BETTER BUSINESS BETTER WORLD

5. RENEWING THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
Key Points
• Achieving the Global Goals that meet basic needs and protect human
rights (the social goals) is a business imperative as well as a moral one.
• Failure on the social goals has huge economic costs – rising inequality
has knocked more than 10 percentage points off growth of some
economies. Women still earn 25 percent less than men on average for
comparable work.
• More than 600 million new jobs are needed over the next 15 years to
match growth in the global workforce. Youth unemployment is already
at 13 percent; automation risks are significant. This outlook makes the
potential for the Global Goals to deliver more than 380 million jobs even
more vital.
• Today 20-40 million workers are trapped in forms of modern slavery.
More than 150 million children are working in the fields, mines,
workshops, and rubbish dumps, the informal dark side of the world
economy.
• Trust in business continues to fall. Business can honour the terms of
their social contract to regain society’s trust by:
• Adhering to high standards of behaviour;
• Supporting sectoral coalitions that raise standards across the
competitive playing field for all players;
• Paying their taxes transparently like everyone else;
• Using their influence to advocate for policies in line with the Global
Goals; and
• Developing good jobs with decent pay along the whole of their supply
chains in a way that fully respects the UN Guiding Principles on
Human Rights.
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