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Blog | Tuesday June 22, 2021

UNGPs' 10th Anniversary: The Next Decade of Business and Human Rights

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This June 2021, we mark the 10th anniversary of the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). Unanimously endorsed by the UN Human Rights Commission in 2011, the UNGPs have become the universal standard guiding business responsibility to respect human rights.

At BSR, we have seen tremendous progress over the past decade as we have worked with businesses to align their policies and practices with the UNGPs. The broad consensus around the UNGPs has given companies across sectors—and their partners in government and civil society—a shared roadmap for respecting human rights and has driven the development of corporate commitments, policies, and procedures to better prevent and mitigate harm due to business activity.

Our work is far from over, however.

Corporate commitment and process has not always translated into impact in real life, and we continue to see headlines associating companies with human rights abuses through their operations, sourcing, and sales.

Why is this? In part, this is due to the gap between commitment and implementation—the ongoing need to better resource and more meaningfully embed efforts to avoid, prevent, mitigate, and remedy human rights violations across corporate functions.

But this is also due to the scale and complexity of the great challenges of our time—climate change, rising inequality, persistent marginalization of women and people of color, and growing geopolitical tensions, to name just a few. These challenges exacerbate the risk that business activity will be involved with harm.

How can we close the gap between aspiration and impact? Throughout 2021, to mark the 10th anniversary of the UNGPs, BSR is reflecting on what additional action business and other actors can take to shape a future where human rights are realized in law and in practice. In the coming months, we will publish deep dives into emerging issues and evolving approaches that will shape the next decade of business and human rights, including:

1. The Shared Opportunity to Promote Human Rights: Based on the premise that the absence of action to promote human rights presents severe risks to their fulfillment, our first paper draws upon BSR experience over the past decade to propose a framework for the shared promotion of human rights.
2. Downstream Human Rights Due Diligence: This primer provides a practical overview of human rights due diligence of products and services.
3. Climate Change and Human Rights: This paper explores the anticipated linkages between climate change and adverse human rights impacts, as well as mitigating measures that companies can take to prevent harm.
4. Business in High-Risk Contexts: Building on the UN report on business, human rights, and conflict, this issue brief lays out practical steps companies can take to conduct enhanced human rights due diligence in conflict-affected and high-risk areas.
5. Access to Remedy: Delving into the oft-neglected third pillar of the UNGPs, this issue brief explores challenges as well as best practices in providing remedy for human rights harms.
6. Human Rights Assessment: Drawing on over 25 years of experience, this paper lays out BSR’s synthesized learning and refreshed approach to conducting decision-useful human rights assessments for companies.

In a world facing increased climate impacts, rapidly changing technologies, and shifting geopolitics, resilient business strategies are critical to business success. By embedding human rights approaches across business, sales, and supply chain operations, companies can not only build resilience but help to create a more just, sustainable world. Join us as we explore what this means for business in this decisive decade.

Blog | Thursday July 14, 2022

Delaying Climate Action: The Challenges of Moderating Climate Misinformation on Social Media

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Misinformation about climate change has been around for decades, mostly in the form of climate denialism. Today, climate misinformation is focused on seeding doubt about climate science and the measures that are taken to mitigate climate change. Examples include: suggesting that the consequences of global warming may not be as bad as scientists claim, arguing that climate change policies are bad for the economy or national security, describing clean energy as unreliable, or claiming that no action will be able to halt climate change.

These varying manifestations of climate misinformation all have the same outcome: delaying climate action.

Earlier this year, the IPCC drew attention to the impacts of climate misinformation for the first time:

Vested interests have generated rhetoric and misinformation that undermines climate science and disregards risk and urgency. Resultant public misperception of climate risks and polarized public support for climate action is delaying urgent adaptation planning and implementation.

Social media brings both opportunities and risks to the climate science dialogue. Scientific information related to climate change is accessible to larger populations through social media platforms—including real-life experiences of affected populations. On the other hand, social media can significantly undermine climate science by allowing for the rapid and widespread sharing of misinformation through user-generated content and online advertising. Social media platforms are also just one part of the information ecosystem, which also includes news media and professionally created entertainment.

At a point when delays in climate action may lead to catastrophic and irreversible harm, companies must address climate misinformation urgently and decisively. 

