Leo Strine’s call for a rebalancing of shareholders and workers’ rights is welcome. The chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court is calling on those promoting an ESG (environmental, social and governance) line to make it EESG, with the added “e” standing for employees.
As well as urging companies to take a longer-term approach to investment, Mr Strine said, “Workers must be given far more priority by companies”. Barriers to union representation should be eased. “We must make it easier to hold companies accountable by requiring better disclosure of how they treat workers and whether they operate in an ethical, sustainable, environmentally responsible manner,” he said.
In assessing how likely companies are to act on this, we need to remember that the ESG movement, backed recently by the Business Roundtable and institutional investors such as BlackRock, is nothing new.