CWC engage with fund manager Blackrock on Labour Rights

 

A little late in the evening UK time but pleased to attend and ask a question. 

🌎 Last week, over 20 global asset owner representatives – with a combined AUM of nearly USD 1.8 trillion – engaged collectively with BlackRock to articulate their expectations around the managers’ approach to labour rights stewardship. This was the 5th annual CWC-convened meeting with asset owner clients of BlackRock from North America, Europe, South Africa, and Australia – including representatives from CalPERS, London CIV, Cbus, and CCOO F.P. – whose actions seek to protect and enhance value for their beneficiaries.

📢 The asset owners acknowledged that despite the geopolitical environment and changes to its stewardship team, “company impacts on people” remains an engagement priority for BlackRock. However, the group voiced concerns around a narrow view of labour-related shareholder engagements as simply an exchange of information. If company engagements are not tied to specific objectives and outcomes, they risk becoming indefinite and inconsequential conversations, instead of critically assessing the success of programs that have been implemented by companies.

🎯 The group called on the world’s largest asset manager to explain how its company engagements evolve over time to deliver on its stewardship objectives and drive meaningful outcomes, particularly in relation to fundamental labour rights and the just transition.

The CWC’s Asset Manager Accountability Initiative aims to use the collective influence of asset owners to drive stewardship practices that protect workers and enhance long-term investor value.

hashtag#BlackRock hashtag#ResponsibleInvesting hashtag#WorkersRights 

Hat tip (1) Post | LinkedIn

LGPS Forum: Opportunity to participate in transnational Labour Rights Investor Network

 

(UNISON are supporting their members who are pension trustees/activists to join)

The Global Union’s Committee on Workers' Capital (CWC) is a network of pension trustees and staff dedicated to ensuring that employee retirement assets are invested responsibly. The CWC is initiating the Labor Rights Investor Network, a new investor education and exchange network that will offer resources and actionable information to help investors better engage portfolio companies on labor rights issues, including freedom of association, collective bargaining, and health & safety . We encourage you to follow the registration link below and join us to hear more about this exciting new initiative.

REGISTER HERE

Mikail Husain (he/him)

ESG Analyst | SOC Investment Group 

"Investors have three reasons to advance their stewardship of labour rights. First, labour rights are human rights and investors have responsibilities to respect these rights in their investment and stewardship decisions. Second, respect for labour rights enables investors to mitigate systemic and company-specific risks. And third, freedom of association and collective bargaining, along with other worker rights such as the right to a safe and healthy workplace, can improve corporate performance.

The Labour Rights Investors Network will provide investors with the actionable information they need to engage on labour issues, uphold their responsibilities to respect human rights, mitigate workplace risks, and drive stronger returns. An initiative of the Global Unions’ Committee on Workers’ Capital (CWC), the Network will offer events and resources, including regular opportunities for education and exchange on issues such as identifying labour risks, the impact of different legal contexts, and how stewardship can improve transparency and performance on freedom of association and collective bargaining. The Network will provide written resources, bring workers to share their experiences, and connect investors to experts in such areas as international labour standards, country-specific labour laws, and workplace health and safety.

Our first webinar will provide a selection of the types of content the Network will offer. You will hear from workers who have experienced labour risks firsthand, learn about one company’s approach to mitigating that risk, hear from an investor on why freedom of association is an important topic for stewardship, and have a chance to ask an international labour rights expert questions. We will present an overview of the network and what you can expect from joining.

We are hosting two sessions of this webinar and invite you to register for the session that best fits your time zone and schedule as both events will follow the same agenda. You are invited to join one of the following two options:

• Option 1 (Australia/North America): Wednesday November 15th at 3pm Eastern Standard Time / 12pm Pacific Time/ 9pm CEST | Thursday November 16th at 7:00am Australian Eastern Daylight Time. REGISTER HERE 
• Option 2 (Europe/North America): Monday November 20th at 3pm Central European Time / 9am Eastern Standard Time/ 6am Pacific Time. REGISTER HERE

Labour 20 pledges to working people (and 3 more of my own)

Finally, we are beginning to see some clear red water between Labour and the Tories on what really matters to British workers. While my wish list would like to see the reintroduction of wage councils, greater national insurance benefits for the self employed and a state backed defined benefit pension scheme for all, the below proposals matter for all workers.

Listen. This is the number one issue. The message should be clear. If Labour gets in your pay and your rights at work will go up and your Executive bosses pay will go down. Enough of Tory rip off Britain.

Hat tip Unionstogether

The next Labour government will bring in a 20 point plan for security and equality at work:

Give all workers equal rights from day one, whether part-time or full-time, temporary or permanent – so that all workers have the same rights and protections whatever kind of job they have

Ban zero hours contracts – so that every worker gets a guaranteed number of hours each week

Ensure that any employer wishing to recruit labour from abroad does not undercut workers at home - because it causes divisions when one workforce is used against another

Repeal the Trade Union Act and roll out sectoral collective bargaining – because the most effective way to maintain good rights at work is through a trade union

Guarantee trade unions a right to access workplaces – so that unions can speak to members and potential members

Introduce four new Bank Holidays – we’ll bring our country together with new holidays to mark our four national patron saints’ days, so that workers in Britain get the same proper breaks as in other countries.