In 2021, Ford Foundation, the Ariadne Network, and Mozilla Foundation commissioned a research project to explore grantmaking strategies that can address issues at the intersection of environmental justice and digital rights. As part of this project, BSR wrote an issue brief on the role of social media companies in creating, shaping, and maintaining a high-quality climate science information environment.

The brief explores the specific challenges of moderating climate misinformation. We describe some of these challenges below:

• Climate Misinformation Is Happening in “Subtler” Ways and Is Increasingly Intersectional.
  While outright climate denialism is easy to refute, it is more difficult to identify subtle ways of spreading climate misinformation—such as claims that green policies are too costly. The response to climate change is a topic of political debate, making climate misinformation closely tied to politics, elections, and the larger civic space. These intersectional ties help grow the reach of misinformation and take it to different levels that can be difficult to anticipate.

• Existing Content Moderation Frameworks Are Not Sufficient in Addressing Climate Misinformation.
  Most of the content moderation principles and frameworks used by social media platforms today were written to address immediate harms related to hate speech, incitement to violence, and other objectionable content, and they are not as applicable for scientific misinformation that may be associated with broader, longer-term harms.

• Content Removals May Not Be Adequately Effective in Fighting Scientific Misinformation.
  While the removal of content is effective in fighting harmful content such as hate speech, scientific misinformation may require different approaches. Platforms should not only rely on content removal but also focus on tactics to reduce the visibility of misinformation and display high-quality information to inform users.

• Climate Misinformation Is Political and Is Backed by Institutions.
  Since the 1980s, climate disinformation campaigns have been largely driven by the fossil fuel industry’s intentional efforts to undermine climate science. Today, climate misinformation can still typically be traced to fossil fuel interests. In addressing climate misinformation, it is important to consider the material incentives of the producers of such content.

In our brief, we make recommendations to social media companies, as well as civil society actors, and funders. These include the addition of climate misinformation under content policies, applying content moderation frameworks to climate misinformation, strengthening fact-checking capabilities, investing in user resiliency, and increasing scrutiny on advertising by oil and gas companies. We envision a high-quality climate science information environment that supports informed public debate, ambitious business action, and science-based policy making.

Social media companies have made significant commitments to reduce the climate impacts of their businesses (i.e., reducing GHG emissions), but they also have a responsibility to address the potential harms that they may be connected to through climate misinformation on their platforms. 

Civil society groups and funders have an essential role to play in holding companies accountable for their actions or omissions to address climate misinformation and keep this topic on the agenda. Among these actors, it is our observation that environmental groups are less familiar about the practical challenges, complexities, and nuance of misinformation, and the content governance community is less familiar with how climate information can adversely impact our collective efforts to address the climate crisis. These communities would benefit from increased collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Fostering a deeper understanding of this topic across sectors will not only help remove one of the biggest barriers in the way of climate action, but it will also broaden our understanding of scientific information, and how human rights may be impacted online. 

BSR will continue to work with social media companies, civil society groups, and funders on this topic. Please reach out if you’re interested in connecting with us.

Blog | Thursday April 13, 2023

Why Every Business Needs to Think about Responsible AI

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AI technologies are transforming the way we engage with the world and the way companies conduct business. From generative AI technologies like ChatGPT, to facial recognition, to AI solutions for hiring, distribution, or research and development, evolutions in AI are transforming business operations at a startling pace.

This transformation presents complex, system-wide human rights opportunities and risks.

Tech companies are taking steps to integrate responsible AI practices to address these issues for some time. However, the risks and opportunities associated with AI are related to both the design and development of technologies, as well as how technologies are deployed and used by companies outside of the tech sector.

It’s time for all companies utilizing AI in their products, services, and operations to take a human rights-based approach to the deployment and use of AI.

BSR has worked with member companies to explore the potential human rights impacts of AI in four key industries: retail, extractives, financial services, and healthcare. We focused on identifying the current use cases of AI in these industries, assessing the potential human rights impacts, and recommended initial steps to address adverse impacts.

The findings are summarized in four industry briefs that we hope will serve as a starting place for companies.

