Social Responsibility

| December 1, 2014
Social Responsibility

“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give” (Winston Churchill)

Many companies have made social responsibility an integral part of their business model. It’s an increasingly important issue for any organisation. There is a shift towards making a positive contribution – or at least reducing a negative impact – on a corporate and individual level.

More companies today believe in giving back to the community, as they begin to understand how economic growth is linked to social and environmental wellbeing. To be sustainable and credible, organisations have to take the social and environmental consequences of their actions into account.

Is social responsibility integrated into your organisation? How can we strike a balance between economic growth and the welfare of the workforce, our families, the local community and the larger society? And how can we be socially responsible as individuals? How do our actions affect communities outside our immediate circle of family and friends?

If you are interested in contributing a blog, you are warmly invited to contact Svetlana, the editor of Open Forum, at sstankovic@openforum.com.au.

 

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  1. lydialaker

    April 1, 2015 at 11:17 am

    The controversial Australian asylum seeker and refugee policy.

    The unjust treatment of refugee and asylum seekers in Australia By Lydia Laker

    Australia has resettled around 800,000 refugees since World War II, building one of the world’s most successful multicultural societies. Today, Australia continues to have a generous resettlement programme and, along with the United States and Canada, has ranked consistently among the world’s top three resettlement countries. While we have seen a significant increase in asylum seekers seeking protection in Australia in recent times, Australia’s share of asylum applications remains a very small fraction of the global total (about 2.2%) (Australian Human Rights commission, 2013). The Australian Asylum seeker and refugee policy remains one of the most argumentative issues in contemporary Australia. Australia maintains one of the most restrictive immigration detention systems in the world. It is mandatory, not time limited, and people are not able to challenge the need for their detention in a court of law. This policy has sparked a lot of controversy regarding human rights issues that arise from the situation facing asylum seekers and refugees who arrive in Australia by boat (Australian Human Rights Commission, 2013). The United Nations Human Rights Committee’s recent finding against Australia report not only found that these refugees’ indefinite detention was arbitrary, it also found that it was ‘inflicting serious psychological harm upon them’, which amounted to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The report reveals a significant gap between Australia’s human rights obligations under international law and the current treatment of asylum seekers and refugees. The Commission has for many years called for an end to this system because it leads to breaches of human rights obligations under treaties to which Australia is a party. This policy is no way of treating people who flee from countries which persecute, torture and inflict violence on them, escaping with only their lives (Amnesty International, 2013). The UN international refugee convention requires host countries to treat Asylum seekers with dignity and respect while their claims for asylum are being processed (United Nations Human Rights, 2015). There is increasing evidence that Australia’s detention centres hold Asylum seeker in condition harsher than those experienced by convicted criminals and saw “alarming levels of self-harm”. There are beds without mattresses, toilets without doors and showers without curtains (United Nations Human Rights, 2015). Recent allegations of sexual abuse of women and children and threats of rape by guards working in the detention centre on Nauru have surfaced (The Sydney Morning Herald). Is this how Australia treats asylum seekers with dignity and respect? Our current system humiliates and psychologically damages innocent people and goes against UN convention. While taking into consideration the government approach in attempting to deter future arrival of asylum seekers, this deterrent approach should not mean tough and inhumane treatment of human beings whilst directly violating human rights (Green left weekly, 2015). According to former Minister for Immigration, Amanda Vanstone, these people are a burden that we don’t want, and the best way to stop them is to show them that Australia is not an open country and will not accept everyone (The Sydney Morning Herald, 2014). This attitude does not reinforce the lucky, multicultural community and diverse society that we perceive Australia to be. The above policy does not comply with Australia’s nature of the lucky country it is perceived as and a country that was founded on the resettlement of refugee and immigrants. In our anthem, we sing: “for those who come across the seas, we’ve boundless plains to share” (Australian Government, 2012). Oddly, it is in the second verse which we hardly ever sing. Perhaps this reveals the true attitude Australia has towards asylum seekers. I plead with the Australian Government to ensure that all asylum seekers and refugees are treated humanely regardless of their mode of arrival, and to continue to uphold our proud history of providing protection to some of the world’s most persecuted and vulnerable people.

