DHSS continued this month with their Lecture Series and Career Talks by inviting Ms Sarah Albert, a Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility (CSER) Senior Manager at Flex, to give a talk about “Global Citizenship” on 29 March in B101. This lecture was arranged by Dr Edoardo Monaco and foreign intern Elizabeth Rodewald of the Government and International Relations (GIR) programme.

Sarah Albert gave a short introduction about herself, and the variety of jobs that have all played to her advantage to get her to her current role, from being a bartender to working as a programme manager for the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Afterwards, she told the audience about the multinational company she currently works for, Flex, which is presently the second largest electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider in the world. 

Ms Sarah Albert is a CSER Senior Manager at Flex

Ms Albert’s main role as CSER senior manager at Flex is to ensure that company operations are conducted in a “fair, equal and ethical” manner. Ensuring the workers at Flex know their labor rights is crucial to raising and preserving the company profile. Everything must be transparent, from obeying local government’s rules, all the way to industry standards and the sourcing of materials for manufacturing.

The talk really went in depth, and Ms Albert even showed the audience an example of a major problem that occurred at a Flex factory in Malaysia, explaining how they solved this issue: the problem occurred ahead of the launch of the iPhone 5, therefore Flex had to significantly ramp up production, hiring new employees via brokers and recruiters in Nepal, Pakistan and other surrounding areas. As factory jobs were highly desired, many families in these relatively poor countries paid upfront fees to brokers to acquire the positions, resulting in loans that could then take "imported" workers years to pay off. Factory managers, as it turned out, controlled when workers were able to leave. When Flex discovered this, they cut all dealings with the brokers and recruiters and instead invested millions in setting up their own recruitment agency in Malaysia, where they now pay for the workers’ travel and other expenses to bring them in.

Other topics that were discussed included Central Africa’s conflict minerals - that are known as “3T’s & G”, from their initials (tin, tungsten, tantalum and gold). Workers’ rights were also mentioned and a couple of videos were shown to give a visual explanation of the importance and benefits of employee diversity and inclusion.

Ms Albert finished the lecture of by explaining what kind of jobs are covered by CSER. She then actively engaged with the audience: attendees provided answers to Ms Albert’s questions, and posed their own questions about various aspects, such as Flex’s future strategic plans now that their main competition, Foxconn, is moving some of their production to South East Asian countries for cheaper manufacturing. Ms Albert’s response was that, although she cannot be certain as 10 years represent a very long time in economics, Flex now has 60% of its customers in China and this market’s strategic importance for the company, now, clearly goes far beyond production costs.

Reporter: Samuel Burgess (MPRO)
Photographer: Zheng Jinglin (CCM, Year 4)
Editor: Deen He (MPRO)
(with special thanks to the ELC)