Post

The People's Media Agency/人民媒社/인민미디어대행사/ピープルズメディアエージェンシー/Агентство народных СМИ

SHIMEN — By executive decree, our Beloved and Wise Leader Kum Jing-In has pledged to resolutely combat corruption, bribery, and the exploitation of human relations by enacting the death penalty for all associated cases of corruption.

This comes after talks with the Censors of the Republic, who have agreed and vociferously backed the Supreme Leader's initiative.

Currently, insatiable foreign demand for manufactured goods from the FEUSSR has led to high levels of fraud among local manufacturers, many of whom rely on a Potemkin village of consultants who defraud their customers by intentionally covering up deficiencies and illegal activities within the manufacturing industry - for a cost. An industry of consultants help some factory owners flout labour laws, offering a range of services from coaching workers on answering auditors’ questions, to the provision of falsified record books. Some say they can arrange for a particularly friendly auditor to inspect to ensure that the facility is well-prepared, while others use software to create falsified documents for a full team of seemingly legitimate factory workers to cover up the employment of illegal or underage workers. Interviews among some consulting firms showed that they regularly take in bribes to pay off auditors. A database of more than 5,000 audits conducted last year showed that more than 90% of factories audited by third-party auditors for the Amfori BSCI platforms were not transparent in their documentation and had falsified records.

According to the FEUSSR Federation of Trade Unions, workers in the FEUSSR who log more than 40 hours a week are entitled to fixed overtime rates for a maximum of three hours a day, as well as social insurance covering benefits including pensions and health care. However, this many factory owners attempt to game the system to cut corners and costs. Instead of having clients perform the audits, however, they usually outsource to a third-party auditor who also has a strong incentive to cheat, due to long working hours and intensive travel activities. Theoretically, corporate clients should commission spot-check audits to confirm the validity of each inspection, but industry sources say these checks are not done as commonly as they should be.

Consequently, the executive decree signed into law today would see the meting out of the death penalty for corrupted individuals, as well as the government-mandated sanctioning of over 40 of these "audit commoditising" consultancy firms, and billions of USP worth of civil asset forfeitures, as the MI-PIS investigates banks and freezes accounts that have given and received bribe payouts. Over $12 billion USP worth of bribes have been seized by the MI-PIS Furthermore, new laws have made it illegal for factories to hire said consultancy firms to deal with audits, while simultaneously mandating employers stick to labour laws under a coloured tiering system. Factories flagged at the 'green' tier are facilities that are able to comply with labour laws consistently, while companies flagged at the 'yellow' and 'red' tiers do less in increments. Companies that reach the 'red' tier are liable to in-depth government investigations. By imposing such harsh penalties, the Censors hope to discipline factories and force them in line.

The government has also urged foreign companies to be more aware of their corporate footprint.

Censors say that adding more frequent inspections would increase the likelihood that factories get caught out, which will be done. The Republican Censors will receive a doubled budget for their operations next year to compensate for their added duties. Factories next year can expect random spot-check audits, both by companies as well as the government. To proactively remove incentive for auditors to cheat, the government has also set out to discipline auditing firms, lambasting them for long hours and intensive travel activities. The government has pushed for the greater organisation of workers among all strata of society into unions and workplace soviets, as to better improve collective bargaining and labour welfare across the country.