Conscience Incorporated: Pursue Profits While Protecting Human Rights

“Corporations have not paid enough attention to human rights, and that failure has become an increasing risk to their business,” according to this bracing debut. Surveying how American companies exploit lax international labor laws, Posner, an ethics and finance professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, discusses, for instance, how in 2010, Steve Jobs stood by Apple’s contract with Chinese electronics manufacturer Foxconn despite public outcry over Foxconn’s abysmal working conditions (the combination of denied overtime pay, work weeks exceeding the legal 60-hour maximum, and inadequate safety precautions had caused a rash of suicides, according to Posner). The author contends that fixing such moral lapses will require enacting strong regulations and details fitful efforts across the globe to do so, discussing how the U.K. passed a toothless 2015 ban on forced labor that provided no mechanism to penalize noncompliance, and how the European Parliament’s 2024 measure requiring companies to “identify, prevent, and mitigate” exploitation of supply chain workers was winnowed down to only apply to 30% of the companies covered in earlier drafts. Posner is forthright about the difficulties corporate reformers face, but the damning reports on the atrocious foreign labor conditions that power American companies demonstrate the urgent need to do so. This will galvanize readers. (Dec.)