 Come everyone to this event on how finance and business can progress the living wage and decent work as part of living wage week 2021, which is the annual celebration of the living wage movement. We're geared up today for a really dynamic discussion and invite you to please post your questions and comments throughout the event by the chat in the channel where we'll get to these at the Q&A at the end of the session and you can also continue the conversation with us afterwards on LinkedIn. I'm Lucy Ordon. I manage the investment leaders group convened by the University of Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership. We're a group of leading investment organisations working together to co-create actionable research that addresses the greatest challenges in progressing sustainable investment. Together with our members and my colleague Jason Tio, we're currently working to understand and demonstrate how investors can progress decent work, which includes the payment of a living wage through investment decision making and engagement. This builds on previous research from the group on measuring the impact that portfolios have on people and the planet. I'm delighted to be joined today by my colleague Dr Anna Barford, a CISL Prince of Wales fellow. She's working with Unilever and our colleague Marina Zerilla to research pathways to decent work that support the business case for the living wage within circular and linear models. Anna's previous research with Safi Ahmed argued that circular economy principles for rejuvenating and restoring materials should also be applied to labour relations. And as we build a new form of economy, their research proposes that the rights and needs of workers should be at the foreground. Anna's team are now researching how companies are moving towards living wage commitments and payments. I'd like to extend a very warm welcome to our fantastic panellists today. So we're joined by Julie Valla, Vice President of Human Rights at L'Oreal, Rachel Coban Walden, Global Director of Human Rights at Unilever, Laura Bosch, Social Engagement Specialist at Rubico, and Martin Buttle, Head of Good Work at Share Action. So without further ado, I'd like to hand over to my colleague Anna to kick off today's discussion. Anna, over to you. Excellent. Thank you, Lucy. And welcome to all our panellists. Today we're here to talk about how finance and business can progress decent work in the living wage. And to start with, I want to invite all our panellists to introduce themselves. So we've got more of an understanding of who they are and where they're coming from. As you might expect, we've got people from the finance side and from the business side. So we'll start with finance and ask Laura, would you introduce yourself first please? Sure. So good afternoon and good morning everyone. It's a pleasure for me to be here and thank you very much for inviting me to this panel. So my name is Laura Bosch and I work as a Social Engagement Specialist at Rubico. Rubico is an asset manager with a long term investment bill, where we basically manage about 200 billion euros, AUM, on behalf of our clients which are mainly institutional ones like pension funds and insurers. And for us sustainability is really at the core of the work that we do. So all of our investment strategies actually integrate sustainability in different shapes and forms. But we also take ownership of our investment decisions and once we invest in a company we also engage with them to nut them to improve their sustainability performance. And among some of the topics that we discussed with them, it's also a topic of decent work and living wages. Laura, thank you. Also I'm from the finance side. I'd like to send to Martin please to introduce yourself. Good afternoon. It's a real pleasure to be here and thank you for the invitation to speak. So I'm Martin Butler. I'm head of good work at Share Action. Share Action is a charity that works with the finance system and financial investors to ensure that it's responsible for its impacts on people and planet. And we do that in three main ways. So the first way is we benchmark investors on their policies and approaches to responsible investment. And then we work with them to engage with them and use their influence to influence corporate practice. We work with policymakers and regulators to drive the uptake of responsible investment policy, both in the UK but also globally. And we work with individuals to educate and empower them to understand how their money works and what the influence of that money can be on the global economy and on society. Excellent. Thank you Martin. And now to Julie, your turn for an introduction please. Sure. Thank you for your invitation. So I'm Julie Valais in charge of Human Rights for L'Oréal. It's based in the corporate sustainability department. And we have a team of human rights correspondents in all our markets all over the world. So interacting with many colleagues from HR, from procurement, internal experts, but also external experts as these issues are very cross cutting. Excellent. Thank you. And last but not least, Rachel, please. Thank you also for the invitation. So my name is Rachel Coburn Warden. I'm Global Director for Human Rights at Unilever. So along with my team, our role is to really help support Unilever from a policy process advocacy and implementation perspective to really drive our human rights strategy. To reflect internally to the business, what the external expectations are, and also to reflect externally the work that Unilever is doing as we continue to implement the UN guiding principles on business and human rights. Excellent. Thank you. And then kind of building on what what you've just shared Rachel and also Julie, would you mind kind of giving us a bit more of an in depth explanation about what your companies are doing right now to support the global move towards paying living wages, both at Unilever and also at L'Oréal, please. Rachel first. So thanks, Anna. So in January of this year, we made a commitment building on our commitment that all our direct employees we paid a living wage, which we actually reached at the end of 2020. In January of this year, we expanded that commitment to include all our direct supplies. So we have approximately 56,000 direct supplies. That's our tier one supplies. And by 2030, we want that everyone who directly provides