Bar companies guilty of wage theft from federal contracts
Wages and workers
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
The position as written is a procurement rule only government can adopt, and shareholders cannot vote a debarment list into existence. The direct route for owners runs through the conduct underneath it: wage theft is a pay practice inside companies, and a company that pays what it legally owes needs no debarment rule. Owners can require that conduct directly through pay-practice policies, audits and disclosure. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility's living wage engagements ask companies to adopt wage policies, end subminimum pay and disclose compensation metrics. The public remedy has already been tested and killed by corporate political influence. President Obama's Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces order required bidders on federal contracts over $500,000 to disclose recent labor law violations. Contractor groups fought it as a 'blacklisting rule,' and Congress and President Trump eliminated it in March 2017 through the Congressional Review Act. Owners voting their values can deliver the underlying outcome, honest pay, and can change what their companies lobby for when the rule returns.
How this was scoredPivotal
Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Common Ground of the American People: Low Income Assistance, Program for Public Consultation / Voice of the People, 2026 (studies February 2023, January 2017)
- Living Wage (investor statement and engagements), Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2023-11-14 (statement); page current 2026
- President Trump Revokes Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order, Smith, Gambrell & Russell, 2017-03
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinates member engagements asking companies to adopt, disclose and implement living wage policies and end subminimum wages, and organized a 2023 investor statement on living wages signed by more than 125 investors.
Living Wage, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2025-09
Filed shareholder proposals at Walmart and Kroger in 2024 asking the companies to adopt wage policies that provide workers the minimum earnings needed to meet a family's basic needs.
4 campaigns on record
End the subminimum wage for tipped workers.
Result: not stated in source
McDonald's left the National Restaurant Association over the association's continued support for subminimum wages for tipped workers, and ICCR members commended the move as a model for the industry.
Establish company wage policies reasonably designed to provide workers with the minimum earnings necessary to meet a family's basic needs.
With The Nathan Cummings Foundation, The Shareholder Commons
Result: SEC staff denied Walmart's request to exclude the proposal, finding it transcends ordinary business; vote result not stated in source
Adopt a living wage policy to prevent the company contributing to inequality and racial and gender disparity.
Result: More than 83 percent voted against
Pay workers a living wage sufficient to afford a decent standard of living for the worker and family.
With Amalgamated Bank, Legal & General Investment Management, Vancity Investment Management, Mercy Investment Services
Result: 136 institutional investors representing $4.5 trillion in assets signed the statement
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Common Ground of the American People's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.