The Use of AI in Different Industries

Retail, extractives, healthcare, and financial services companies are deploying and using AI systems in ways that may be connected to significant human rights risks. A few examples of AI use cases include:

• Retail: Personalization of customer experience, improved product search, in-store assistance, demand forecasting, and inventory management in the retail sector.
• Financial Services: Facial and voice recognition for account access, fraud detection, and credit risk assessment in the financial services sector.
• Healthcare: Patient care personalization, care delivery, and research and development in the healthcare sector.
• Extractives: Data collection and analysis, exploration, workplace management, and advanced monitoring in the extractives sector.

The use of AI technologies can alleviate or exacerbate human rights impacts, including but not limited to:

• Violations of the right to privacy through the collection, storage, and use of customer personal data;
• Discrimination by race, gender, age, disability, or other protected categories. This can manifest due to biases present in training data or using AI-generated insights in discriminatory ways.
• A positive impact on labor rights, via improved labor planning and better health and safety measures. However, the use of AI technologies may also result in loss of employee autonomy or privacy.

Regulatory Landscape

To date, there’s been limited focus on the responsibility of non-tech companies to address human rights impacts of their AI technologies. However, this is changing, in part due to upcoming regulations such as the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, which sets out a risk-based approach to assessing the potential risks AI solutions may pose to people’s rights, and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which will require companies to take appropriate measures to identify the actual and potential human rights impacts arising from their operations.

To help companies outside the tech sector respond to upcoming regulations and act in accordance with their responsibilities under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, BSR is working with members across different industries to help them identify their human rights impacts related to AI.

BSR’s Industry Briefs on AI and Human Rights

Over the next few months, we will publish briefs for specific industries setting out potential human rights impacts of AI solutions and recommendations to mitigate them. These briefs are intended to help companies bring a human rights-based approach to the way they design, develop, and deploy AI technologies.  

• AI and Human Rights in Retail
• AI and Human Rights in Extractives
• AI and Human Rights in Financial Services
• AI and Human Rights in Healthcare

For further information, including how BSR can support you with the responsible deployment of AI technologies, please contact the team.

Blog | Thursday October 12, 2017

Q&A: The Future of Inclusive Economy

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As part of our Q&A series with our experts on the past, present, and future of sustainable business, we sat down with Inclusive Economy lead Susan Winterberg to discuss innovations, opportunities, and challenges in the field.

Elisabeth Best: What has been the single most important innovation in inclusive economy in the last 25 years? 

Susan Winterberg: The greatest advances in the inclusive economy field have been in the area of diversity and inclusion. Looking back just 50 years, it is astounding to see how much attitudes have changed regarding women and minorities in the workplace. Similarly, business leaders have been increasingly using their voices to stand up for diversity, which became evident when the U.S. business community came out in full force earlier this year: More than 100 companies signed an amicus brief on the U.S. Executive Order on Immigration.

It continues with new business commitments to advance the rights of women, refugees, the LGBTIQ+ community, and others announced almost every week. Nonetheless, much work still needs to be done on diversity. In particular, we will need to innovate and build a better evidence base on what works to retain and promote more women and minorities in key industries and occupations, close pay gaps, and increase representation in C-suites and boards.

Best: What does sustainable business, specifically as it relates to inclusive economy, look like in 2030? 

Winterberg: The 2020s will see major disruptions in social order, to governments, and perhaps even to capitalism itself. We’ve already seen the beginnings of this: first with Occupy Wall Street and Fight for $15, and more recently with the outcomes of the Brexit vote, the U.S. election, and a surge of interest in nationalist movements around the world. There are three major issues that business leaders will have to grapple with in the coming decade if we are going to have an inclusive, safe, and sustainable world in 2030: good jobs, taxes, and lobbying.   

A strong and secure middle class; a healthy government with fiscal capacity to fund education, infrastructure, and safety nets; and functioning democratic institutions are requirements for a peaceful and prosperous society. Many of the companies I have spoken to about the need to address these issues—particularly as they relate to their operations in the U.S. and other advanced economies—seem to see them as outside the purview of the sustainability department. However, these issues will become more critical—and sustainability professionals will be increasingly asked to address them—in the coming years.

Best: What’s the biggest challenge or opportunity you see looking forward?

Winterberg: Automation will be by far the biggest opportunity and challenge to an inclusive economy in the next decade. Technologies like artificial intelligence, big data, sensors, and autonomous vehicles will bring so many benefits to society—from enhanced health and safety to consumer convenience. Yet these technologies will also pose some hard questions on issues of privacy and discrimination. They will displace large numbers of people who will need to be retrained, and they will likely result in pockets of high unemployment in those communities most strongly affected by these changes. Companies need to begin preparing now to ensure a sustainable transition toward automation.