goods or services to Unilever to earn a living wage or indeed a living income. So that's our commitment. And we're now in the process of creating both country and portfolio implementation plans. So looking at this through our own value chain, but also understanding that really what we want to do is create a living wage movement. And therefore working with peer companies with expert organizations with industry platforms to really also drive overall uptake of living wage as a key foundation of decent working conditions. Excellent. Thank you. And how exciting to hear that you're at the forefront of this movement towards living wage payments. Julie, how about L'Oréal? Sure. So at L'Oréal, we took the commitment to make sure that all our employees are granted a living wage through our employee human rights policy. And it was issued in January 2020. And we didn't wait to have completed this journey internally because of the poverty, because of COVID, because of, you know, one in five workers earning less than $3 per day. We also issued just a few weeks after our employee human rights policy. So in April 2020, our L'Oréal for the Future program in which we took the commitment to make sure that all our strategic suppliers will be granting to their own workers a living wage by 2030. And our strategic suppliers are roughly 80% of our spend. Thank you. So thank you. 2030 is going to be a big year then to achieve these these impressive goals from both companies. So now turning to Laura and Martin. I'd like to ask you what your strategies are to achieve better working conditions, including living wages, both through investment activities and stewardship work, please. I'll turn to Martin first. Thank you, Anna. So in share action we have two programs that are focused on decent work and encouraging companies through investor engagement to improve their practices or decent work. So the first is the workforce disclosure initiative, which is an investor backed annual survey of the world's largest companies, listed companies, asking them to disclose better and more data on their workforce policies and practices. And it's designed to be a gold standard for data disclosure aggregating all the global expectations and reporting frameworks on workplace topics into one reporting mechanism, which is then available to investors. And it covers not just employees, but third party contractors and supply chain workers and is fully aligned with the UN guiding principles on business and human rights. And then the second program is our good work program. And whilst the WDI is focused primarily on data and data disclosure, the good work program is focused on real world outcomes. And we've been engaging FTSE 350 companies to pay the living wage, tackle insecure work and create more diverse and inclusive workplaces since 2013. And we coordinate a group of 38 investors with 3.4 trillion assets under management who are working to support those goals. We also coordinate with individual activists and people with interests in these topics and buy and help them to buy shares so they can turn up to the AGMs of companies and ask questions about these topics at the AGMs of companies. And then we will follow up with those engagement letters with the investor coalition. We will also explore filing shareholder resolutions, which are a particularly powerful approach to engagement and stewardship. And we're currently exploring the possibility of filing a shareholder resolution on the living wage at a UK supermarket in 2022. Since 2013, we've been engaging on the living wage with FTSE 100 companies and this week we're celebrating the 50th FTSE 100 company accrediting as a living wage employer. So that is 50% of the FTSE 100, which is fantastic. And we know that about 89 million has been put into the pockets of low wage workers as a result of this engagement work. That's wonderful news. Congratulations. Halfway there. So great, great news. And also, like from our work and our interviews with CSL colleagues, we've really found that this issue of they're not being good enough data has really been a barrier or an issue for companies seeking to go living wage. So it's great to hear about your work and see your work on data disclosure. Can I turn to you and ask you the same question about stewardship work and investment activities and how you can use these to promote the living wage? Sure. So let me start on the investment front. So for us, it's really important to integrate sustainability topics across the stock selection process and also the way that we construct portfolios. And for that, for fundamental investment strategies, we also look at the companies beyond their financial returns and the financial metrics. We also look at how sustainability topics can really make a difference in the way that companies are valued in the market. So, for example, if we look at the labor intensive sector, like the food retailer there, we will also look at some sustainability metrics, like, you know, labor practices and the type of wages and benefits that they provide to workers as a proxy to understand to what extent companies can be exposed to legal, the potential risks, but also how well can these companies also attract and retain talent to make sure that they have a stable workforce. So, across our investment strategies, we look into sustainability topics and decent work and wage top related matters are also important components of that decision making process. But once we decide to invest in a company and we hold that company in our portfolios, then we also take accountability as shareholders and how to further improve that sustainability performance of our investing companies. And that's why for us, our stewardship work is very important to not companies to move that extra mile. And if we talk about the engagement work that we do, there we have more than a decade experience really engaging with companies in different industries on various social topics, including labor practices and human rights and the topic of living wages. So just to give you an example, we've been very active engaging on the topic of, you know, accelerating the payment of living wages in the apparel sector for the last three years. And we did that in a collaborative investor platform called the platform for living wage financials. And that's a coalition of 18 financial institutions really joining forces to