Committee on Workers' Capital

Trustees Driving Real World Impact: An Interview with Cheri Hearty (Canada)

Hugues Letourneau — 2022-05-04T20:41:04Z

The first interview from the CWC's 2022 Trustee Leadership Profile Series features Cheri Hearty, a Canadian union-elected trustee and co-chair of the Pension Plan for the Employees of the Ontario Public Service Employees' Union since 2019. Despite being from a smaller plan, Cheri's knows how to pack a big punch when it comes to ESG issues.

Cheri's advice to trustees looking to improve ESG practices at their fund is to ask lots of questions to their asset managers and to join like-minded peers through networks like the CWC and the Canadian Capital Stewardship Network (CCSN). Speaking to how trustees can work together (through initiatives like the CWC's Asset Manager Accountability Initiative) to mobilize workers' capital, Cheri says, “If you feel like that small minnow in a big ocean, all of a sudden, you're ten thousand minnows in the same ocean. Collective action is really important; it can expand the effectiveness of individual trustee action.”

Cheri was interviewed in March 2022.

cwc__profile_cheri_hearty_final.pdf

CWC endorses three PRI board asset owner candidates in 2021 election

Tamara Herman — 2021-10-01T21:22:18Z

The CWC Leadership Team has endorsed three trade-union backed candidates for the PRI Board:

Scott Connolly (Telstra Super, Australia)
Sharon Hendricks (CalSTRS, United States)
Laetitia Tankwe (Ircantec, France).

The CWC encourages trustees at PRI signatory asset owner funds to:

Raise the election with fellow board members
Encourage their fund's contact point with the PRI to vote for these three candidates

ABOUT THE CANDIDATES

Sharon Hendricks
Vice-chair, CalSTRS Board

Sharon Hendricks is the Vice-chair of CalSTRS in the United States and a member of the AFT local 1521. Sharon has received the endorsement of the CWC leadership team in 2019, and this is her second PRI election. She has over 10 years of governance experience and has pushed CalSTRS to adopt a more activist investor role, including the development of the board's investment beliefs on ESG issues. Sharon is committed in her second term on the PRI board to strengthen the influence of the PRI, to provide oversight on the retooling of the PRI reporting framework and to oversee the selection of the next CEO of PRI.

Click for candidate statement

Scott Connolly
Trustee Director, Telstra Super

Scott Connolly, a trustee at Telstra Super in Austrailia has been an active member of the CWC network. He is a respected leader of the Australian labour movement, serving as Assistant Secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU). With over 20 years experience leading and advocating for working Australians, Scott is well positioned to elevate workers' voice and the consideration of social issues at PRI.

Click for candidate statement

Laetitia Tankwe
Advisor to Ircantec President, Ircantec

Laetitia Tankwe, advisor to the president of Ircantec in France and endorsed by CGT representatives, brings almost 20 years of experience in the financial sector. In her work, Laetitia strives to go beyond ESG integration and seeks to make a true impact in the real economy through stakeholder capitalism. In her current mandate on the PRI Board, she has demonstrated leadership supporting the PRI's Financial, Audit and Risk Committee as well as its Policy Committee. Seeking re-election, Laetitia aspires to ensure that a high level of ambition is maintained at the PRI to turn a philosophy into real actions.

Click for candidate statement

The brainstorming sessions at the 20201 Workers' Capital Conference will be an opportunity to meet the three union-backed PRI board candidates endorsed by the CWC.

The session times are as follows:

Session 4a on October 28th at 8:00–9:30 Pacific Time | 11:00–12:30 Eastern Standard Time | 17:00-18:30 Central European Time | Friday Oct 29 @ 2:00–3:30 Australian Eastern Daylight Time
Session 4b on October 28th at 15:00–16:30 Pacific Time | 18:00–19:30 Eastern Standard Time | Friday Oct 29 @ 9:00–10:30 Australian Eastern Daylight Time (anchor time)

Sept. 9: Trustee Briefing Webinar on Asset Manager Accountability Engagements

Tamara Herman — 2020-08-26T18:14:22Z

The CWC is pleased to invite labour and union nominated asset owner board members to a Trustee Briefing on the Asset Manager Accountability Initiative and our planned engagements with BlackRock and State Street Global Advisors (SSGA).