Best: What are leading companies doing today to make a sustainable future a reality? 

Winterberg: Companies are taking action on promoting a more inclusive economy through three main mechanisms: creating good jobs, expanding access to products, and engaging with society.  

Leading companies are thinking about good jobs by treating contingent workers more fairly, investing in training and career paths, creating predictable scheduling, increasing benefits coverage, and developing profit-sharing programs. They are also starting to develop ways to expand their diversity and inclusion efforts to include more groups who face challenges in employment. We have seen pioneering efforts to promote other types of diversity, like neurodiversity, and to create enhanced opportunities through their global supply chains through impact sourcing. Companies have also been increasingly vocal on key public policy issues affecting inclusion, from immigration to health care access.

Best: What aspect of this year’s BSR Conference are you most excited about?  

Winterberg: BSR is launching a new Sustainable Futures Lab—and we have a great line-up of sessions this year looking at sustainability challenges that will arise from new technologies: The 21st Century Social Contract, Ethics of Artificial Intelligence, Inclusive by Design, Human Rights by Design, The Just Transition, and Transportation of Tomorrow. I’m most excited to hear how companies are getting ahead of the curve and integrating concerns for ethics, inclusion, and human rights into their R&D processes to make a sustainable future a reality. 

Blog | Friday July 1, 2022

President and CEO Aron Cramer Responds to West Virginia v. EPA

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BSR believes that today’s US Supreme Court hearing in West Virginia v. EPA is a deeply mistaken decision that wrongly undermines the US federal government’s ability to take decisive action to combat dangerous climate change.

As we continue to assess the specifics of the ruling, many things are clear. First and foremost, the science speaks in a way that is more authoritative than the Court, and it is clear that climate action is becoming more and more urgent by the day. Restricting the ability of the EPA, the main environmental regulator in the US, means that the United States will not be able to take steps necessary to shift to a clean energy economy.  Signs of further restrictions on other science-based steps to address environmental and other questions are also very troubling.  

The damage done by this decision emanates beyond the immediate impacts on the EPA’s regulatory authority. It will undermine American climate diplomacy, at a time when the world’s largest economies must band together to take action on a global basis. Reversal of climate action also creates a public health challenge, one that falls most heavily on women, people of color, and communities with fewer economic resources.  It also suggests that the Court, as it showed  in its recent decision to overrule and invalidate Roe v. Wade, and weaken states’ authority to enact gun safety legislation, is not only damaging to the rights of Americans, but also out of step with public opinion in ways that weaken its legitimacy.

Today’s decision reinforces the need for ambitious climate action on the part of business, states and cities, civil society, and all of us as citizens. We are pleased that so many companies from across the US supported an amicus brief supporting the EPA’s authority.  Even more, thousands of companies have committed to net zero climate strategies, and are investing in new business models, technologies, and transition plans to help lead the way to a clean energy future.

We are convinced that the future depends on this transition. While it is heartening to see action from state and local officials, investors, civil society, and businesses, it is extremely distressing that the Supreme Court has embraced a backwards looking ideological approach that will only create greater cost and economic uncertainty, worse public health outcomes, and even more political division. We will continue to work with our more than 300+ member companies and many partners to achieve a truly just and sustainable world.

Blog | Tuesday March 31, 2020

Meet the Moment. Build the Future.

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As the health and economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic continue to spread, we at BSR are working hard to continue supporting our member companies around the world, along with our many other partners, as you navigate this extraordinary and unprecedented time and contribute to our collective well-being.

From speaking with many of you, we know how challenging it is to manage effectively during this difficult and uncertain period, which poses significant impacts on your businesses, employees, and supply chains. Many of us are also coping with the stress of health impacts on ourselves, our families, and our communities.

This remarkable moment calls on all of us to bring our very best. We are quite literally writing history through countless acts and decisions we make every day.

Our approach at BSR can be summed up in six words: Meet the Moment. Build the Future.

Here’s what we mean by this.

