“No poverty” (SDG 1), “Zero hunger” (SDG 2) and HRM

The link between HRM and poverty and hunger is complex. While workers’ general welfare could be thought of as being in the separate private domain, the absence of poverty is dependent, in capitalist society, upon paid employment and so poverty is directly related to wages. In addition, while access to food may seem like an even further point of separation, hunger is directly related to wages and, in addition, any working day will traverse a time when food would normally be consumed: the lunch break. Historically, whilst general workplace conditions improved in the West as a result of regulation, unionisation and paternalism, this trend reversed in the period identified with neoliberalism from this point in the early 1980s. This chapter identifies the links between HR practice, food, and poverty. It traces the history of these links and then presents two contrasting national case studies: the UK and Sri Lanka.