DATE: September 9, 2020
TIME: 7:00 am PST | 10:00 am EST | 3:00 pm BST | 4:00 pm CEST

The CWC Asset Manager Accountability Initiative supports trustees and unions in raising workers' rights issues with asset managers. This initiative aims to shift the balance of power in the investment chain by enabling asset owners to hold the asset managers they contract accountable, driving meaningful improvements in workers' rights at the company level.

In autumn 2020 and early winter 2021, the CWC is organizing engagements with BlackRock and SSGA. Please join us to learn more about the initiative, the upcoming engagements and how union and/or worker nominated asset owner board members can participate.

The topics to be discussed in this session will include:

Introduction from José Meijer, chair of the CWC Trustee Leadership Network and APG supervisory board member (former ABP trustee)
An overview of the CWC Asset Manager Accountability Initiative
Upcoming engagements on labour standards in real assets
Upcoming engagements on elevating workers' rights in investor stewardship in their equity portfolios
Updates on key issues to be raised at the meetings in companies such as Amazon and Teleperformance.

This event is open to CWC participants. Participation in the CWC is open to representatives from the trade union movement. Please click here to register to access the participants' area on our website and receive news from our mailing list.

Learn more about the CWC Asset Manager Accountability Initiative here

Image: Shutterstock | Rawpixel

2019 CWC Trustee Leadership Workshop

Tamara Herman — 2019-08-27T18:56:34Z

The agenda for the 2019 CWC Trustee Leadership Workshop is available here.

Session Moderators:

Hugues Létourneau, Manager, Global Unions Committee on Workers' Capital
David Wood, Director, Initiative for Responsible Investment at the Hauser Institute for Civil Society, Center for Public Leadership, at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government

Topics include:

Organising and empowering trustees to improve capital stewardship in their fund portfolios
Strategic actions for trustees: building a movement to push asset managers from talk to action

The workshop has been developed in collaboration with SHARE and the Initiative for Responsible Investment at the Hauser Institute for Civil Society, Center for Public Leadership, at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

To register, click here. Registration will be capped at 40 participants.

Photo: AhmadArdity | pixabay

Investor Brief on the Digitalisation of the Economy: Why it matters for long-term investors and what to look for

Tamara Herman — 2019-06-21T17:50:59Z

Digital transformation is changing the world of work, raising profound challenges in areas such as labour protection, employment transitions, training, and tax policies. The transformation has implications for investors, from the portfolio to systemic levels.

Produced by the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) in conjunction with the CWC, this brief describes how digitalisation is transforming the world of work overall and the challenges that workers are now facing. It looks specifically at highly digitalised companies, such as online platforms, the challenges they raise in terms of fair competition, corporate governance and tax. It outlines issues that long-term investors look for and how they may respond to the digital transformation.

Read the full brief here:

2019-tuac-cwc_brief-06-21.pdf

Caspar Camille Rubin

Asset Manager Report Cards

Tamara Herman — 2019-02-21T00:03:06Z

Pension fund trustees who participate in the CWC network oversee the retirement savings of millions of workers. Trustees expect the asset managers they contract to invest and manage workers' funds in their best long-term interests. Our Asset Manager Report Cards are providing trustees and trade unions with information on the extent to which 10 global asset managers incorporate workers' concerns into their stewardship of workers' capital.

What's the issue?

Although asset owners sit at the top of the investment chain, establishing accountability from their asset managers on labour-related issues – the “S” in "ESG" – is among the major challenges faced by trustees striving to responsibly steward workers' capital.

Despite improvements in accountability on environmental and governance issues, substantial shortcomings are evident in how global asset managers incorporate social issues pertaining to workers in their investment practices, stewardship activities and interventions in the public policy arena. The result is that global asset managers often utilize the capital of their clients – including workers' retirement savings – in a way that undermines workers' fundamental rights.

