How ethical investors can show leadership by promoting a corporate social conscience.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of millions of UK workers employed on zero-hours contracts or within the gig economy. For them, self-isolation means a sudden loss of income, often without access to redundancy payments, sick-pay, or universal credit.
COVID-19 has highlighted the economic reality of working conditions for employees in insecure, precarious, low-paying, and temporary jobs. According to the Office of National Statistics, a record 974,000 people had zero-hour contracts as their main job at the end of 2019, 130,000 more than one year earlier.
The challenge to ethical investors is clear – how to encourage powerful corporations to offer fair conditions of employment for honest work?
Download the Zero hours work: facing the ethical challenge
S Waters and Q G Rayer (2020), Zero-hours work: facing the ethical challenge, CII: The Journal, https://thejournal.cii.co.uk/blog/zero-hours-work-facing-the-ethical-challenge/, 14 September 2020. Republished with kind permission of the Personal Finance Society.
