Was the Royal Bank of Canada hurt by public consternation about exporting jobs, importing foreign workers and telling tall tales about the actions? Only slightly, and only briefly, as their stock price reflects:

That does not mean that individuals cannot apply continued pressure on the Royal Bank and their CEO, who earns a quarter million dollars a week while terminating Canadian workers gaining 1/500 of his remuneration.

A group of construction union pension plans have threatened to pull $1 billion in investments and funds if RBC does not abandon plans to outsource jobs by using temporary foreign workers. Lee Loftus, president of the B.C. Construction Trades Council, said,

“A billion dollars is chump change to them, we understand that, but we certainly think that a billion dollars is a substantial amount of money in the B.C. economy and if they are not going to manage our money right, we will find others that will.”

According to its most recent investment inventory list, the BC Investment Management Corporation could withdraw another $1 billion from investments in RBC. The agency invests on behalf of public sector clients in British Columbia including the pension plan investments of more than 500,000 people.

Individuals acting together can make a difference. There is no better place to initiate ethical investment policies than with public pension funds. After adding shares in eight of its nine tobacco stocks in fiscal 2012, bcIMC had more than a half billion dollars invested in cigarette manufacturers. It also holds massive investments in other corporate pariahs, including SNC-Lavalin and twelve of the twelve corporations rated worst in ethical performance among multinationals by Swiss research firm Covalence.