Large global asset managers have, to varying degrees and within a range of frameworks, articulated commitments to integrate social considerations into their investment practices and processes. Yet discrepancies between discourse and action on social issues are visible in the substance and outcomes of asset managers' engagements with portfolio companies, their proxy voting records and their input into public policy and regulatory consultations.

What are we doing?

The CWC, in consultation with an advisory committee, has designed a methodology that evaluates 10 global asset managers whose client base includes CWC participants based on:

1. The strength of the stewardship framework: The degree to which the asset managers' internal policies, processes and practices establish a stewardship framework to ensure that companies in public equity and alternative investment portfolios uphold workers' human rights and labour standards. These are drawn from the ILO core conventions, the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the UN SDGs, the ITUC Global Rights Index and other relevant standards.

2. The impact of asset manager stewardship practices on trade union priorities: This component examines specific cases where fundamental rights of workers have been or are being violated and analyses how the asset manager is using its leverage, as per the OECD Guidelines, to influence the entity causing the adverse human rights impact. Furthermore, it reviews how asset managers use their clout to weigh into public consultations on topics such as corporate governance and disclosure. Our analysis includes:

The scope, substance and outcomes of engagements with public equity portfolio companies on CWC-supported campaigns;
The proxy voting records of asset managers on resolutions relevant to workers' rights and workplace issues that were supported by the CWC;
The public policy positions of asset managers on issues related to trade union priorities;
The existence and implementation of Responsible Contractor Policies (RCPs) or other guidelines on workplace issues and standards in their alternative investment portfolios.

The CWC organizes meetings between asset managers and CWC pension trustees to transform and deepen accountability in the investment chain. Our completed asset manager report cards, meeting reports and methodology are available upon request to CWC participants.

CWC Asset Manager report cards are available to CWC participants. Contact the secretariat for more information.

To read our informational flyer, click here.

For more information on this initiative, please contact the CWC Secretariat

Photo: Pixabay | Pexels

Trustee Guidance Note on Pension Fund Investment in Infrastructure

Hugues Letourneau — 2018-03-07T07:58:19Z

The CWC Trustee Guidance Note on Pension Fund Investment in Infrastructure provides a set of 13 principles to inform the decision making of pension fund trustees around infrastructure assets. The principles are meant to help trustees reconcile pension board decision making with the general interest of the trade union movement of sustaining strong labour standards for the workers who are impacted by infrastructure investments.

cwc_infrastructure_guidance_final.pdf

An Interview with Roslyn McLennan (Australia)

Tamara Herman — 2018-02-14T08:55:26Z

Roslyn McLennan was appointed to the Sunsuper board in 2015 as a member representative on behalf of the Queensland Council of Unions. She is also a member of the fund's Investment Committee, Remuneration, Nomination and Governance Committee, Successor Funds Transfer Committee and Claims Committee.

The CWC interviewed Roslyn in February 2018.

cwc_trustee_rmclennan_final_v2.pdf

An Interview with Philippe Soubirous (France)

Hugues Letourneau — 2017-11-30T07:41:06Z

Philippe Soubirous is Vice-President of Préfon and a board member at Ircantec, where he represents plan members as a representative of French union Force Ouvrière. He is also the co-founder of the Réseau d'administrateurs pour l'investissement responsable (Trustee Network for Responsible Investment), known as RAIR, in France.

The CWC interviewed Philippe in May 2017.

cwc_trustee_psoubirousen_final.pdf

An Interview with Sharon Hendricks (USA)

Hugues Letourneau — 2017-07-21T06:55:41Z

Sharon Hendricks is vice-chair of the California State Teacher's Retirement System and she holds a member-elected position as a community college instructor representing current educators on the CalSTRS board.

The California State Teachers' Retirement System provides retirement, disability and survivor benefits for California public school educators. The fund has approximately 914,000 members and $202 billion in assets under management as of February 2017. CalSTRS is the largest educator-only pension fund in the world and the second largest pension fund in the United States.

The CWC interviewed Sharon in March 2017.

CWC_trustee_profile_Hendricks