Innovation + Responsibility

This week we are meeting with our external stakeholder team to get feedback on our CSR-related progress over the past year.  We will be getting feedback on our 2007 report, reviewing the 2008 report outline and updating the team on Sun's progress toward achieving some of the goals and commitments we set forth during our first meeting last May (you can read about it here).

One of the commitments we made during that initial stakeholder team meeting, which we formalized in our 2007 report, was to develop a human rights policy for our company. Several of our existing policies - like our Standards of Business Conduct and our Supply Chain Code of Conduct - touched on various aspects related to human rights. And as a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact, we have expressed our commitment to human rights principles (you can listen to a podcast I hosted with the UNGC's Executive Director Georg Kell). But we didn't have a stand-alone policy to outline our company's stance on the subject. Until now.

 It is with great pride that I tell you that you can now count Sun as a company with a formal human rights statement.  You can find it on our company Web site here and the full text is below.

On the eve of our next stakeholder meeting (literally - it's tomorrow), the creation of this policy is great evidence of the value of this kind of engagement. Certainly our stakeholder team tries to push us (sometimes out of our comfort zone)  to take actions they believe will best serve our business and our larger community of stakeholders. And though we are not able to always act on their feedback or suggestions, the process itself is a valuable component to our ongoing commitment to corporate responsibility.

Sun Microsystems Human Rights Policy

Sun Microsystems' human rights policy is based on our company's long-standing commitment to the highest standards of ethics and integrity, and a deep respect for all people.  A supporter of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and a signatory of the UN Global Compact, Sun will continue to work to uphold the human rights of the people and communities where we purchase products and where our products are made, bought and sold.

Consistent with the core tenets of our Standards of Business Conduct, applicable to all Sun employees, and Sun's Supply Chain Code of Conduct to which all of Sun's top-tier manufacturing suppliers have committed to adhere, Sun's policies and practices are based on law and ethical principles related to the following:

* Non-discrimination
* Privacy
* Freedom of association, including the right of our employees and those of our business partners to freely join or not join associations of their own choosing,
* Fair wages and working conditions
* No child or compulsory labor

We require our employees and our principal suppliers to abide by these principles and we take steps to hold them accountable to these standards.  For more information, please read Sun's Standards of Business Conduct and/or Sun's Supply Chain Code of Conduct.
 

Sun's Board of Directors takes up CSR
In other news...Sun's Board of Directors recently voted to amend the Corporate Governance and Nominating Commitee's charter to include Corporate Social Responsibility. Specifically, the CGNC's new charter includes the following:

Reviews and reports to the Board on a periodic basis with regards to matters of
corporate responsibility performance, such as environmental, workplace
or stakeholder issues, as appropriate, and the company's public
reporting with regards to these topics.

I'm pretty excited about this development.  When we first raised the possibility of making a formal connection between CSR and Sun's Board of Directors, I was not sure how it would go. The Board has a serious role to play in the governance of our company, the committees are fairly small (2 - 3 people) and they have plenty to do already. Would our Directors see CSR as a worthwhile use of their time? To my delight, they do!

I'm still not sure how exactly it will play out. But I'm looking forward to working with them to continue to evolve Sun's CSR efforts.