This document discusses the Open Corporation project, which aims to increase transparency of multinational companies and hold them accountable by ranking their performance on issues like working conditions, social responsibility, and environmental protection. The project would survey multinationals and publish the results, allowing citizens to monitor their actions. It encourages participation by proposing companies for evaluation and helping to distribute surveys, with the goal of promoting virtuous behavior among multinationals.

1. TRADE UNION RANKING OF MULTINATIONAL
COMPANIES
Many multinational companies have turnovers that are greater than the GDP of some countries, and use their power to
influence the choices of governments and parliaments (see CNMS, Top 200 – The rise of corporate power, 2015)
Democracy is increasingly threatened by the growth of multinational companies that claim wealth and concentrate it in
the hands of few top managers and investors. Multinationals, that know everything about us, use and abuse of Big Data,
but seldom reveal information on themselves and their actions.
TRANSPARENCY and ACCESS TO OPEN DATA are the unavoidable conditions to allow citizens to perform an effective and
aware control of the actions of multinational companies and ask for sustainable and responsible behaviors.
OPEN CORPORATION is a tool to decipher the behavior of multinational companies and free a mass of information
relative to concrete actions applied to add value to the workplace, workers, and the differences among them, contribute
to the growth of territories, reducing every negative impact and promoting a fair distribution of wealth.
WORKING CONDITIONS, SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY, TRANSPARENT BALANCES, PROMOTION OF DIVERSITY, ACCESSIBILITY
FOR ALL, PROTECTION OF THE ENVIRONMENT are key words in this project, the topics over which OPEN CORPORATION
will examine and confront multinationals, will rank them and let them compete against each other to promote virtuous
behaviors.
These are topics that concern quality of life inside and outside the workplace and on which the trade union has the right
and the duty to intervene, using all the tools available: dialogue, negotiation, participation, protest actions and
awareness raising campaigns.
CONTRIBUTE TO OPEN CORPORATION!
BE AN ACTIVE PART IN CHANGE: MAKE YOUR CORPORATION OPEN
It’s not that hard:
1) Propose your company as a candidate for participation, writing to INFO@OPENCORPORATION.ORG. You will
receive further information on the project and the trade union observatory;
2) The research team will perform a survey on the actions of your multinational and prepare a questionnaire,
partly pre-filled, for the company management of your multinational;
3) The research team will send an online questionnaire to the company contacts that you will provide, to be filled
in, and a letter that underlines the objectives and tools of the survey;
4) Urge the company management to fill in the questionnaire;
5) Verify the information given by the company management, confirm them and/or indicate inconsistencies;
6) During the project you will be able to access the OPEN CORPORATION observatory and compare the actions of
your multinational company with that of other companies operating in the same sector!
**********
And remember, if you want transparency from your company, don’t hesitate to be transparent yourself. Test your
ability to “be accountable” for the activities of your European Works Council! Write to INFO@OPENCORPORATION.ORG
to fill in the EWC questionnaire online and evaluate its transparency.
For further information, please visit the website: www.opencorporation.org
PROJECT COORDINATION: FILCAMS-CGIL – THE ITALIAN COMMERCE TOURISM SERVICES WORKERS' FEDERATION, gabriele.guglielmi@filcams.cgil.it
RESEARCH TEAM COORDINATION: IRES-CGIL ER – ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH INSTITUTE, davide_dazzi@er.cgil.it
BUDGET HEADING
04.03.01.06
CALL FOR PROPOSALS
VP/2015/003
GRANT AGREEMENT
VS/2015/0380