Responding to our stakeholders

Our aim is to investigate & understand stakeholders' concerns

With operations in around 100 countries, our business impacts a wide range of stakeholders – from individuals in local communities to national governments and international organisations. People contact us about various concerns: these may be very specific or local issues (such as traffic from our factories) or more complex global issues such as the need for sustainable palm oil or to reduce animal testing.

Our Code of Business Principles commits us to running our operations with honesty, integrity and openness. Our approach is always to investigate, understand and discuss issues of concern and respond. However, we realise that in running a business of the size and scale of Unilever, we do not always "get it right" and need to learn from our mistakes if we are to continue to be a respected and responsible business.

This section of our website features significant global issues that stakeholders have raised with us recently. Our aim is to profile the issue in a straightforward and factual way with links to the stakeholder's concerns so that people can understand the differing perspectives involved. 

Often the issues raised are complex. This means we cannot always respond as immediately as our stakeholders would like because it takes time to investigate and check facts. In some cases, there are no clear-cut right or wrong answers. In other instances, issues cannot be addressed by Unilever in isolation and may require wider engagement with industry and other stakeholders, as is the case with sustainable palm oil. We are committed to approach concerns with integrity and transparency and will do our best to resolve issues.

We hope that by providing our perspective on reports or international press coverage, people will be able to understand our point of view and come to a balanced judgement on the actions of our business.

Labour rights & working practices

In May 2009 the FNV Mondiaal trade union organisation produced a report "Adding Insecurity to Life" (1,343 KB). The report concerns Unilever's outsourcing and working practices: it questions our respect for labour rights and makes accusations about unfair working practices and the "casualisation" of labour.

Copies of the report were presented to us at our Annual General Meeting in Rotterdam on 14 May 2009. It has since been circulated to organisations that work with us, such as our NGO partners, and posted on a variety of civil society websites.

We take these allegations seriously and are committed to maintaining an open dialogue with trade union organisations to seek appropriate and sustainable long-term solutions to the issues.  However, we object to the characterisation of Unilever as portrayed by the FNV as we have a long track record of operating responsibly and with integrity in all markets. 

Outsourcing is a common industry practice that enables businesses to operate efficiently and remain competitive. We have outsourced many of our 'non-core' business operations (such as catering, IT support or end-of-line packaging of products) to third party service providers. Our use of workers who are employed through third party service providers is always done in ways that are consistent with local employment laws and practice. We also seek to ensure that our service providers comply with minimum wage, social security and retirement contribution requirements.

We address the questions raised by the FNV in: "Labour Rights and Working Practices: A Summary of Stakeholder Concerns and Our Response" (303 KB).

Our document is designed to be read in conjunction with the FNV report as it responds to the concerns in the order in which they are raised by the FNV. Our document quotes each FNV concern in summary, followed by our response and links to further details online.

Suppliers of Palm Oil

In April 2008, Greenpeace issued a report entitled "How Unilever Palm Oil Suppliers are Burning Up Borneo". This report claimed that suppliers of palm oil to Unilever were responsible for “fuelling climate change and helping drive orang-utans to the brink of extinction”. The suppliers were accused of being involved in unacceptable practices such as clearing of peat lands and orang-utan habitats, whilst not having the required legal permits.

These are serious allegations that Unilever could not ignore. If proven to be valid they would constitute a breach of our Business Partner Code and the mandatory requirements of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, of which these suppliers are members.

In order to assess the veracity of the Greenpeace report we commissioned an independent study to check their substance and to screen suppliers against RSPO criteria. We asked Eric Wakker of Aidenvironment, an independent not-for-profit consultancy advising private and public organisations, to lead this effort.

The study, "Verification of the Greenpeace report 'Burning up Borneo'", concludes that the Greenpeace report, although flawed in parts, was broadly accurate. In some cases, Unilever’s suppliers were unable to produce complete sets of valid permits.

We have shared the study’s results with our suppliers and urged them to address the shortcomings. Based on their reaction to date, we are confident they will correct the problems highlighted by Greenpeace and authenticated by Wakker.