When Randall Stephenson joined 180 of his peers leading many of the richest United States companies in signing the Business Roundtable pledge on the"purpose of a corporation" in August 2019, the then-chief of AT&T Incorporated promised to look out for the interests of all the wireless carrier's stakeholders, not just shareholders.
"We are the face of AT&T and we go out of our way to help customers communicate with their families," said Darren Miller, a 35-year-old technician whose job was cut last July."But we are a dime a dozen to them. If they can get someone cheaper to do the job, they will do it." The analysis found that the 171 publicly traded companies that signed the pledge returned a median 60% of net income to shareholders during the first 3 quarters of 2020 through dividends and buybacks, versus a 50% return among the 355 S&P 500 firms that did not sign the statement.
The pledge's lack of detail gave signatories wide discretion in deciding how the pandemic pain would be spread among shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders. Indeed, some signatories have won praise from progressive-leaning organizations for standing by employees during the pandemic. AT&T's layoffs during the pandemic attracted the attention of Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, who wrote to the company last July objecting to"corporations using the pandemic as justification for continuing to make anti-worker decisions that are aimed at boosting share price."