together leverage the influence that we have as shareholders and really engage with our investing companies to give them more resources and more feedback on how they can improve the overall payment of living wages across our global supply chains. So beyond the engagement work for us, a proxy voting is also very important. So we also integrate sustainability factors in our voting guidelines. And in next year, we're going to start integrating some social factors looking at to what extent companies carry out the proper human rights to diligence across our operations and supply chains. And whenever progress is not deemed sufficient, then we might consider voting against specific agenda items. And also filing shareholder resolutions is a useful tool to escalate that engagement and further stress and emphasize the importance of specific topics like decent work and labor practices whenever we engage with our investing companies. Thank you so much. That's such a thorough answer touching on so many different dimensions of how you're engaging and promoting this work. I just want to turn now to think more about what the, what the, what, what the implications of not paying the living wage might be. And just to be really clear, because I know that some people are very familiar with this term living wage and other people aren't so familiar with it. So the living wage is usually different from the minimum wage is normally much higher than the minimum wage. And it's based, it's based on the idea of having and being able to afford what it, what it costs to live in the place that you live in so minimum living wages will vary across space. And it also was only enough to live on it also has enough to make make small savings. So you've got some contingency as well. So I just wanted to kind of throw that in because not everyone's really familiar with exactly what living wages are. Maybe not everyone listening. So now I just want to talk to Julian Rachel again about what the consequences of not paying living wage might be or the costs of inaction. And that might be the costs to individual businesses or it might be to society as a whole. So maybe we can start with Julie this time and then turn to Rachel after. Okay, so as you said rightly Anna very often the living wage is going beyond minimum wage in many, many countries, because it takes on board what you said but also it takes on board the dependence so the size of the family. So, which vary, of course a lot from one country to another, based on fertility rates for example. So it's also very important to go back to your question. It's critical to have this in place as a as a big company but also for states or, you know, you have in the UK great data about that. They are also in the US and others context but it's critical to fight poverty. As I said earlier one in five workers are earning less than $3 per day to survive and these are the poor workers. And unfortunately, these numbers are growing when we are looking at the last international labor organization reports. So fight poverty, you know, is a key points for everyone to act collectively as Rachel said we are working together. L'Oréal Unilever and other companies to embark all our ecosystems on that through different platforms. Another very important point, which is also critical is that very often concerning you know these low skill workers, very often women are impacted, you know for L'Oréal it could be our beauty advisors or the cleaning services or the catering or you name it. Very often women are at stake and are hurt by this by this poverty. So having living wage in place is a very powerful tool to address discrimination gender pay gap. As I said poverty and many other issues so again it's critical to fight these problems systemic problems together. Thank you Julie and Rachel. Absolutely I mean what's the risk of not paying living wage while there's obviously risk to the individual, most important to the worker. We know that living wage as a floor not a ceiling I think that's really important we're saying living wage as the minimum is actually critical for an individual to be able to care for her or his family and also to be able to play that meaningful role within society and we also know that being able to earn a living wage is no neighbor of access to other rights, education, health, good diet, housing, etc. So I think it's completely undeniable the importance of the individual. In terms of society of course the widening inequality that we're seeing has a really destabilizing effect on society. Which also is something that you know we really have to fight against bearing in mind the huge environmental and social challenges that we see all the world is is coming against at the moment. From a business perspective. I really question whether poverty wages which is what we're talking about fighting poverty in work poverty is a stable foundation for the resilient and future fit businesses that we all want to see. So I think it's really about really making certain that there is that understanding, and there is very clear information how in terms of actually the individual company level, whether it's attraction retention, whether it's better industrial relations, whether it's improved productivity, less quality incidents, better health and safety there are many many benefits of the individual business level. And of course the reality is if you're putting more money in the pockets of workers that money gets spent, and that money will often be spent on the products that the business is making or the services the business is providing. And of course that virtual circle of more money going into the economy in general because we also know, and we do want more evidence on this but we do know that those on lower incomes are much more likely to put that money straight back into the economy. And so I think that's something is, is not talked about enough and something that we really need to, to really get more information and certainly and certainly talk more about those elements. So lots of really good cases of why actually paying better wages, taking workers out of poverty is clearly good for individual clearly good for business is clearly good for society. And also I'd argue also good for governments too, so that you're not topping up wages through the tax system as well, and keeping people in often intergenerational policy of poverty rather which