Meet the Moment

It is essential for all of us to adapt sustainability activities to address the profound short-term needs faced by companies, employees, and communities in these challenging times. From speaking with many of you over the past few weeks, we know that you are facing new, unprecedented questions. How do I ensure that we continue with our commitments when our business is in such difficulty, with budgets under intense pressure? What is the right thing to do to support our employees, and those who are employed in our supply chains? How is the economic crisis impacting traditionally marginalized groups, and how can we respond to that? Can we reorient manufacturing to deliver on health care needs? Should we publish our sustainability report at a time when doing so might appear tone deaf?

We have been proud to see so many of you take action to protect employment, help generate badly needed medical equipment, provide capital, and support essential public policy steps to address the health and economic impacts of this pandemic. We are here to help you think through how to respond, to build partnerships, and to amplify your efforts.

Build the Future

As challenging as the day-to-day is right now, this is also a time to think ahead to building a fundamentally different future. For business, this means more emphasis on resilient business strategies, something which we have been discussing with many of you, and is now much more than an abstract concept. Sustainability questions can and should be a core element of such strategies. We also see the rising importance of ensuring societal resilience. This is why business has a strong interest in remaking the social contract to meet 21st-century needs, ensuring economic vitality, stability, and security. We know also that the next challenge to resilience could come from environmental challenges that risk creating serious social disruption and economic loss. The future may not seem relevant right now, but if this episode teaches us anything, it is that change can come more quickly and powerfully than we might think.

BSR’s Efforts

We are here to help you both meet the moment and begin to think about how to build a different future. We know that the pandemic is having a profound impact on your business. We also know that sustainability can be one of the core elements of navigating this crisis while also bolstering your position once the crisis passes. To help you achieve these goals, we are re-orienting some of our activities to help you meet these extraordinary circumstances, while also staying focused on longer-term objectives that remain extremely important, and indeed, could be seen as even more important.

• Communications: We will be producing a series of blogs and webinars to help you understand and discuss the impacts of the pandemic on sustainable business, both overall, and on specific issues like human rights, women’s empowerment, and the impact on ESG investing. In addition, our industry teams are bringing member companies together to share challenges and best practices within their sectors.
• Collaboration: We have shifted many of our collaborative initiatives to virtual formats, and the initial signs are that these are delivering on group objectives well, in some cases with even more participation as virtual models take hold. We are also speaking with many of you on how we can generate new collaborations that meet the moment, whether staying focused on climate action despite turbulent times or designing more resilient supply chains that will be needed once the crisis subsides, and we welcome your inputs on other matters we can help you navigate with peers. We also remain mobilized to support you one-on-one via advisory work.
• 21st-Century Social Contracts: We are accelerating our work on 21st-century social contracts. We welcome your engagement on this crucial issue, and will have content coming in the next two weeks on how business can not only meet short-term needs, but also contribute to more resilient social contracts that enable economic vitality, as well as economic mobility and security in a fast-changing world.
• Emerging Issues/Scenarios: To help you stay focused on the future, we are launching the first in a series of emerging issues briefs in June. This will be delivered by our Sustainable Futures Lab and will be based in part on a virtual salon in late April.

This crisis will pass. Our world, our businesses, and our economies will not look the same in the post-pandemic environment. But our values and objectives will not only endure, they will provide the very basis for seeing us through the crisis. They will also serve as the foundation for structural changes that produce more resilience, more economic fairness, and an ongoing commitment to preserve natural resources.

And these values will guide us as we meet this moment and build the future—together.

Blog | Wednesday July 19, 2017

Inclusive Growth: How Business Leads

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Turn on the news on any given day and the lineup of stories is often the same: an economic report of flat wages and rising financial insecurity combined with tales of social unrest and political instability around the world. Beneath all these seemingly disconnected events lies one common thread—inclusive growth.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) defines inclusive growth as “economic growth that creates opportunity for all segments of the population and distributes the dividends of increased prosperity, both in monetary and non-monetary terms, fairly across society.” A lack of inclusive growth has been tied to everything from higher rates of cancer and crime to voting for populist leaders to joining terrorist groups.

Creating more inclusive forms of economic growth has long been seen as the responsibility of governments and civil society. Yet in the last few years, it is increasingly being taken up by the private sector as a central pillar of company sustainability platforms. According to the 2017 BSR/Globe Scan State of Sustainable Business report, which will be published later this month, the number of companies that say they consider inclusive growth a "high priority" for sustainability efforts has increased almost 10 percent since last year.

