After years of shareholder pressure that ratcheted up after the racial reckoning in summer 2020, some of the world’s most influential companies have agreed to independent racial-equity or civil-rights audits to consider how their policies, products and practices affect the civil rights of and equality among employees, customers and society.
The vote failed because under Alphabet’s dual-class structure, insiders such as Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin hold the bulk of Class B shares, which are worth 10 votes each. So the resolution received only 22.4% of overall votes. Aside from undergoing an audit, the companies need to follow through on the resulting recommendations, civil-rights experts and others say. Results of the audits that have been conducted at other companies, such as Meta’s Facebook, Airbnb Inc. ABNB, +2.63% and Starbucks Corp. SBUX, +2.60%, have had varying degrees of success.
A Meta spokeswoman said the company has a dedicated civil-rights team led by a vice president, Roy Austin. She also said the company has made “substantial progress” and that 91% of the audit’s recommendations have either been completed or are in progress.Even though he thinks Facebook has fallen short on its civil-rights audit follow-through so far, Robinson said the company still “did something that Google refused to do, still refuses to do and other companies are just getting around to doing.
“What we’ve heard from the staff is that they’re being thoughtful,” said Johnny Mathias, the group’s deputy senior campaign director. “But we do need to see them move forward with same type of speed, time and resources that they give [to other things they prioritize].”
More affirmative action hires? Because that’s historically proven to be so effective at lifting up those who need it most? GoWokeGoBroke
Shareholder = ETF groups who are pushing ESG. Regular investors are not pushing this bullshit.
LoL.