is really not being able to either fulfill the potential of individuals, or indeed of countries and economies. There are really really powerful points there. And this, this point about paying more to your workers can actually increase their capacity to buy what they need to live. It reminds me of the Fordist model of Ford paying his workers enough that they could then become consumers themselves of the cars that they were making in the factory so there's there's definitely a historical analogy there as well. So, we've heard the business, the business case of business voice on this. Now I'd like to attend to Laura and Martin again. Because, you know, it's one thing if the businesses want to do this, what about investors. How much demand would you say there is amongst investors right now for companies to provide information on their policies and practices around decent working living wages. Maybe as part of a kind of wider ESG disclosure that they might be interested in. I'll turn to Martin first on that one, please. Thank you. I mean I think a lot of the points that have already been raised about, you know, the value of paying a living wage to individuals and to hand for business is equally true for investors as well. And so I think, you know, investors are very much interested in understanding how businesses are responding to the living wage and how they are aiming to pay that living wage. But as you say they need data to understand that. And there is a growing demand for data in this space and understanding the workforce policy and practices of businesses. And that was largely why we created the workforce disclosure initiative which I mentioned before. And that has the backing of 58 investors with 8 trillion assets under management. And they created it because they realized that the quality and quantity of data that is available for investors is very poor. And that's partly because, you know, global companies are operating over multiple jurisdictions and there are different reporting requirements in those different jurisdictions. And also the fact that, you know, there's not enough quality data being disclosed and investors need to understand more about these topics. We actually did a comparison last year looking at companies that had disclosed to the WGI versus companies that hadn't looking at public disclosures by companies that hadn't. And we determined that actually companies that are disclosing to the WGI actually provide about three times as much data to investors in terms of quantity. I mean, you can, the quality is harder to measure but in terms of quantity there's there's three times amount amount of data that's being provided to investors through the WGI platform. And Laura. Sure. So maybe to add to the discussion. From an investment perspective what we're seeing is this clear trend towards a rise on sustainable investing so you know almost 36% of total assets managed globally are actually channel to solutions that really looking to the sustainability profile of those companies that are being part of the different portfolios and then going back to Martin's point, the importance of really having robust data around labor related topics like this work living wages is really crucial for investors to be able to make better investment decisions. So if we look at it from a financial maturity perspective, we need clear information on how companies perform on topics like human capital management strategy data around you know turnover rates overall wage levels social dialogue. So we can really compare them against your peers and really pick those companies that really perform better and therefore sort of have a better green credential in our investment strategies. But beyond the financial maturity argument, there is also an increasing demand from our clients and from the investor community to have products that are really looking into the impact that those companies really generate on the societies that they operate. And through the products and services that they sell in the market. And then going back to some of the points that Rachel and Julie have mentioned. It is very important that through the capital that we provide to companies we're also supporting business models that are really looking for, you know, paying a living wage and making sure that those societies where these businesses are operating they can also flourish in a more broader sense given that they have access to the basic needs and they can really have a more appropriate livelihoods. So beyond the overall business case for investors as well. What we see is an increasing demand from clients from regulators for the translate industry to be more transparent on the way that we integrate all the sustainability considerations in our investment strategies. Let me give you an example at the European Union level we have the sustainable finance disclosure regulation, really giving us clear guidelines for asset managers and as owners on how we should be, you know, putting together financial products that are more sustainable on what type of disclosure we need to provide to our clients in a more systematic way. An important component of these regulation is going to be the implementation of the adverse impact indicators. So these are 18 metrics that all financial institutions will need to report on at the fund level. And it really looks into to what extent the companies that are part of these portfolios are having a negative impact on the environment and on the society. And these 18 indicators will be mandatory for all financial institutions and they will be standardized. And that means that there is increased need to really bring more information from the corporate side to the market. So then investors can really advocate that data at the fund level and really share it in a transparent way to their client on the overall level of, you know, sustainability profile of their products and also to what extent these companies that are part of investment products might have a negative impact on topics like, you know, labour practices and fundamental ILO conventions. Laura, thank you. And maybe I can just have a quick follow up question with you if that's okay, which is about what's the overall willingness would you say of companies to engage with investors. How responsive are companies when investors start kind of promoting the topic of decent work and within that, of