs or living wage we have started discussions with internal and external stakeholders to find an approach for defining Living Wages on a country level. Labour unions, NGOs and civil organizations are excellent source of local competence to work with us in this matter.

Sustainable metals

Nokia does not buy raw materials directly, but ever since we were first made aware of the potential link between mining of Coltan and financing of the conflict in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2001, we have been and continue to be concerned about practices in some parts of supply chain and recognise our responsibility to drive environmental and social improvements in our supply chain. Despite the complexity and the fact that there are typically 4-8 supplier layers between Nokia and any mining activities, we continue to actively work to tackle these issues both as a company and now also at an industry level. Mining activities that benefit militant groups are unacceptable. We do not accept any illegal and unethical conduct and will take swift action if we find this is the case. For further information please see our statement in our website (updated in October): www.nokia.com/corporate-responsibility/supply-chain/overview

Going further together

Nokia has been at the forefront of driving action and awareness of social and ethical standards with its own operations and within the wider electronics industry.

Nokia has had a global partnership agreement with WWF international for over 6 years and is also working in close cooperation with IYF, UNICEF and Plan. In July we continued our dialogue with SACOM, Good Electronics and FairtradeCentre related to potential issues in our supply chain. This has helped to identify new areas for improvement and we have continued to work on solutions to make sure that working conditions are in line with our standards and how they could be improved if needed.

We believe working together with competent, constructive NGO´s enables us to drive further improvements, and will be glad to have a dialogue on relevant issues also in the future.

Next MakeITFair campaign

We welcome the efforts of the MakeITFair campaign and hope it will continue to be a construcive forum for driving further improvements.