Raise the minimum wage to the level of the living wage (expected to be at least £10 per hour by 2020) – so that no one in work gets poverty pay

End the public sector pay cap – because public sector wages have fallen and our public sector workers deserve a pay rise

Amend the takeover code to ensure every takeover proposal has a clear plan in place to protect workers and pensioners – because workers shouldn’t suffer when a company is sold

Roll out maximum pay ratios – of 20:1 in the public sector and companies bidding for public contracts - because it cannot be right that wages at the top keep rising while everyone else’s stagnates

Ban unpaid internships – because it’s not fair for some to get a leg up when others can’t afford to

Enforce all workers’ rights to trade union representation at work – so that all workers can be supported when negotiating with their employer

Abolish employment tribunal fees – so that people have access to justice

Double paid paternity leave to four weeks and increase paternity pay – because fathers are parents too and deserve to spend more time with their new babies

Strengthen protections for women against unfair redundancy – because no one should be penalised for having children

Hold a public inquiry into blacklisting – to ensure that blacklisting truly becomes and remains a thing of the past

Give equalities reps statutory rights – so they have time to protect workers from discrimination

Reinstate protection against third party harassment – because everyone deserves to be safe at work

Use public spending power to drive up standards, including only awarding public contracts to companies which recognise trade unions

Introduce a civil enforcement system to ensure compliance with gender pay auditing– so that all workers have fair access to employment and promotion opportunities and are treated fairly at work

Union rights ARE an ESG issue!

            An intelligent and thought provoking post as ever by Capital Stewardship blogger Tom P here (and below) on the failure (I could be a little more direct) of the ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) industry to promote Labour rights. As someone who has an interest as the UNISON NEC member for the UK charitable and voluntary sector, I wonder how many of these organisations actually recognise trade unions for their own staff and have collective bargaining? Or realise if they don't - they are failing to follow the United Nations Global principles on human and Labour rights? 

By coincidence last week I attended a meeting of the Association of Member Nominated Trustees (AMNT) working group on their "Red Lines" initiative. Which is a new approach to pensions shareholder engagement and voting at Company AGMs. Labour rights and trade union recognition are accepted as key "Red Lines" - as important as environmental or corporate governance.

(Tom P) "I've blogged a little previously about what I see as a general failure of labour issues to make it very high up the ESG agenda. As someone who has worked with and for trade unions in different ways for much of my adult life I find this frustrating, particularly as it contrasts sharply with progress on environmental issues in responsible investment. So I thought I'd go into a bit more detail.

One of the things that troubles me is the apparent tolerance some people in responsible have for poor behaviour by companies on labour rights. I very much doubt this sort of behaviour would be tolerated in respect of other ESG issues. I think it is worth restating, as obvious as it should be, that labour rights are human rights. Therefore, where unions raise concerns about companies' not respecting labour rights this should not be seen as a "difference of opinion" between employer and employee, but a potential violation of human rights. Also, unions are very often able to provide specific breaches of labour law by companies. The consequences of such breaches vary considerably between jurisdictions but the key point is that companies are breaking the law, often repeatedly.

Seen in these terms, I question why investors do not take alleged labour rights violations more seriously. Aside from the danger in being seen as tolerating abuses of human rights, I would argue that investors should see this as a serious hazard warning. If a company is breaking the rules over and over even if you don't personally like/support unions you should be concerned about whether this is indicative of a wider management attitude.

However, for some reason this message doesn't seem to get through. I doubt a company that could be shown to have repeatedly violated environmental regulations would be given the benefit of the doubt by many ESG folks, but this does happen with labour rights. To take a real life example, imagine the reaction if a company stated that it would lobby aganst certain environmental standards because it was bad for business, and if it repeatedly used lawyers to frustrate attempts to make it more environmentally responsible. I think we know that most RI people would think this was intolerable.

Yet this is exactly what happens when unions try to organise within companies. It is far more acceptable in the ESG world for a company to oppose unionisation, even when this strays into alleged breaches of the law, than it is for it to decline to adhere to voluntary environmental initiatives or targets. I have even seen an asset manager with some ESG credibility report publicly that it supports a company's right to campaign against unionisation because it thinks this is in the interests of the business.

I genuinely get it that the working lives of retail workers, or dockers, or bus drivers are to most people in the the RI world a less interesting thing to look at than climate change, particularly if those workers live in developed countries and sound a bit thick. Engaging over these issues maybe doesn't have quite the same feeling that you are contributing to something important. But actually the ability of workers to bargain for a fair share is closely linked to inequality, surely quite an important societal issue.

It's a bad news story really: the decline of trade union strength is closely correlated with increased inequality, as an IMF paper pointed out last year. The effects might be two-fold, weaker unions mean that labour is less able to bargain for a fair share, but also reduce the countervailing power that once held corporate management in check. Is it any wonder that the US, with its weak labour law and numerous anti-union companies (and union-busting firms that advise them) is so unequal? So if you are concerned by inequality you should be concerned by companies that try to prevent or reverse unionisation.

Finally, I think it's important to flag up the issue of beneficiary interest and representation. I genuinely believe that RI policies and practices should reflect beneficiary concerns where possible.

There is a lack of good info on what beneficiaries really want to see in RI policies but some of the limited info we have suggests that they put more emphasis on basic employment-related issues than the ESG community as a whole does. If this is broadly correct this may be because they see a self-interest in it. We also know that beneficiaries want to get a decent return and are worried about getting ripped off. Therefore an RI policy that was generally rooted in beneficiaries' interests might have more to say about workplace terms and conditions on the one hand, and fees and charges on the other. To state the obvious we are long way from that, although this is broadly the territory that unions seek to occupy.

I do worry a bit that the priorities expressed in responsible investment can sometimes look like the liberalism of the well off and successful. We're very good at flying around the world to conferences and signing up to global initiatives. In contrast, bus drivers complaining about shift patterns or faulty heaters can seem rather dull. If you've never done a menial job, or struggled to get on at work, you may well consider some of the complaints that union members raise to be trivial, or whiny. But these are the people whose money makes responsible investment possible. Without their pensions you and me don't have jobs. I think they have a right to expect that their voice gets a better hearing than it does currently".

(hat tip chart to http://www.unionswork.us/)