course, living wages. So I think there has been an increasing trend from companies to actually be more receptive from feedback from investors and really more open to discuss this type of topics with us. And I would like to maybe classify the type of findings that we get from this discussion in two different buckets. On one hand, we have the positive trends that we've heard from companies. And there we see that in general, most of the companies that we talk to, they agree on the fundamentals of why decent work is important, why living wage is something that they should really look after and try to implement across our operations. And we also see increased level of transparency on how companies deal with this topic, either through specific internal policies on human rights or also the type of expectations that they have on suppliers by requiring them to uphold and pay living wages. And maybe in terms of what are still challenges that we see across our dialogues with companies, I think most of the companies still approach the topic of decent work and living wages as a risk mitigation factor, meaning that they really try to comply with the minimum requirements that are legally mandated to make sure that they don't have any reputational or legal risks going forward. And they're going back to your point on minimum wages and the fact that they're pretty much lower than living wages. That's something that we hear often from companies that when we talk about wages, they say that they pay an attractive salary. But that usually translates into a minimum wage rate and we know that that's much lower than living wages. And also we see, frankly, quite some original differences on how companies react and respond to these topics. So for example, if we talk to companies based in the US, there we see that terms like living wages can be quite partisan and can also be a bit difficult to grasp and to respond for companies. So there the framing that we investors take in our dialogues is very important to make sure that we are talking about the same concept, even though we might label it in a different way. And finally, in terms of challenges, I think it's also very, you know, important area for improvement, the way that companies translate all the policies and all the commitments that they have around upholding robust labour practices and paying decent salaries, how that is being actually implemented in practice. And that disconnect or gap in terms of disclosures is something that we see often. And we think that's something that companies should really work on to really bridge that gap in terms of availability of data in the market that Martin was also referring to before. Laura, thank you. That's such a thorough answer. And I'm curious, actually, what is the way, if you don't mind, that you do frame it living wages when you're talking to businesses. In all of the interviews we've done, people have said, well, of course, the living wage isn't the ceiling, it's actually the floor of what we should be thinking about. But I'm curious, if you don't mind, how do you frame it yourselves? Yeah, absolutely. So we basically follow internationally recognised definitions of living wages. And we look also at the anchor methodology as a way to really support that living wage definition that really contains all the components that we deem appropriate, like having that family component, looking into discretionary income and being able to really meet the basic needs. So that's the way that we refer to living wages when we engage with companies. Excellent. Thank you, Laura. Okay, I'm turning to you, Martin. I'm curious, we've talked already about what some of the risks of an action are for society and for the business of not paying living wages. So I wanted to kind of turn a similar question to you to ask, how might not investing in decent labour conditions results in financial risk? Yes, I think, as I said before, a lot of the same motivations are there for investors as they are for businesses. But in the case of not supporting decent work, I mean, I think one of the recent examples that most people will know about is the case of Buhu, where it's been documented widely that the wages in the garment sector are very low, and particularly in Leicester in the UK, where there was a scandal last year, where it then became clear that during lockdown that workers in the garment sector were still working and some were working despite having COVID and there was fellow fraud going on and very low wages. That actually manifested in an ESG scandal for Buhu and their share price actually fell 175 points or 43% of their value at that point in time. And there were actually quite a lot of investors who were invested in Buhu because they were actually rated by some of the rating agencies as a responsible company. And we can go into some of the reasons why they were rated as a responsible company, but it did mean that a lot of investors and some in particular had to divest from Buhu at that time. So that's the sort of reputational risk angle. But I think there's also legal risk issues around low pay and the absence of decent work. And the gig economy is a good example of that. You know, the UK Supreme Court ruled in February that Uber drivers had been misclassified as independent contractors and they should have been classified as limby workers, which gave them a set of different set of rights. But then we saw very soon after that in April of this year, Deliveroo, the cycle courier firm, have its IPO. And we actually saw something unprecedented at that time that 12 big investment firms actually came out and said that they wouldn't invest in Deliveroo prior to the IPO. And I think that's unprecedented, that sort of public statement that concerns around decent work meant that they couldn't invest in Deliveroo. So I think that those sorts of risks are very much part of the sort of question that investors look at. But, you know, as others have mentioned that there is a very strong investment case for investing in decent work. And people have said that, you know, businesses that invest in decent work provide better jobs. Those jobs are more productive. People are treated well. They're more likely to stay on in their work. You're going to have more engaged people working there that's going to increase customer satisfaction, those sorts of things. And also inequality is a risk for