Companies are taking action on promoting inclusive growth through three main mechanisms: creating good jobs, expanding access to products, and engaging with society.

Creating Good Jobs

A 2016 survey by JUST Capital found that the U.S. public considers providing good jobs as the most critical sustainability issue facing companies today. Some companies are rising to this challenge. IKEA, for instance, made a commitment in 2014 to pay its U.S. retail workforce a living wage. Other areas where companies are beginning to think about good jobs include treating contingent workers more fairly, investing in training and career paths, creating predictable scheduling, increasing benefits coverage, and developing profit-sharing programs.  

Companies are also starting to develop ways to expand their diversity and inclusion efforts to include more groups who face challenges in employment. Member companies of the Global Impact Sourcing Coalition are focusing on ways to improve inclusion in their supply chains through encouraging their suppliers to offer job opportunities to neglected groups, such as long-term unemployed persons, informal sector workers, and “neurodiverse” workers. Some companies are exploring how to bridge geographic divides through “rural sourcing” programs, which hire people from high unemployment rural communities in the United States. There’s even a small group of companies focusing efforts on preventing violent extremism by offering economic opportunities to youth in communities that are targeted by terrorist recruiters.

Expanding Access to Products

Access to affordable and high-quality products in housing, basic infrastructure, healthcare, food, and financial services is a critical component to inclusive growth. Many companies now have access policies and programs for their products. One example is MasterCard’s Center for Inclusive Growth, which uses proprietary technology platforms and big-data capabilities to connect microentrepreneurs, refugees, and other excluded groups to affordable financial services products. The United Nations’ Business Call to Action has secured inclusive business commitments from more than 190 companies to expand access to critical goods and services to the poor in developing countries. Chobani’s founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya formed Tent Partnership for Refugees which has organized commitments from companies to improve critical product access to refugees. Doug Rauch, a former president of the grocery store Trader Joe’s, started the The Daily Table, which has organized more than 40 grocery chains and food brands to tackle the challenges of food deserts and malnutrition in U.S. inner cities.

Engaging with Society

Community and government engagement for inclusive growth has long been a focus in the extractives industry, where maintaining a ‘social license to operate’ has been a central focus. Yet the range of industries, geographies and policy issue areas in which business is engaging is expanding.

The last few years have seen a growing tide of "CEO Activism." Earlier this year more than 150 CEOs signed an amicus brief on the U.S. executive order on immigration. This trend could continue in the coming years as businesses weigh in on other critical inclusion policy issues such as U.S. universal access to health care. Other dialogues are also forming at the multilateral level such as the OECD’s Business Leaders for Inclusive Growth and at the “B20,” which is the business platform at the G20. These platforms can provide ways for business’ collective voice to promote fairer and more inclusive policy frameworks for global trade, immigration policy, digitalization and skills, and other global economic challenges.

Inclusive growth is one of the great challenges of our time. Yet through commitment, collaboration, and action, business is showing that it can move from being a central source of the problem to a central driver of the solution. 

Blog | Tuesday April 11, 2023

Call to Action for Businesses on the Medication Abortion Rulings

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Full access to Mifepristone (part of the two-drug regimen for medication abortion in America) remains legal after the US Supreme Court blocked new restrictions from taking effect. The Supreme Court’s order on Friday, April 21 was a decision about whether the lower court’s stay could remain in place—litigation on the merits of the case will continue in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals with oral arguments on May 17.

For background, on Friday, April 7, two federal judges issued opposing rulings in litigation regarding access to Mifepristone (Mife), a safe, effective prescription drug utilized in medication abortion and miscarriage care. Mife has been FDA approved for 23 years and is how more than half of patients in the US access abortion care. A federal judge in Texas ruled that the FDA's initial authorization of Mife was improper and sought to suspend the pill’s FDA approval. Less than an hour later, another federal judge in the state of Washington issued a ruling that directly conflicted with the Texas ruling, ordering the FDA to make no changes to the availability of mifepristone in the 18 states that filed that lawsuit. These two rulings set up a legal standoff that will need to be resolved by higher courts. The Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals granted the Biden administration's request to put on hold part of the Texas judge's order blocking the FDA's approval of the pill.

