8/1/22, 9:59 AM The No. 1 ESG issue for Americans isn't climate change
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/13/the-no-1-esg-issue-for-americans-isnt-climate-change.html 3/11
Gig workers are central to business models
does not capture the fact that a significant proportion of their workforce is classified as
independent contractors.
The workforce disclosures that corporations make as part of being transparent to stakeholders
are typically limited to corporate employees. Just Capital found, for example, that the employee
information it had available to review in assessing Uber covered 2.3% of its actual workforce
when gig workers were included in the count.
Martin Whittaker, CEO of Just Capital, says when the firm sets out to create the annual list of
America's "most just" companies, it wants to get it "as right as you can," and it's not confident
that ESG is there yet with the contingent workforce model.
"When you have a whole business model built around contingent workers it's hard to get data,"
Whittaker said. "The full-time employees I'm sure are paid very well and get great benefits. And
you get data on that. But we know its whole business model is based on a different relationship
with workers, and we didn't feel like we had enough data to accurately reflect that story. It's the
same for Doordash and Lyft," he said. "We felt like it is an emerging systemic story and we didn't
feel like we really had a sufficiently strong handle on what it meant and how to measure it."
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Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman on ESG: We are a disclosure economy
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