What is the Hub?
The Global Labour Rights Campaigns Hub (the “Hub”) supports trade unions and labour rights organizations in amplifying their corporate campaigns by activating investors to uphold decent work and labour rights.
The Hub supports campaigns from around the globe, with a specific interest in worker rights issues arising in global majority countries. It provides research, strategy, and implementation support to help enhance the capacity of unions and organizations to advance their campaign goals using capital strategies.
What do we do?
Investors and other financial actors can have an important voice in encouraging responsible business practices. At the same time, investors face growing pressure to consider environmental and social factors in their investments.
“Capital strategies” aim to leverage the power of invested capital to support social and environmental campaigns and produce meaningful action. Social movements and organizations using capital strategies seek to influence capital market actors, including international financial institutions, institutional investors such as pension funds and foundations, asset managers, sovereign wealth funds, and corporations.
Capital strategies involve a range of approaches and tactics to change corporate practices. They include working with shareholders to file shareholder resolutions in public companies, meeting with investors in both public and private companies, and engaging global asset managers.
What support can we offer?
The Hub offers research, co-ordination and implementation support to enhance the capacity of trade unions and labour rights organizations to build capital strategies into their campaigns.
Research
Researching companies, their investors and lenders in public and private markets, utilizing databases that provide information to support power-mapping and financial analysis.
Co-ordination
Bringing campaigns to the attention of investors through CWC initiatives, such as the Labour Rights Investor Network and the Asset Manager Accountability Initiative.
Strategy
Strategizing and co-ordinating capital strategies campaigns in collaboration with interested organizations.
Education
Providing training materials for trade unions and labour rights organizations to support their efforts to design and deploy capital strategies as part of their campaign efforts.
Who are we?
The Global Unions’ Committee on Workers’ Capital (CWC) is an international network of trade union-nominated pension fund trustees and union representatives for dialogue and action on the responsible investment of workers’ capital. It is a committee of the International Trade Union Confederation.
The CWC leverages the power of asset owners and asset managers to add value to labour rights campaigns and drive changes down the investment chain through initiatives such as the Asset Manager Accountability Initiative (AMAI) and the Labour Rights Investor Network (LRIN).
Partners & Supporters
The Hub also works with the following organizations, which engage corporations on behalf of investors to implement shareholder engagement strategies:
Shareholder Association for Research and Education
SHARE
SHARE is a non-profit organization dedicated to mobilizing investor leadership for a sustainable, inclusive, and productive economy. Using shareholder engagement, advisory services, research and education, SHARE helps investors steward their assets in ways that contribute to positive social and environmental outcomes.
Pensions & Investment Research Consultants Ltd
PIRC
Pensions & Investment Research Consultants Ltd (PIRC) is Europe’s largest independent corporate governance and shareholder advisory consultancy with over 25 years of experience providing proxy research services to institutional investors on governance and other ESG issues. PIRC has dedicated research and stewardship teams with expertise and experience across climate, labour and human rights.
We are grateful for the support of the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundations.
Advancing Labour Rights Together
Reach out for support
The Hub is not a fee-for-service model, and we do not charge organizations any money for the support we provide. We select the campaigns we work on based on a set of criteria, which includes looking at whether capital strategies could advance the campaign’s goals.