The rulings have created confusion about whether the drug is still legal and accessible despite having been safely and effectively used by millions of people since it was approved in 2000. This has been a rapidly evolving situation over the last several weeks, but we now know that patients will continue to be able to access Mifepristone pending any further court rulings this summer.

Access to medication abortion is even more important since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer. According to new research on Talent and Social Policies conducted by Morning Consult, on behalf of BSR: 

• By a 2:1 margin, workers want to live in a state where abortion is legal and accessible. 
• Nearly half of workers are concerned for themselves or their partner being criminally charged or going to prison for having an abortion in a state where it is illegal. 
• More than a third of workers are concerned about having enough money for themselves or their partner to travel out of state for an abortion. 

Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, is a business and economic issue that employers are already navigating. A ban or further restrictions on medication abortion will result in workers needing to take more time off to find and access healthcare, increase travel and logistical burdens, raise healthcare costs and potentially additional medical follow-up, and increase trauma for employees seeking time-sensitive services and facing unexpected hurdles. In the number of states where abortion is legal, reproductive healthcare systems could potentially be overwhelmed by people traveling to them for care. 

These restrictions harm women ages 18 to 45 and have disproportionate impacts on lower-income people, people who live in rural counties, those with disabilities, and families navigating fertility treatments as well as higher-risk pregnancies. Companies need to support efforts to ensure that workers have access to essential healthcare. This is a matter of safety, privacy, and workforce well-being.   

Understand the Impact of This Case   

BSR is a signer of Don’t Ban Equality which provides the following background and recommendations. 

• This case will impact employers of all sizes, in every state, and its potential outcomes represent uncharted territory.  
• In addition to safe, effective, and widely used medication abortion care, the case would impact the safest, most effective form of early miscarriage care, and potentially fertility care. 
• Employers should evaluate and commit resources (time, travel, and expenses) to support their workforce and dependents to get care, which may increase as employees need to travel further for abortion and miscarriage care. 
• Employers should be aware that a nationwide ban on mifepristone would compound gender, economic, and racial inequities, and that providers are already stretched thin. 10 US States Would Be Hit Especially Hard by a Nationwide Ban on Medication Abortion | Guttmacher Institute and Where Restrictions on Abortion Pills Could Matter Most in the U.S. - The New York Times (nytimes.com) 

Recommendations for Business Action  

1. Be vocal now. Speak up about how this ruling could impact the workforce and the benefits you provide to your workers and their families. Eliminating access for this abortion and miscarriage management translates into more logistical burdens, more time away from work, and an additional threat to employee safety and well-being. Speak to the business press, including on background, so they can understand and amplify business concerns, what steps businesses are taking to protect workers/employees, and what challenges employers are facing. Businesses should communicate actions they are taking with their workforce—as employees will ask about how their employers’ existing commitments, programs and policies are affected.
2. Stand up in business associations. Business associations that your company belongs to can also stand up—they can sign amicus briefs, engage privately with officeholders, and provide safety in numbers. Hundreds of pharmaceutical and biotech companies as well as individual executives signed an open letter opposing the Texas judge’s ruling. The BIO industry association alongside companies and other executives in industry ultimately filed an amicus brief at the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court citing threats to pharmaceutical innovation and industry standards. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court citing concerns about widespread industry disruption if a ban on Mifepristone went into effect.
3. Communicate with lawmakers. Talk with office holders that represent your operational locations about the need to codify access to reproductive care into law, including the federal Women's Health Protection Act, and any efforts for codification in supportive state environments. Reach out privately to lawmakers in states where new restrictions are advancing right now to oppose them, including North Carolina and Florida (also see the State policy bill tracker and What US Abortion Legislation Looks Like in 2023).
4. Understand business impacts on customers and affected stakeholders. Identify how your business’ actions, products, and services might impact those seeking reproductive healthcare, including data tracking and surveillance, financial services for health care providers, pharmaceutical sales policies and practices, etc. Shareholders are already demanding more from companies post-Roe.
5. Align corporate political giving heading into the 2024 election cycle. Employers that support diversity, equity, and inclusion need to consider the bottom-line and personal consequences of providing uncritical support to lawmakers that are advancing dangerous policies that are opposed by a majority of workers in the US. Companies can do self-assessments and use tools like the Erb Principles for Corporate Political Responsibility to help companies respond to new questions and pressures related to their political influences – from employees, investors, customers, and the public.

