Executive says his company safeguards work conditions

 BY PAUL B. JOHNSON
 ENTERPRISE STAFF WRITER
  HIGH POINT – The top executive of a major furniture manufacturer that does business in China said his company makes a concerted ef*fort to safeguard working conditions.
  “We have a code of conduct that we expect of all of our vendors,” said Paul Toms, chairman and chief executive officer of Hooker Furniture Corp.
  Practices deemed unaccept*able to Hooker include child la*bor, forced labor and prison la*bor, he said.
  “We are in the factories fairly frequently, and if we observe any*thing that we believe is illegal or unethical, then we would pull our*selves out of that factory and source somewhere else,” he said. “That hasn’t happened, but we have our representatives in the factoriesweekly, if not daily in our biggest factories.” Toms said he can’t speak for other manufactur*ers, but did say a “code of conduct with your sup*pliers is fairly common” in corporateAmerica.
  American companies are taking a calculat*ed risk in moving key production to a poten*tially unstable nation such as China, said Nir Kshetri, assistant professor of business ad*ministration at the University of North Car*olina at Greensboro.
  If another uprising such as the 1989 Tianan*men Square democracy movement occurs, and the Chinese government cracks down heavily, it could lead to calls for economic sanctions.
  Furniture manufacturers would risk being cut off from Chinese factories.
  “They see a very small possibility of that or they have a contingency plan,” said Kshetri, who has done seven years of research on Amer*ican companies doing business in China.
  Most companies have a contingency plan to shift production to countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia or Vietnam if an uproar disrupts supplies from China, Toms said. But a disruption is unlikely, he contends.
  “Our countries are so interconnected through trade that I’m not sure either country can do without the other one,” Toms said.  

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