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  2. Alan S

    Alan S

    April 26, 2016 at 11:49 pm

    Immigration

    Recent surveys in Switzerland and the US have found that migrants have not only a net positive influence on the economy of their host countries, but also they send more money back to their country of origin than the world spends in aid. I quote from New Scientist 9 April this year: “The millions fleeing Syria have shone a spotlight on refugees, but that tragedy is just a small part of a bigger picture. More than 240 million people worldwide are international migrants. Refugees account for fewer than 10 per cent of the total and, in theory, they are the least contentious group, because many countries have signed international commitments to admit them. The rest are moving to work, or to join family members who have jobs. When such people travel with refugees, they are often derided as “just” economic migrants. This is unfair, says Alex Betts, head of the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. Whether or not they meet the official definition of a refugee, many are escaping dire conditions that pose a threat to their survival. Although globalisation of the world’s economy has lifted millions out of poverty, it has not been able to create enough jobs where there are people in need of work. Aid funds are starting to address this problem – but for the most part people must go where there are jobs. That’s why some see migration as a crisis. The 2008 financial crash spawned insecurity about jobs and concerns about economic migrants. Several populist parties took the opportunity to warn of a flood of freeloaders at the gates, increasing the issue’s political visibility and hardening the policies of some mainstream parties, including in the UK. The US government decided not to bail out firms that hired too many immigrants. Spain paid migrants to leave – even after they had stopped coming as jobs disappeared. And feelings of insecurity remain. “The logic driving this is the idea that migrant workers present additional competition for scarce jobs,” says Ian Goldin at the University of Oxford. Indeed, it is probably part of our evolved nature to think that more for you means less for me. But that’s not how modern economies work. If economies really were zero-sum games in this way, wages would go down as labour supply increased and natives might well lose jobs to immigrants. But no modern economic system is that simple, says Jacques Poot at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. The knock-on of economic migration is that increased labour also brings an increase in profit, which business owners can invest in more production. They can also diversify, creating opportunities for a broader range of workers. In addition, migration means workers can be more efficiently matched to demand, and make the economy more resilient by doing jobs natives won’t or can’t do. “More people expand the economy,” says Goldin, because people are moving from where they cannot work productively to where they can. In a survey of 15 European countries, the UN’s International Labour Organisation (ILO) found that for every 1 per cent increase in a country’s population caused by immigration, its GDP grew between 1.25 and 1.5 per cent. The World Bank estimates that if immigrants increased the workforces of wealthy countries by 3 per cent, that would boost world GDP by $356 billion by 2025. And removing all barriers to migration could have a massive effect. A meta-analysis of several independent mathematical models suggests it would increase world GDP by between 50 and 150 per cent. “There appear to be trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk” if we lift restrictions on emigration, says Michael Clemens at the Center for Global Development, a think tank in Washington DC, who did the research. But who gets those billions? Most of the extra wealth goes to migrants and to their home countries. In 2015, migrants sent home $440 billion, two and a half times the amount those countries received in foreign aid – promoting development and jobs at home. But what do natives of countries that attract migrants get out of it? In the EU it has been difficult to tease out the effect of free movement of workers from other economic results of membership. However, a study of non-EU member Switzerland is illuminating. Different parts of Switzerland allowed free access to EU workers at different times, enabling Giovanni Peri of the University of California, Davis, to isolate the effects. He found that while the workforce grew by 4 per cent, there was no change in wages and employment for natives overall. Wages increased a little for more educated Swiss people, who got jobs supervising newcomers, while some less educated Swiss people were displaced into different jobs. Peri has also looked at the situation in the US. “Data show that immigrants expand the US economy’s productive capacity, stimulate investment and promote specialisation, which in the long run boosts productivity,” he says. “There is no evidence that immigrants crowd out US-born workers in either the short or the long run.” Natives instead capitalise on language and other skills by moving from manual jobs to better-paid positions. Peri calculates that immigration to the US between 1990 and 2007 boosted the average wage by $5100 – a quarter of the total wage rise during that period.” When we accept that many of these migrants come from dry, semi-desert environments, we should also accept that they probably know as much as we do about living in inland Australia. The fact that they have the capacity and tenacity to come here shows that they will probably make a success of their lives here.

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