A one-year-old Belfast company, Forward Emphasis, has become the North's first call centre and direct mail house to achieve trade union recognition from Unison.
The North's Secretary of State, Dr Mo Mowlam, yesterday attended the introduction of the company's ethical business charter. This sets out its commitment to ethical standards in its trading policy and work practices.
The LEDU-backed company is donating up to 10 per cent of its net annual profit to charity, and also hopes to create 50 jobs through training programmes aimed at homeless people and the long-term unemployed. The company's estimated turnover for 1999 is about £400,000.
Dr Mowlam said Forward Emphasis was setting a benchmark for other companies in this growth business area by creating a positive working environment for its 60 staff.
One of Forward Emphasis's three directors, Mr Patrick Loughrey, said trade union recognition and the company's ethical charter aimed to show that commercially successful businesses can also be ethical.
Mr Loughrey, who previously worked for Amnesty International, the Simon Community and the Northern Ireland Council for Voluntary Action, said the company intended to develop programmes to encourage employees, clients and suppliers to become more ethical and community-orientated.
Forward Emphasis's clients include the charities Save the Children, Age Concern and Oxfam. Mr Loughrey said its ethical trading policy would rule out clients with shareholdings or investments in projects involving human rights abuses or unsound environmental practices.
He said the company's two main suppliers had developed charitable donation policies due to encouragement from Forward Emphasis, which itself does non-paid work for several charities.
The company also encourages charitable schemes for staff, 30 of whom will take part in this year's Simon Community fundraising Christmas "sleep-out".
A co-director, Ms Fiona Burns, said the company's awareness of ethical issues did not mean it was commercially naive, but that its "bottom line" was financial and social.
