Board Actions

• New Board Positions: Elected Richard Wong (Flextronics) as Board Vice Chair and Eric Austermann (Jabil) as Treasurer.
• New Programs: Approved development of an academic research program to build working relationships with academic institutions on important CSR issues, and approved an issue management program to guide EICC actions on issues that affect the ICT industry.
• New Compliance Program: Approved a new initiative to improve EICC member compliance with membership requirements. The Board will provide more information about the program in the next few weeks.

Membership Meeting a Success!

The September 16-17 EICC membership meeting was a big success. 80% of EICC member companies were represented at the meeting in Chandler, AZ. Presentation slides for the meeting are available on the EICC SharePoint site, and may be accessed here. Highlights of the meeting include:

• Special Topics: The meeting included presentations by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and BEERG on labor-related issues. Slides for the ILO presentation will be provided by BSR and made available on the SharePoint site next week.
• Tantalum Supply Chain: Companies that represent each stage of the Tantalum supply chain participated in a half-day session to discuss the challenges of tracing and tracking the mineral. Contact Grant Feichtinger if you would like copies of the presentations. A second meeting will be held on November 17. Contact Brad Cameron if you would like to attend.
• Company Contributions: EICC thanked Intel for hosting the meeting at its facilities, and for providing meals, break-out rooms for work group meetings, and logistical support. EICC also thanked Dell for hosting a membership dinner, and Acer for donating two laptops for EICC use.

Members who attended the meetings are asked to complete a survey. The survey may be accessed here, and will be used to improve future meetings.

The next membership meeting will be held during Q1 2010 in the US from Jan 12-14 or 19-21. Meetings in Q2 and Q3 will be held in Europe and Asia. EICC requires a host for each meeting. Contact Carrie Hoffman if your company is willing to host one of the meetings.

EICC Code of Conduct Review Cycle

EICC held a membership vote this month to respond to recommendations about the EICC code of conduct review process. The vote concluded on Sep. 11, and resulted in a 60% to 40% majority in favor of opening the code to review every three years. The change follows a successful review process this year that resulted in 36 changes to the code. Contact Eric Austermann if you have questions.

Asia Program

The EICC Board approved recommendations by Richard Wong, Director for Asia Programs, to plan a recruitment program for Asia. Richard will work with AMS to identify regions and prospective companies, and to develop plans. As a first step, AMS must identify an Asia contact for every EICC member (we only have Asia contacts for 22 of our 40 member companies). Every member is asked to send an email to Grant Feichtinger that provides contact information for a contact in Asia who you want to represent your company in EICC Asia initiatives.

NGO Meeting to Consider Collaboration Proposals

Members of the Stakeholder Relations, Code Revision, and Learning & Capability Building workgroups met with makeITfair and other NGOs on August 24 to discuss proposals for collaboration that were presented by the NGOs. The proposals were included in a report issued by makeITfair in May, and followed participation by EICC in a conference sponsored by makeITfair in February. The NGOs were represented by Esther de Haan (makeITfair), Conrad MacKerron (As You Sow) and Pauline Overeem (Good Electronics).

The workgroups will schedule a follow up meeting with the NGOs. EICC members can see more information about the proposals by viewing slides about the issue that were presented at the recent membership meeting (see link above to access the presentations). Contact Wendy Dittmer for more information.