Speaking at our Portfolio Certification Launch, Antonia Parkes, Senior Director, ESG & Stewardship – Workforce Integration Investments at AustralianSuper, discussed how Portfolio Certification will improve the working conditions and retirement outcomes of their members as as well as support better long-term value creation for investors. Below is the speech delivered by Antonia at the event.
Today’s CAF Portfolio Certification Launch is an exciting milestone. AustralianSuper is proud to have supported CAF along the journey to this milestone, starting as a co-founder of CAF just over a decade ago. As a founding member of ISPT, we are also proud that ISPT has been involved in the Portfolio Certification pilot. We would like to acknowledge every stakeholder involved in the development and pilot of the Portfolio Certification, and most importantly the cleaners present in the room today.
Member lens
As Australia’s largest superannuation fund, AustralianSuper has over 3.4 million members, and over $341bn of member assets as at 30 June 2024. Our purpose is to help members achieve their best financial position in retirement.
CAF started with the goal of improving labour standards in the cleaning industry and ending worker exploitation. Together with industry leaders and stakeholders, a due diligence framework was designed and implemented that seeks to protect cleaners from exploitation by driving responsible contracting and procurement practices. Just over a decade on and CAF is recognised as a powerful and legitimate worker-centric, due diligence model for the commercial property services sector.
We have been involved in CAF since its inception because we want to help the approximately 100,000 AustralianSuper members as at 30 June 2024 employed in the cleaning industry to achieve their best financial position in retirement. By supporting CAF, AustralianSuper seeks to improve the working conditions and retirement outcomes for our members and contribute towards improving outcomes for the industry as a whole.
Investor lens
As an investor, AustralianSuper is supportive of the CAF Portfolio Certification which will help drive the scale benefits of CAF’s positive impact on the commercial property industry. For investors, CAF has a proven track record in uncovering and remediating labour rights violations experienced by cleaners and ensuring that the conditions for decent work are in place in buildings across Australia. CAF has cemented its place as an innovative model to assess supply chain risks of modern slavery in the cleaning industry and is an invaluable part of risk management. Central to CAF’s success is that it involves all stakeholders, cleaning contractors, property owners, investors, facility managers, regulators, unions and most importantly workers.
As an investor, we believe that fair and sustainable employment conditions support long term-value creation in the companies and assets we invest in. When it comes to commercial properties, we expect that companies we invest in are:
- effectively managing labour, safety and modern slavery risks in their cleaning supply changes;
- identifying areas for improvement in procurement and contract management practices, including a clear pathway for how to achieve best practice;
- demonstrating human rights due diligence and responsible procurement, including year on year improvements as is increasingly expected in modern slavery reporting; and
- ensuring that business practices are being informed by worker voice.
We are supportive of Portfolio Certification as this will increase CAF’s ability to positively impact cleaners on a broader scale, by enabling CAF Certification of whole property portfolios rather than individual buildings. As a large investor in the Australian commercial property market, CAF certification of a portfolio indicates that properties are operating ethically when it comes to their labour practices, helping mitigate modern slavery risks and protecting investment value and members’ outcomes in the long term.
We value our partnership with CAF and look forward to seeing the program’s continued success.