Corporate Social Responsibility

 

Towards being a good corporate citizen

What we have achieved

AKM Meadville is a strong advocate in Corporate Social Responsibilities. Since 2013, AKM Meadville has already been using Responsible Business Alliance(RBA), formerly the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) as an important “compass” to steer the organization towards being a good corporate citizen through the use of the following elements that held steadfastly to the EICC’s core values. They are Labor, Health and Safety, Environmental, Ethics and Management Systems.

What we have achieved

AKM Meadville is a strong advocate in Corporate Social Responsibilities. Since 2013, AKM Meadville has already been using Responsible Business Alliance(RBA), formerly the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) as an important “compass” to steer the organization towards being a good corporate citizen through the use of the following elements that held steadfastly to the EICC’s core values. They are Labor, Health and Safety, Environmental, Ethics and Management Systems.

The Transition from EICC to RBA

As more and more organizations within the electronics industries took notices on the importance in complying with the EICC requirements. The EICC has gained wide acceptance and recognition from the various electronics industries throughout the globe. In 2017, EICC has changed its name to RBA (Responsible Business Alliance) of which it still maintained its stance as a non-profit coalition whereby such coalition was founded by a group of leading electronics companies which are committed in supporting the rights and well-beings of workers and the communities worldwide that are affecting the global electronics supply chain. As of to-date, the RBA has already been revised and updated to Version 7.0 and some of the general elements could be depicted as followed.

Responsible Business Alliance Code of Conduct
A. Labor

A1    Freely Chosen Employment
A2    Young Workers
A3    Working Hours
A4    Wages and Benefits
A5    Humane Treatment
A6    Non-Discrimination/Non-Harassment
A7    Freedom of Association

B. Health & Safety
B1    Occupational Safety
B2    Emergency Preparedness
B3    Occupational Injury and Illness
B4    Industrial Hygiene
B5    Physically Demanding Work
B6    Machine Safeguarding
B7    Sanitation, Food and Housing
B8    Health and Safety Communication

C. Environment

C1    Environmental Permits and Reporting
C2    Pollution Prevention and Resource Reduction
C3    Hazardous Substances
C4    Solid Waste
C5    Air Emissions
C6    Materials Restrictions
C7    Water Management
C8    Energy Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

D. Ethics
D1    Business Intergrity
D2    No Improper Advantage
D3    Disclosure of Information
D4    Intellectual Property
D5    Fair Business, Advertising and Competition
D6    Protection of Identity and Non-Retaliation
D7    Responsible Sourcing of Minerals
D8    Privacy
E. Mangement Systems
E1    Company Commitment
E2    Management Accountability and Responsibility
E3    Legal and Customer Requirements
E4    Risk Assessment and Risk Management
E5    Improvement Objectives
E6    Training
E7    Communication
E8    Worker Feedback, Participation and Grievance
E9    Audits and Assessments
E10   Corrective Action Process
E11   Documentation and Records
E12   Supplier Responsibility

Being a Tier 1 supplier to all RBA members, AKM Meadville are committed in adhering to the RBA Code of Conduct and all other applicable laws to ensure the organization is providing an open and safe working environment where workers are being treated with respect and dignity, business operations that are run in an environmentally-responsible manner and the management team is committed to adhering to a sound management system in ensuring the workforce is conducting businesses in a professional and ethical fashions.

The latest RBA Code of Conduct is available at: http://www.responsiblebusiness.org/code-of-conduct/

AKM Meadville Launch of RBA from a bird-eye view

Since adopting the RBA in 2013, the respective AKM Meadville sites have gone through the VAP (Validated Assessment Process) whereby GME/FPC was first being certified in 2013, this was followed by SME and SP where both sites have met the RBA requirements in 2016. Since then, the respective AKM Meadville sites have evolved by leaps and bounds with the revision and update of the RBA requirements.

Labor / Social Contributions

AKM Meadville has a set of Code of Conducts that ensures all its employees would conduct businesses in a professional and ethical manner. Besides what have been stipulated under the RBA requirements and SA8000 requirements, AKM Meadville observes and follows the aforementioned laws and regulations diligently as well. ILO denotes as International Labor Standards. They are:

ILO C029 – Forced Labor Convention
ILO C105 – Abolition of Forced Labor Convention
ILO C087 – Freedom of Association and Protection of the Rights to organize Convention
ILO C098 – Right to organize and Collective Bargaining Convention
ILO C100 – Equal Remuneration Convention
ILO C111 – Discrimination (Employment and Occupation) Convention
ILO C135 – Workers Representatives Convention
ILO C138 – Minimum Age Convention
ILO C155 – Occupational Safety and Health Convention
ILO C159 – Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (Disabled People) Convention
ILO C177 – Home Work Convention
ILO C182 – Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention
Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
The United Nations Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women

AKM Meadville views its human resources as an important asset and treasures its workforce highly; efforts have been spent to ensure that the organization would instill and foster a harmonized working environment for the employees, some of the classic examples would be that GME has been awarded “Harmonized Enterprise in Employer/Employee Relationship – Class AAA” since 2011 while SKE won the “Harmonized Enterprise in Employer/Employee Relationship” from the Shanghai Human Resources and Social Protection Bureau in May 2019.

