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202 activities Unit 10, exercise 32a Student A The AIRpod is powered by compressed air, which is stored at high pressure in shatterproof thermoplastic tanks surrounded by a carbon-fibre shell (the same tanks used to contain the fuel in gas-powered buses). The air is released through pistons in the engine, which drive the wheels. Unlike conventional internal combustion engines, air-powered engines run very cold and thick ice quickly forms on the engine. This means that the engine can be used to cool the inside of the car, but not to heat it. Each car has an onboard pump that can refill the tank overnight. But Negré has also developed a high-pressure air pump – like a version of the tyre pumps found on a garage forecourt – that can fill the tanks in less than a minute. These could be powered by clean electricity – hydro, wind or solar – making the air car completely pollution-free. Even if carbon-generated electricity is used, CO 2 emissions are still only 10% of a petrol engine’s. The car has a range of more than 112 miles, and it takes less than two minutes to refill the 210-litre air tank. It can reach speeds of just less than 45 mph, although the air-powered engine produces only eight horsepower, so acceleration is slow.  Yet the reality is that in the last decade or so, governments in China, Bangladesh and Indonesia, among other places, have in effect outsourced their labour law enforcement to global corporations. Dozens of retailers and brands have erected extensive and expensive infrastructures of workplace standards, audits, inspections and reports to improve factory conditions – with mixed results, at best. In the long run, it can’t make sense to leave it to Apple and Walmart to guard the rights of factory workers halfway round the world.  “We must work harder to promote human rights, not just respect them,” Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, said. Paul Bulcke, CEO of Nestlé, pointed with pride to the work that Nestlé is doing to help improve the lives of 750,000 farmers in its supply chains. But as Sharan Burrow, the feisty general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation , noted pointedly, hundreds of millions of poor workers are not fortunate enough to be associated with companies like Unilever. “Today’s global supply chains are characterised by exploitation,” she said. Burrow urged big companies to work with labour groups and NGOs to press for higher minimum wages in emerging markets. In Cambodia, for instance, the minimum wage has just been raised from $100 to $128 per month, but only after a long campaign during which militant workers clashed with police.  Even if responsible companies voluntarily agree to pay more, Burrow said, they can be undercut by less scrupulous competitors. Only the governments can establish a set of rules that apply to all.  Put another way, one of the most important things companies can do to promote human rights is to become more active in the public-policy arena, by lobbying governments to respect human rights – pushing for press and internet freedom in China, say, or a higher minimum wage in Vietnam.  The trouble is, not many companies are willing to lobby for more regulation, according to Georg Kell, executive director of the UN Global Compact , a corporate sustainability initiative. With a few exceptions, he said, “the big industry associations are still fighting old ideological battles,” opposing any interference with unfettered markets.  What’s more, he said, it’s difficult to get CEOs of big companies to cooperate, even around human rights issues. “It’s not in the mindset of these highly competitive alpha guys.”  That said, cooperative efforts are emerging. The most promising is in Bangladesh, where, in response to the Rana Plaza garment factory collapse, garment brands and retailers formed a pair of coalitions, the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety and the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh , to improve factory conditions.  Equally important, the US government, the Euro- pean Commission, the International Labour Organi- zation and the Bangladeshi government have signed a sustainability compact aimed at, among other things, strengthening labour laws there. The goal is to duplicate the kinds of government institutions and processes that work reasonably well, most of the time, to protect the human rights of workers in the US and the EU.  Business has a role to play. But as Hina Jilani, a veteran Pakistani lawyer and human rights activist, reminds us: “It is the fundamental obligation of states to protect citizens against exploitation and degradation.” Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv