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2 May, 2012
Marking 28 April, the World Day for Safety and Health at Work, the Committee on Workers’ Capital (CWC) launched a briefing paper on workers’ safety and the role of responsible investing in ensuring labourrights. The report shows how investors can hold companies accountable for failure to protect their workforce from work-related accidents or diseases, and how workers’ capital especially through trade union pension funds can seriously effect change in corporate governance.
Collaborators in the project included ICEM, the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers Federation (ITGLWF), the Building and Wood Workers International (BWI), and ICEM affiliates the United Steelworkers (USW), and the National Union of Mineworkers of South Africa (NUM).
The CWC is a joint initiative of the ITUC, Global Union Federations (GUFs), and the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC). Established in November 1999, following a meeting of international trade union leaders in Stockholm, Sweden, the CWC examines ways for workers to leverage their retirement savings on companies so that they respect human and labour rights.
The paper includes case studies from the Massey Energy Upper Big Branch mine disaster of April 2010 that killed 29 non-union members in the state of West Virginia, and from USW oil workers at the Tesoro Refinery in Anacortes, Washington, and from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The paper also includes a clear framework on how pension trustees can use their pension fund investments to address the issues of Occupational Health and Safety and labour rights.
Ken Georgetti, Chair of the CWC and President of the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) said: “Innovative partnerships between labour rights advocates and investors can deliver the promise of decent work for all.”
View the full Investing in Decent Work report here