Unit 6, exercise 8b Group B Imagine you’re going to give a tour of a factory where glass bottles are made. 1 Read the information below. Check any words you don’t know in a dictionary. 2 Make brief notes to help you give your tour: powder (sand, soda ash, limestone) – furnace (up to 1675 °C) – … 3 Choose expressions from 7 to help you organise what you want to say. 4 Practise giving your tour with someone else from your group. Glass is made out of various ingredients such as sand, soda ash and limestone. 1 Melting the ingredients ■■ The bottle makers crush the ingredients for glass to a powder and mix them up. ■■ They melt the powder in large furnaces at high temperatures (up to 1675 °C). ■■ The melted glass emerges from the furnace, moving along a special channel. ■■ As it moves along, it cools slightly and becomes a bit thicker. 2 Forming the bottle ■■ A knife cuts the soft glass into simple cylinders. ■■ The cylinder moves along and is pushed into a mould to half-shape it. ■■ Then it goes into another mould, where it’s formed into its final shape. 3 Cooling and finishing ■■ The glass shrinks and hardens as it cools. ■■ To make it strong, the bottle goes into a special oven. ■■ It’s re-heated, then slowly cooled for 20–60 minutes. ■■ It’s examined to make sure it’s perfect. ■■ After that, it’s ready for packaging and shipment. Unit 6, exercise 32a Whose job is it to protect human rights? Businesses are being asked to take more and more responsibility for protecting human rights. But should governments really be outsourcing this role to companies? Scan the headlines about modern-day slavery in Qatar, forced labour in Uzbekistan, a ban on trade unions in Swaziland, a draconian anti-gay law in Uganda and widespread economic and social discrimination against women – as well as millions of children who are abused, neglected or exploited – and it is hard to argue that global corporations are being asked to do too much to protect human rights. And yet as the number of human rights demands placed on business – and particularly on global companies with supply chains in poor countries – continues to escalate, there’s a risk that governments will be let off the hook. After all, governments are obligated, if not always willing or able, to protect human rights. One of the difficulties for companies taking on the responsibility of protecting human rights is that the definition of the term ‘human rights’ is infinitely expandable. The UN says it includes labour rights, gender rights, children’s rights, gay rights, cultural rights, freedom of expression, the right to food and water, land rights, indigenous people’s rights, the rights of development and self-determination, all of which are interrelated, interdependent and indivisible. It’s no wonder some companies duck and hide what they are doing to protect human rights. A second problem is that many businesses don’t have the expertise or the resources to do much about human rights beyond their own corporate walls and supply chains. Nor are they accountable to the public, as governments should be. Yet the reality is that in the last decade or so, governments in China, Bangladesh and Indonesia, among other places, have in effect outsourced their labour law enforcement to global corporations. Dozens of retailers and brands have erected extensive and expensive infrastructures of workplace standards, audits, inspections and 210 A Activities Nur zu Prüfzwecken – Eigentum des Verlags öbv
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