businesses, for investors, particularly those universal owners who have investments across multiple businesses. They can't then change the way that they are constructing their portfolios if they're invested across multiple sectors. And so things like inequality becomes systemic risks that they need to address. Excellent. Thank you, Martin. Thank you very much. So we've had some very strong cases so far from all of you, in fact, about the benefits of doing this, of committing to living wages and promoting it, not just for your own organizations, but also beyond the collaborations that you've got with wider network of people working to promote living wages. I guess my next question is more about what the challenges are for businesses and for investors. What are the obstacles that people are facing when they're trying to kind of follow through on these commitments? We've heard a lot about kind of what's being done already. Amazing work to address issues of data availability and quality of data. So maybe kind of stepping aside that kind of issue of data. What are the other challenges that investors and businesses are facing? I'd like to address this one first to Julie and then to Martin, please. Thank you, Anna, for your question. It's true that there are some challenges. We mentioned already, you know, that it's quite a complex concept and we need to demystify it, you know, when we try to embark on ecosystems and stakeholders on that. So explain, demystify and make it accessible, you know. So this is a challenge. Of course, as you mentioned already, the measurement and the data, the cost, we mentioned that already. And maybe also more particularly, you know, for the SMEs, for them it could be a challenge, a small and medium enterprise. So they need more capacity building than the big, you know, companies to start this journey. And also, again, it's a journey because we want to avoid potential negative consequences. For example, because we are talking of low-skill workers, the robotization or, you know, the compliance approach versus other kinds of approach. So we don't want suppliers to stop hiring, you know, people because they want to be compliant with living wage. So that's why it's a journey. That's why it takes time. And that's why we are providing, you know, tools and supports, especially to small and medium ones. Because, again, it's a challenge for some of them. Thanks, Julie. Now to Martin, please. Thank you. I mean, I did mention earlier that we're seeing 50 or 100 companies accrediting as living wage employers. But I think it's quite easy in the context of the UK where there's the Living Wage Foundation, there's a strong accreditation scheme. And the vast majority of the workers that are being uplifted in that context are direct employees. I think it's much more challenging in international supply chains for some of the reasons that Julie mentioned already. But I think, you know, if you look at the apparel sector, for instance, you've got a real challenge of getting suppliers to be on board with the ideas. And wanting to share the right data. I know we didn't want to talk about data, but in terms of getting suppliers to pay the living wage, then a lot of lead businesses say they don't have visibility of what wages are down the supply chain. There's a reluctance from suppliers to give open costings to disclose kind of how they break down their costs and whether they ring fence labor costs. And that's partly, I think, because of the structure of supply chains, the fact that in a lot of sectors where you have transactional relationships between buyers and suppliers, you have a really different sort of set of power relations where you've got, you know, a small group of buyers and a large number of suppliers. So they feel that if they start disclosing this sort of information to their customer that they may then lose business and face sort of unfair purchasing practices from their clients. So I think all of these sorts of structures of supply chains does create problems for paying the living wage. And, you know, I hear a lot about brands talking about leverage over suppliers, but I think that that's a dual-edged sword, because, you know, leverage is power and influence, but that power doesn't necessarily translate in, you know, true partnerships with their supply chain. I think one of the really interesting solutions for this is like to have anonymous supplier voice mechanisms, which can actually then feed back information into the supply chain about how suppliers are experiencing purchasing practices. Better buying is an example of this that has been developed in the apparel sector, and I would love to see stuff like that developing in other sectors. Martin, thank you. And I think this point about unequal power is so pertinent here. And, you know, we've talked already about the opposite of living wages being poverty wages. And, you know, in many ways that epitomizes that unequal power relationship in one of the most extreme ways. So maybe on some more positive note, we've spoken about some challenges. But the next question is about what could help either a accelerate progress or be scale up progress by businesses and investors. So that, you know, we had already about these 2030 goals from both L'Oreal and also Unilever. But we're curious about what could help push this agenda forwards quickly. Maybe I could turn to you, Rachel, to take that one first. Sure. Thanks for that. Well, I mean, I think the really good thing is that it's so much discussion around living wage now. And we're seeing some really good strong developments from industry platforms. So we had, you know, back at the start of the year in March, we had IDH, Sustainable Trade Initiative, Launch Recall to Action. That was then followed up in June by the UN Global Compact. We then have Business for Inclusive Growth, which Julie and I have worked a lot on with their statement of support. And then just recently, just this week, actually, we've had in progress also the membership organization of fast moving consumer goods to also come out the statement of support. So I think what really can speed up is really that mass of companies actually saying, yep, this is an issue that we need to resolve. We don't necessarily have all the answers. We don't know how to do it. But actually, this is what we're going to work on and we're going to share. We're going to share