The Queen’s Bank, Coutts & Co and the Coal Pensions Board have joined a group of investors supporting a resolution calling for Sainsbury’s to pay an independent fixed salary for all staff and employees.
The vote at the annual meeting of shareholders of the second largest supermarket in the United Kingdom on July 7 will be the first resolution obliging the board of the British company to pay the alimony.
ShareAction, the responsible investment campaign group, said the resolution would be a “litmus test for investors’ social engagements amid the cost of living crisis”.
Leading investors in the city, including HSBC, Legal & General Investment Management and Fidelity International, as well as pension fund Nest and Brunel Pension Partnership are already part of the coalition behind the resolution, which comes when family budgets are squeezed by rising inflation.
Sainsbury’s has raised the salaries of its 171,000 direct employees in more than 1,400 stores in the UK to a living wage, calculated independently for the Living Wage Foundation, from at least £ 9.90 an hour outside London, or £ 11.05 in the capital. However, she has not made the same commitment to the performers. Outsourcing companies such as Mitie provide basic services such as supermarket cleaning and security.
Leslie Gent, Head of Responsible Investment at Coutts & Co, said: “We recognize the positive progress Sainsbury’s has made to match the support of its direct staff. As a dependent employer, we believe that this accreditation will set the standard for all supermarkets in the UK and provide the security and transparency that help attract a high-quality workforce, today and in the future.
More than half of the FTSE 100 are among more than 10,000 accredited maintenance employers. However, none of the big supermarkets are among them.
The national government allowance, which sets statutory minimum rates, pays £ 9.50 to those aged 23 and over, before falling to £ 6.83 for those aged 18 and over and £ 4.81 for apprentices.
Rachel Hargreaves, campaign manager at ShareAction, said: “There is no excuse for a highly profitable company with multimillion-dollar executives to refuse to guarantee all its staff, including subcontractors, a basic standard of living.
As energy and food costs rise, the lowest paid workers in the UK are under particular pressure.
The Institute for Fiscal Research said the poorest households faced 10.9% year-on-year inflation by April, three percentage points higher than the best earners.
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However, the UK’s National Statistics Office recently shared data showing that retail workers’ wages rose by only 3.7% in the year to April.
Sainsbury Chairman Martin Shiklana, a former Deloitte chief accountant, wrote to all shareholders asking them to vote against the resolution. He claims that the company’s pay rates have already been higher than many of its competitors and that “Accreditation as a maintenance employer would mean that a third party – the Maintenance Foundation – would decide to change the pay of our colleagues every year. .. We believe it is right for the company and our stakeholders to make independent decisions on pay and benefits, rather than being determined by a separate external body. ”
Tesco Chairman John Allen used a similar argument when asked about the UK’s largest supermarket chain accredited to livelihood at the June 17th annual shareholders’ meeting. He said Tesco had tried to determine wages through negotiations with unions, adding: “We are very concerned about making a commitment to support and putting our wage structure at the mercy of a third party decision,” he told shareholders. .
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