Contents: THE WORKERS' DEMANDS and THEIR MERIT • POLAROID'S POSITION • BOYCOTT OR WITHDRAWAL? • The report says Polaroid Corp., based in Cambridge, Mass., enjoys a reputation as a progressive company whose employment practices and community relations programs are far ahead of most companies. However, Polaroid has been doing business in South Africa since 1938, selling film, camera, and identification systems through a local distributor, Frank and Hirsch Ltd., which also manufacturers sunglasses with imported Polaroid lenses. Some Polaroid employees issue an uncompromising challenge to the company to be consistent with its humanistic aims by getting out of South Africa...
Contents: THE WORKERS' DEMANDS and THEIR MERIT • POLAROID'S POSITION • BOYCOTT OR WITHDRAWAL? • The report says Polaroid Corp., based in Cambridge, Mass., enjoys a reputation as a progressive company whose employment practices and community relations programs are far ahead of most companies. However, Polaroid has been doing business in South Africa since 1938, selling film, camera, and identification systems through a local distributor, Frank and Hirsch Ltd., which also manufacturers sunglasses with imported Polaroid lenses. Some Polaroid employees issue an uncompromising challenge to the company to be consistent with its humanistic aims by getting out of South Africa and, in a sense, making reparations to the struggle for liberation there. Polaroid has already set precedents in South Africa by trying to prevent its products from being used by the government in implementing its apartheid policy. The black Polaroid Revolutionary Workers Movement (PRWM), which leads the campaign, have added another dimension by pressing the issue of economic disengagement even more sharply than the bank campaign did. The PRWM has demanded that: 1. Polaroid disengage completely from South Africa; 2. management meet with the entire company and announce its position on apartheid in the U.S. and South Africa simultaneously; and 3. the company donate its profits earned in South Africa to the South African liberation movements.
