It was during the 1980s that the cellular phone first came to our attention – remember the images of yuppies flaunting phones the size of car batteries – and in the years since they have become the most common personal accessory since the wristwatch.

The industry is dominated by a small number of very powerful global players, with Nokia and Motorola accounting for nearly 60 per cent of the global market, and SonyEricsson, Samsung, and LG Electronics controlling around 20 per cent. Despite many of its markets reaching saturation point – over 90 per cent of western Europeans have access to a mobile phone – the industry grew by a remarkable 24.7 per cent in 2006, shipping more than a billion handsets globally.

In November last year, the Dutch-based Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), published The High Cost of Calling. This in-depth report clearly shows that as a relatively new industry, mobile phone manufacturers rely on the same discredited practices as their counterparts in longer-established sectors.

In the countries where most of the world’s mobile telephones are manufactured, China, India, Thailand, and the Philippines, the depressingly familiar case studies include the use of child labour, compulsory unpaid overtime for ‘unskilled’ workers, no legal right for workers to organise or strike, and horrific breaches of the most basic health and safety standards.

Perhaps the worst example of the latter was discovered at a mobile phone lens production facility, Hivac Startech Film Window (Shenzhen), where lenses for the cameras on Motorola’s phones were produced. Ventilation in the plant was rarely utilised despite the range of chemicals used in the manufacturing process and nine workers were hospitalised with poisoning. One of the workers affected was forced to terminate her pregnancy on doctor’s advice; a termination that could have been avoided had the company dealt with the issue when workers first raised it more than six months earlier.

Motorola had little choice but to investigate the matter and eventually accepted that not only had the poisoning taken place but that it was as a result of their supplier’s practices.

‘Hivac is just one factory amongst thousands,’ says Joseph Wilde, one of the report’s coauthors. ‘And Motorola’s response is symptomatic of the very ad hoc approach the mobile phone manufacturers have to dealing with these issues.’

Wilde is frustrated that although the companies involved claim to have investigated and improved the issues raised in the report, they have refused to involve local independent stakeholders in the development or monitoring of corrective actions and are unwilling to provide any documentation or evidence as to what has really been done.

‘There is a need for structural changes in policy and practices in the industry, particularly in how companies deal with selecting and monitoring suppliers from which they procure mobile phone components,’ he says. ‘Their focus is heavily weighted towards price and quality and not enough attention is being paid to social and environmental factors.’

Needless to say, SOMO’s recommendations for an industrywide strategy to eliminate disreputable practices have fallen on deaf ears. It is a situation that Jim Puckett, co-ordinator of the Basel Action Network (BAN), can empathise with.

BAN faced a brick wall from the industry’s lead body, CTIA, the International Association for the Wireless Technology Industry, when the group argued that exporting mobiles from saturated markets to poorer countries for parts was the equivalent of exporting hazardous waste. As such, BAN argued, it should be subject to the controls of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal.

‘The cell phone industry lobbied very hard for exemptions from the established rules governing global trade in toxic waste,’ says Puckett. ‘It became clear that the grand design of many of the mobile phone carriers was to transfer the cell phone disposal problem to developing countries, even in contravention of international law.’

The industry has also been under attack for its sourcing of materials. A 2004 report by the Ethical Consumer’s online guide, ethiscore.org, slated mobile phone manufacturers for sourcing coltan, an integral ingredient in the manufacture of mobile phone, from warlords in the Democratic Republic of Congo, as well as for their universal connections to the arms industry.

It is clear that there’s much more to mobile phone manufacturers than the friendly facilitators of communication they like to paint themselves as.

Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO)

Basel Action Network

Ethical Consumer magazine\’s online shopping guide

Unionised workers are less likely to be sacked or discriminated against, and earn up to eight per cent more than non-unionised workers doing the same job. So why is it that unions can’t seem to recruit young people and casual workers?

‘There have been a lot of positive moves by the TUC and individual unions, but it’s still not the priority it should be,’ says Lucinda Yeadon, 24, and vice-chair of the TUC young members’ forum.

Yeadon believes that unions are cutting their own throats if they ignore the potential of young members.

‘Through my union I’ve been involved in campaigns against the far right and against the war. Young people are pro-active and we’ve been able to get a lot done because of that.’

No amount of glossy leaflets plastered with images of fashionable young unionists is going to turn things around. Workers need to know that they are joining an organisation with their interests at heart.

‘We need to be focussing on what young people want rather than solely what the current members want,’ says Kath Owen, 25, and an active union member from Yorkshire. ‘We need to be going into the places young people or casuals work, at the times they work. We need to concentrate on expanding our membership rather than just consolidating what’s already there.’

Mark Dawson of No Sweat agrees. ‘Rather than forcing people to do what you think needs doing, actually allowing people to do what they’re interested in doing and they want to do is the answer,’ says Dawson. The anti-sweatshop campaign has had a great deal of success in recruiting young people by allowing them to make their own decisions within a flexible and democratic organisation.

The East London Communities Organisation (Telco) has followed a similar approach. It unionised staff at Canary Wharf and introduced the living wage by finding out what people wanted, and then involving them in achieving their aims.

‘The Telco model is incredibly effective,’ says Deborah Littman, Unison official and co-chair of the living wage campaign. ‘Schools and colleges join and it’s their organisation, not something organised for them.

‘You’re using community links to reach people that your union wouldn’t normally reach.’

Important lessons from abroad are also taking root here. The SDA is the largest union in Australia and 50 per cent of their members are under 25. The majority of them work as casuals in supermarkets and fast food outlets at night or on weekends.

‘You have to talk their language,’ says SDA national president Don Farrell. ‘We’ve recruited about 80 per cent of them by getting into their workplaces when they’re working. We also offer benefits that appeal to them like education scholarships.’

‘Our membership turns over at the rate of 50 per cent per year so it’s difficult, but young people retain a degree of idealism so if you can get in front of new employees they’re often very receptive.’

The TUC has borrowed an Australian idea by creating an Organising Academy, where predominantly young organisers are trained for the specific challenges faced in non-traditional, non-unionised workplaces. British trade unionists are also going into schools and colleges in an attempt to overcome some of the negative stereotypes that still survive from the 1980s

A worker’s first experience in the workplace often determines their attitudes for the rest of their working lives. It’s no good waiting for someone to finish their studies and enter a particular industry if they’ve had a miserable experience while working their way through college.

These initiatives are vital if the British unions are to maintain their strength. Kath Owen sums it up perfectly when she asks: ‘In ten years time, who are going to be the members? Do we really want more retired members than we have working ones?’