We really liked the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and supported the initiative in our consulting work during the past years.
Like many others, we did not quite appreciate the fact that companies like Deutsche Bank, Monsanto and Nestlé, to mention just a few, were accepted members of the initiative, but anyway.
Since we recommended the participation in the UNGC initiative to (almost all of) our customers, at some point in time we felt that we should walk the talk and become a UNGC member ourselves.
So we filed our letter of commitment and sent it to the UNGC office. But we had to learn that our company is to small to matter : UNGC requires you to have at least 10 employees (FTE) on the payroll. Shareholders, partners and freelancers don't count, you have to employ 10 or more people in order to participate in the UNGC initiative and be an accepted stakeholder.
We consider this to be both an unfair and quite discriminating policy. See the numbers: In Europe, 92% of all businesses are so-called micro-businesses with less then 10 employees. They all don't matter to UNGC and can't play a role in the process.
From now on, we don't support UNGC any longer because we don't take a stand for an initiative that excludes 92% of the economy from participation.
Like many others, we did not quite appreciate the fact that companies like Deutsche Bank, Monsanto and Nestlé, to mention just a few, were accepted members of the initiative, but anyway.
Since we recommended the participation in the UNGC initiative to (almost all of) our customers, at some point in time we felt that we should walk the talk and become a UNGC member ourselves.
So we filed our letter of commitment and sent it to the UNGC office. But we had to learn that our company is to small to matter : UNGC requires you to have at least 10 employees (FTE) on the payroll. Shareholders, partners and freelancers don't count, you have to employ 10 or more people in order to participate in the UNGC initiative and be an accepted stakeholder.
We consider this to be both an unfair and quite discriminating policy. See the numbers: In Europe, 92% of all businesses are so-called micro-businesses with less then 10 employees. They all don't matter to UNGC and can't play a role in the process.
From now on, we don't support UNGC any longer because we don't take a stand for an initiative that excludes 92% of the economy from participation.
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