BSR’s Center for Business and Social Justice is tracking the developments of this case and continuing to help companies navigate this chaotic environment. Reach out to BSR’s Center for Business and Social Justice to learn more about resources, practices and ways companies can get involved.  

Originally appeared on LinkedIn. 

Blog | Tuesday April 11, 2017

Automation: How Business Can Lead a Sustainable Transition

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Automation will profoundly alter the future of work and society, as a great deal of recent research and projections on its impacts have shown. Some have predicted automation will lead to a gloomy future of permanent high unemployment, while others have touted many potential benefits around health, safety, and the environment. Yet, automation also poses a practical challenge for today’s business leaders, who must tackle how to take advantage of the productivity and innovation opportunities presented by automation technologies while also ensuring a smooth workforce transition. These leaders will have to help their current employees adapt to new technologies or retrain for new occupations, and they will also have to build a future talent pipeline that is educated, trained, and capable of meeting the needs of an automated workplace.

In a new BSR issue brief, “Automation: A Framework for a Sustainable Transition,” we explore some of the ways that companies are beginning to address automation, including engaging with civil society partners and governments. The brief explores four practices companies can adopt to facilitate a smooth transition.

1. Forecast and Communicate Planned Changes Early

The rollout of automation will affect different industries, occupations, and communities at different points in time. Early notice is critical, so that workers and governments have time to plan for the transition, reskill and train for new occupations, and minimize time spent in unemployment. The European Union’s CEDEFOP has started an early warning system that forecasts needed skills and workforce changes. By contributing their projected future needs to these systems, companies can help current workers and students plan for the skills that will be in demand in a specific geographic area.

2. Commit to Training and Support Education Partnerships

Companies can commit to partnerships with local educational systems, as well as open-source and online education, to prepare new generations of workers and upskill their incumbent workforce. Examples include partnerships with secondary schools and colleges to teach technical skills and coding or participation in formal workplace training programs through the Global Apprenticeship Network. Companies can also directly fund upskilling of their workforce through onsite training and use of micro-credential programs like Udacity.

3. Provide Support to Displaced Workers

Companies can play an important role in improving the outcomes of workers who will lose their jobs to automation by giving them early notice and extensive support to retrain and/or relocate to pursue new opportunities. Companies can partner with nonprofits and governments to include additional benefits in severance and outplacement packages, such as training grants to reskill for a new role in the company or for a new occupation, relocation assistance, or technical support and funding to start a new business.

4. Support Public Policies to Modernize the Social Safety Net

Automation represents the type of global challenge that can’t be solved through government policies or through individual companies’ CSR programs alone. It requires a coordinated and collaborative approach. Business leaders can play an influential role by using their collective voice to encourage governments to adopt policy frameworks that support workers in the transition to automation. U.S. policies currently being explored include wage insurance programs, which would help workers who lost income during the process of their career transition. Some countries, including France, are developing ITAs, or individual training accounts, which allow workers to accumulate tuition funds and paid leave so that they have time and funding to reskill during their careers. And business leaders are participating in dialogues around transformative policies, such as Bill Gates’ proposal for a “robot tax” to help governments make up shortfalls in payroll taxes. Other longer-term ideas are also in pilot tests in various countries, such as the universal basic income, championed by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Y Combinator, and union leader Andy Stern, among others.  

Whether adopting and sharing the lessons of their individual company programs, forming industry-wide partnerships, or advancing public policy solutions, business leaders can play a critical role in the global effort to redefine the future of good jobs in the age of automation in the 21st century and build an economy that works for all. 

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Brett Landau

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Brett works with BSR member companies at the nexus of its Nature & Climate and Financial Services.

At BSR, Brett works on nature-based landscaping, peer benchmarking, and materiality assessments. In addition, he performs the duties of the secretariat for the ‘Standards and Integrity’ working group for BASCS which works on influencing the voluntary carbon market to ensure carbon credits are made with high quality and integrity. He has performed impact-based materiality assessments, written emerging issue briefs, and helped run workshops across industries on broader ESG issues.

Prior to joining BSR, Brett worked at a strategic communications consulting firm, advising companies in industries as diverse as technology, energy, food and beverage, and healthcare.

Brett holds a BS in Environmental Studies from UNC Asheville as well as a Master’s certificate in Environmental Policy and an MBA in Sustainable Business from Bard College.