Posts tagged Norwegian Ministry of Finance

Norway’s $200 billion oil pension fund bans investments in US retail giant Wal-Mart and mining group because of human rights and environmental violations.

The Norwegian Ministry of Finance has excluded the US retail giant Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Wal-Mart de Mexico (“Wal-Mart”) and Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc. (“Freeport”) from the Norwegian Government Pension Fund – Global’s investment universe in line with recommendations from the Council on Ethics for the Fund. The recommendation to exclude Wal-Mart cites serious/systematic violations of human rights and labour rights. The recommendation to exclude Freeport is based on serious environmental damage.

According to the  Council on Ethics’ recommendation of 15 November 2005 “An
extensive body of material indicates that Wal-Mart consistently and
systematically employs minors in contravention of international rules,
that working conditions at many of its suppliers are dangerous or
health-hazardous, that workers are pressured into working overtime
without compensation, that the company systematically discriminates
against women in pay, that all attempts to unionise by the company’s
employees are stopped, that employees are in a number of cases
unreasonably punished and locked in, along with a number of other
circumstances…”.

The Council’s
assessments encompass Wal-Mart’s business operations in the USA and
Canada, and at its suppliers in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras,
Lesotho, Kenya, Uganda, Namibia, Malawi, Madagascar, Swaziland,
Bangladesh, China and Indonesia.

The Council on Ethics summarises its recommendation as follows: “What
makes this case special is the sum total of ethical norm violations,
both in the company’s own business operations and in the supplier
chain. It appears to be a systematic and planned practice on the part
of the company to hover at, or cross, the bounds of what are accepted
norms for the work environment. Many of the violations are serious,
most appear to be systematic, and altogether they form a picture of a
company whose overall activity displays a lack of willingness to
countervail violations of norms in its business operations.”