Being a responsible corporate citizen, AKM Meadville also participates in various activities ranging from blood donation drive to visiting old folks home etc. Since 2018, GME has organized annual old clothing donation drive to help out the poor and the needy; every year, the factory manages to consolidate more than 1000 sets of old clothing that are still in good conditions whereby these clothing would be donated to the poor and needy in other regions of China. GME has also organized its employees in a blood donation drive in March 2019 where 115 employees donated more than 22.5 liters of blood to the Guangzhou Blood Bank. SME and SP, on the other hand, rallied a group of volunteers and visited the local old folk’s home on 26th April 2019 where the talented employees performed in front of elderly. They came out with astonishing and entertaining performances such as singing and dancing. Besides that, all the old folks received daily necessities such as cooking oil, dairy products such as milks etc. The old folks were deeply appreciative on all the wonderful gestures that the employees from SME/SP have offered to them.

Another point to add was that GME has been received an honor of citation in 2017 from the Guangzhou Huangpu District government for demonstrating its assertiveness in recruiting disabled people for jobs that are not labor-intensive and strenuous to the bodies so that these disabled people are qualified to fill up these positions.

Health and Safety

AKM Meadville complies fully to the requirements as stipulated under ISO45001 (old standard was classified under OHSAS 18001). On top of that, AKM Meadville demonstrates its level of assertiveness and initiatives in ensuring a sound mechanism has been set-up where all the critical performance indicators would be monitored and tracked. Some of these indicators are recordable injury, loss time injury, government inspection follow-up and risk assessments etc. The training team, under the Human Resources Department, at the respective factories would also ensure that all employees would undergo the required health and safety training before they are being allowed to proceed ahead with their required OJTs (On-The-Job-Training) that are specific to their job requirements. Periodic re-certification would be carried out to ensure existing employees would be fully aware with all the health and safety regulations within the factories.

The organization also demands that appropriate PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) would be used appropriately on all work stations so that the employees would be well protected from any potential health and safety hazards that could cause bodily harm. All AKM Meadville sites would have a Safety Committee to govern all health and safety topics within the factories so that immediate attentions could be paid on these topics where rectifications could be applied in a timely fashion.

Environmental

All AKM Meadville PCB manufacturing sites are being certified to ISO14001. Besides that, all the sites comply with the stipulated customer specific environmental requirements as well to ensure that our products would meet the needed compliance. Again, critical environmental indicators are being tracked and monitored periodically so as to ensure prompt actions would be taken swiftly to prevent any environmental hazard that could potentially affect the daily production activities within the respective factories would be surfaced.

AKM Meadville takes a keen interest of all level of environmental inspections and queries, be it an EPA inspection or queries coming from external interested parties. The organization would do its part as a corporate citizen to ensure full compliance to all environmental statutory and regulatory requirements. The regular tracking, monitoring and testing of our products in terms of the reported restriction of hazardous substances would be another area where attention is being paid to. AKM Meadville would have the relevant declarations on RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) to all external interested parties where appropriate to ensure that the organization would not use any restricted hazardous substances on the products that we deliver to our customers.

Ethics

AKM Meadville maintains its stance that its employees would uphold a high level of integrity in all businesses dealings and engagements. The organization’s Code of Conduct would be one avenue where the employees would have an understanding on the respective company’s policies in regards to disclosure of information, protection of intellectual properties, business integrity etc. Periodic refresher courses on such aspect would be delivered to all employees to ensure that the employees would understand what would be expected out of them in terms of not violating any of the code of conducts as stipulated.

Pertaining to the use of materials, AKM Meadville would ensure that none of the materials that are being used come from conflicting region and such information would be offered to any relevant external interested parties through the avenue of CMRT (Conflict Minerals Reporting Template).

Management System

AKM Meadville is certified to the respective management systems such as the Environmental Management System under ISO14001, Occupational Health and Safety Management System under ISO45001 (previously known as OHSAS 18001) and RBA-VAP reports. The ISO14001 and ISO45001 certificates for the respective sites could be cross-referenced through the following link.