best practice obviously within the limitations, correct limitations of competition or where we can. We're going to share some of the challenges, what's tricky. We're going to share the tools and we're really going to create those movements at a country level with all the key stakeholders coming together and not forgetting, of course, the critical role that trade unions have in this. So for me, that's what's really going to help. And we just want companies just to say, don't know all the answers, but yes, this is something that we're going to start looking at. And there is a lot of tools and guidance out there. Talked about the platforms, but also whether it's the work done by UN Global Compact, by Urban Bombay, IDH, by the Fairways Network, by others. There is more and more guidance in terms of how companies can start looking at this, both in their own operations and their supply chain. So I would simply say, you know, the time for working on living wages now for everyone that's come together and let's just start addressing it. Rachel, thank you. Very inspiring words. And Lucy, I knew you were communicating with people after on the LinkedIn. So maybe it would be possible to put some of those links up that Rachel just mentioned so that people can follow up if they're interested because I think they're really lots of very good advice there from Rachel and from everyone else. Now I'm going to close my part of the session and thank you so much to all the speakers for your fascinating answers. I'm going to hand back over to Lucy now who's going to run a Q&A. So hopefully there'll be some audience questions that we can enjoy now. Thank you. Fantastic. Thanks Anna. So we've had some questions in from the audience. The first Martin is to you in relation to the points that you made around the gig economy, which is should workers without a permanent contract and or guaranteed minimum hours ever be plastered as receiving the living wage. Do you have any insights on that? Sorry, I was muted there. No, I think not. I think I think wage is only one component of quality work and and I think, you know, to say that somebody has a living wage requires them to also have other aspects of quality work that includes, you know, visibility of the hours worked, a contract that reflects the hours that they work and a decent notice period so that they know and can plan for the work that they do. So I think those those sorts of things are critical to a decent living wage and a decent work and the living wage foundation have developed the living hours standard to reflect those those concerns as well. And I think, you know, the gig economy is just obviously one really obvious example of of where these issues of contracts type visibility of hours flexible unfair flexibility for workers is is very high on sort of the public radar and I think that these sorts of issues are across a number of different sectors in the UK. I went to an event this week by the Joseph round tree foundation looking at that in the care sector. We know that we know that these issues are across multiple sectors in the UK and indeed globally. Fantastic. Thank you. The question that actually came in before the panel is in relation to what some of the solutions are for those working in developing economies and particularly in Asia who are perhaps poorly located and recovering from the pandemic. Rachel, I know you mentioned about the destabilizing effect that not being paid a living wage might have. I wonder if we could hear your insights in terms of how payment of a living wage could enhance resilience across supply chains, particularly for those in developing economies in Asia. Well, I think also when when companies are looking at, you know, the future of business and supply chains, we know that supply chains are changing. We know that factories are becoming more more automated. We know there's more tech technology coming in and we want to really be able to also upskill workers and therefore link to that upskilling is also that ability to be able to learn to earn more wages. If you look at someone like India, you see huge changes actually in the way that supply chains are being run, but you've also obviously got large numbers of people who are still working in labor intensive industries. So I think resilience for me is about making certain that supply chains are future fit, but everything has to be done with that rights based foundation. So resilience for human rights has to be the foundation of all the changes that are coming. So when we're looking at, for example, future of work, everything has to be with a foundation of respect for human rights. I think also the reality is, you know, resilience, it just simply you cannot have a resilient supply chain. If you have factories or any kind of business where work the working conditions are just simply not associated with the kind of products that you want to see coming out of the factory of workers are tired and they're worried because they are earning very little money and working all hours. They're not going to be able to be able to produce the goods or the services that actually the buyer is wanting to buy. And of course, the consumer ultimately is going to want to have. So I think, you know, for me, that's absolutely fundamental. You cannot run successful supply chains long term on the backs of workers on poverty wages. And for me, that if there was any indication of what supply chain resilience is, it's certainly not that. Thank you. We've got another question in relation to that point about the human impact being a driver. Julie, if I could direct this question to you, which is, is the business case enough, or do you use the moral or perhaps human case when you're kind of appealing to investors and other businesses? Sure. Good, good question. Lucy, it's true that sometimes some people tend to forget that we are talking about low skill workers, you know, and, and it's sometimes very important to remind as Rachel said that Laura said Martin has everyone said that we are talking about human beings. You know, so the, the, the moral case is sometimes also useful because when you give very concrete examples of, for example, when you are granted the living wage, you can have access to menstruation product or to basic healthcare. Or, you know, so we sometimes we provide such practical example to illustrate that living wage is not a solar