shareholder resolution at a UK annual general meeting · 2022
ShareAction at J Sainsbury
Commit to paying the real Living Wage to all workers, including third-party contracted staff such as cleaners and security guards, and become an accredited Living Wage employer.
What happened
Result: 16.7 percent of investors voted for it at the annual general meeting on 7 July 2022, with a further 2.6 percent abstaining. It was the United Kingdom's first Living Wage resolution, tabled by ten investors managing 2.2 trillion pounds, among them the country's largest asset manager and its largest workplace pension scheme, alongside 108 individual shareholders. The Sainsbury's board and both major proxy advisers, Glass Lewis and ISS, urged investors to vote against it.
The resolution moved the company before the vote. In April 2022 Sainsbury's announced a pay uplift for London staff so that all directly employed staff earned the Living Wage, an estimated 19,000 workers receiving a rise. It stayed on the ballot because investors also wanted subcontracted staff such as cleaners and security guards guaranteed the Living Wage and a long-term commitment from the company. More than half of the FTSE 100 were accredited Living Wage employers at the time, but no supermarket was.
Sainsbury's Living Wage resolution achieves significant shareholder support, ShareAction, 2022-07
Who is involved
- ShareAction filer
- Legal and General Investment Management co-filer
- Actiam co-filer
- Fidelity International co-filer
- Nest co-filer
- Brunel Pension Partnership co-filer
- Islington Pension Fund co-filer
- Joseph Rowntree Foundation co-filer
- Guy's and St Thomas' Foundation co-filer
- Friends Provident Foundation co-filer
- HSBC Asset Management co-filer
- 108 individual shareholders, among them Sainsbury's workers, two MPs and a barrister co-filer
- Sainsbury's company
What this campaign is about
- End extreme poverty everywhere Helpful · UN Sustainable Development Goals