Introduction to Company Policies

Policies presented in this section were received from the companies as a response to two ILO surveys conducted in 1998 and 2000.

The 1998 survey concentrated on codes of conduct. In the majority of cases, the codes were obtained directly from the MNEs. A total of 441 MNEs – selected from listings of the world’s largest MNEs, such as those featured in the Fortune Global 500 (1997) and Financial Times Global 500 (1997) lists, and on the basis of suggestions from various international trade secretariats (ITSs) and ILO sectoral activities specialists – were asked to send in their codes of conduct, policy statements, or sets of guidelines dealing with labour rights. In total, 211 codes were surveyed for this study.

The 2000 survey concentrated on equal employment opportunities (EEO) in company human resources policies. Companies were invited to fill in a questionnaire which requested quantitative information on the gender aspects of company personnel and  descriptive information on company policies dealing with EEO. 

Note that companies whose codes of conduct are presented in this section as a result of the 1998 survey might also have Equal Employment Opportunity human resources policies which are not presented here.

The questionnaire of the ILO 2000 survey was mailed to some 5,000 companies representing eight different industries (agriculture, forestry and fishing; chemicals and chemical products manufacturing, food, beverages and tobacco manufacturing; textiles, clothing and leather manufacturing; banking, finance and insurance services; health services; retail and wholesale trade; and information and communications technology including both manufacturing and services). The companies represented different sizes, ranging from those employing 20 persons to those employing more than 100,000 persons, including public and private companies which were domestically and foreign owned in different degrees. 337 of the selected companies located in Africa, 431 in Middle-East, 857 in Asia, 410 in Oceania, 751 in Western Europe, 535 in Central and Eastern Europe, 651 in Latin America and Caribbean and 1,113 in North America. All selected companies were identified from national and international business directories.