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Cayman ends Portugal hopes of Euro 2025 knockout place with victory for
Belgium
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Belgium’s Tessa Wullaert and Janice Cayman struck in a dramatic 2-1 victory
in their final Group B game at Euro 2025 on Friday that extinguished
Portugal...
54 minutes ago
1 comment:
SUSTAIN ABILITY ; ..
Growing public concern over environmental issues does not yet fully extend to social issues, particularly worker treatment. Likewise, while many companies compete over environmental leadership, social issues are often critically overlooked. This is an important issue to keep in mind when assessing the sustainability commitment of companies in the Green Rankings.
Take Walmart. This company has articulated an ambitious set of environmental commitments toward greening its vast network of direct operations and suppliers. With revenue of more than $400 billion, Walmart’s commitment to renewable energy, waste reduction, and sustainable products and services bodes well for the planet. If the company channeled comparable efforts towards enhancing working conditions for employees and suppliers, the results would be far-reaching. But instead it has taken a very different approach. More than any firm in the world, Walmart has been accused of driving a low-wage strategy throughout the economy.
The problem is that Walmart’s environmental leadership masks its underlying social problems. While its environmental commitment is substantive and credible, the trickle-down effect has been minimal; Walmart's approach to labor issues has not wavered. Over 70 labor-related class-action lawsuits have been filed over the past decade, alleging violations of wage and hour laws, employees forced to work off the clock, discrimination, and illegal compensation. Even as these suits have resulted in more than $640 million in settlements, Walmart continues to systematically prevent its employees from unionizing, with tactics including intimidation of union supporters and store closures where unionization efforts have succeeded.
Admittedly, Walmart’s unparalleled market power leads it to be singled out by its critics for its poor labor-relations track record. Yet the tendency to overlook critical social issues alongside environmental initiatives is prevalent across other industries, from tech hardware to extractives, due in part to the misperception that such costly investments do not have tangible impacts on the bottom line. A forthcoming report by Sustainalytics and Tellus Institute—Worker Equity in Food and Agriculture—will demonstrate an overarching tendency among the 100 largest food and agriculture companies and consumers in the U.S. to prioritize health concerns, environmental impact, and animal welfare over worker welfare. The crux of the problem is a narrowly defined characterization of what it means to be “sustainable.”
Now that environmental leadership has been widely embraced by companies as a competitive advantage, it’s time to redefine sustainability to include social impact. This entails a departure from the traditional cost-cutting model towards a triple-bottom-line approach, embracing economic, environmental, and social performance as measures of corporate success.
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