luxury. Yeah, definitely. Great. And more questions coming in. So this next one is how can the living wage be insured in rural areas of countries like, for example, Brazil, where governments don't necessarily have intentions to fortify their command and control of labor laws, for example. So I will direct that question to Laura in relation to perhaps supply chains and investment activities in Brazil where you're, you're seeing that, you know, do you have experience engaging with stakeholders in those kind of rural areas and what difference do you think that makes? Yeah, so that's indeed what we were talking about before in terms of what's the level of responsibility from companies and to what extent they are willing to go beyond what's legally mandated, right. So I think their, you know, companies have the ability to impose a specific requirements to their suppliers. So in order to be able to have a commercial relationship with the specific suppliers, regardless of where is it in Brazil or any other country where with a broader rural area, then there needs to be like a specific provision on what type of, you know, labor standards the companies expecting from their suppliers and to what extent the level of wages are being provided to enable these workers at the beginning of the supply chain to actually meet their basic needs and really earn what we've been talking about the living wage, right. So I think they're the type of leverage that companies have is really through the type of clauses that they establish in their commercial agreement with companies and the type of provisions that they also include in their suppliers change supplier code of conduct. And then, of course, one thing is to just require that from suppliers. And the other thing that we will also like companies to do is to really audit those suppliers to see to what extent they're really enabling and committing and upholding the type of requirements that are included in the code of conduct. So that's the type of, you know, tools that companies could have a time to make sure that even with these are being paid in rural areas. And in Brazil, I can add that, you know, there is a UN Global Compact Local Network working on living wage and living income actively. So it's also something to consider because they have been issuing not only at the at the New York level but also in the Brazil context some guidance for local Brazilian companies, both on living wage and on living income. So. And maybe if I can add something on top of what Julie mentioned, and another important component is also how companies lobby or discuss this topic with governments, right. And to what extent they're really engaging in meaningful discussions with local governments to make sure that the wage levels minimum wages are being. Right, are being increased over time to match what's specified as a living wage in specific regions and using that power as a, you know, corporation being operating or having a supply chain specific countries to really engage in a meaningful dialogue with local governments and change, you know, specific local policies to make sure that the standards being applicable are more in line with living wage estimates is also a very important tool that companies can use. Fantastic. Thank you. One last audience question, which is around what are the future trends that you anticipate and hope for in relation to decent work and the living wage and Martin, I'll write that question to you. Well, I think, I mean, I want to congratulate Unilever on that and and and only on on the commitment, L'Oreal, sorry, on the commitment to the 2030 goal. I think I would like to see a lot more companies make that same sort of commitment over that sort of time frame. I think if we if we can see lots of companies making that commitment, maybe we'll see a lot more momentum and and and make it more, more of a living reality for people in the next 10 years. Thank you. Okay, so we're we're almost out of time and with our last minutes, I'd like to ask each of you just to spend one minute each on this question, which is if you had to advise a group of like minded investors and companies who are wanting to start with the promotion and adoption of the living wage in their supply chains, what would you tell them and, you know, on where they should start so Rachel let's start with you. I think we would simply say just stop talking about it and and start now if it if it was talking to a business and if I was talking to investor I would say much the same start engaging with companies start asking the questions I think now is the time for action. Very heartening to hear that echoing on the social side as well because obviously those are the clear messages coming out of COP26 less blah blah blah and more action so it's great to see that across the sustainability issues. Thank you. Julie, let's let's hear from you. What you would like minded companies. Yeah, in one minute, I would say that it's a it's achievable. They are already great resources available and data and organization so let's not reinvent the wheel and let's work together to do it collectively. Fantastic Laura. Any more directly to the investment community so really look for that collaboration to leverage the influence that you have as a shareholder and be able to come together with like minded investors to engage with the investing companies that you have in your portfolios to start those discussions on how they can accelerate the payment of living wages. Excellent. And I think the message I would say is just don't reinvent the wheel there are so many organizations and initiatives and really great work already happening on the living wage. You know, yesterday we held an event with the Living Wage Foundation that UN Global Compact Living Wage for US and the World Benchmarking Alliance and that was the key message coming out of that event yesterday is connect the dots. There are so many initiatives out there, and there's a growing movement so don't reinvent the wheel, join in and support that great work. Thank you. Fantastic. Well thank you so much to all of you for your really interesting and thought provoking insights and then Anna for moderating the discussion and I'd also like to offer special thanks to our colleagues at CISL, Jason, Tio, Marina Zerilla and Anna Lowe for making the event possible. So thank you all and have a very good weekend.