JUST CapitalBeta
Creates jobs in the U.S.
Communities
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
Where a company puts its work, and how many people it employs in the United States, is the company's own decision, and that decision is the whole of what this issue measures, which puts it at the top of the scale. The ranking scores the issue on the change in a company's own United States headcount from one year to the next, plus whether it runs an apprenticeship programme, a returnship policy for people who have been out of the workforce and a policy for recruiting veterans. Companies decide the location too, and they decide it in both directions: Mondelez moved about 600 Nabisco jobs from the South Side of Chicago to Salinas, Mexico, a decision taken in the company and defended at its annual meeting, where shareholders asked in 2017 and again in 2018 for a committee to look at the effect of plant closures on communities and at the alternatives. The case for holding this item lower rests on the Reshoring Initiative's account of what drives production back, which records 244,000 United States manufacturing jobs announced in 2024 and more than two million since 2010, 1.7 million of them filled, and puts the swing down to policy as much as to preference, with tariffs cited in 454 percent more cases in 2025 than in 2024 while government incentives were cited 49 percent less as earlier subsidies phase out, and with United States manufacturing costs staying 10 to 50 percent above offshore competitors, which it says drives most import decisions. That is a claim about prices and tax conditions, not about anybody standing outside the reach of a shareholder vote. A tariff decides nothing and a cost gap decides nothing; each changes what a decision costs a company that is still free to take it either way, and no source here says any company is forbidden to employ people in the United States or that the workers are not there to hire. Corporate lobbying on this question is real and it is the secondary story. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose board seats executives of Abbott Laboratories, Ryder System, Nasdaq, Cognizant, Allstate and Verizon, told senators that the Bring Jobs Home Act, which would have given companies a tax break for bringing work back and taken away the deduction for moving it out, was misguided and would hamper competitiveness, and said it would score the vote, and Republican aides also pointed to opposition from the National Association of Manufacturers. What actually stopped the bill was a cloture vote four short of 60 amid a procedural fight over amendments, and nothing in the bill would have required any company to put work here in any case. Unions have carried this question to shareholders for twenty years, from Sprint and General Electric in 2004 through Mondelez to the company then called United Technologies in 2020, and none of those votes has reached a tenth of the shares cast, which is a fact about the history of the campaign and not about where the decision sits. The decision sits with the company: it chooses how many people it employs in the United States and where it puts the work, which is why owner pressure reaches this outcome at full strength.
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
- JUST Capital 2025 Ranking Methodology (as of February 3, 2025), JUST Capital
- Reshoring Initiative 2024 Annual Report Including 1Q2025 Insights, Reshoring Initiative
- Offshoring Oreo maker jobs dominates Mondelez shareholder meeting (Internet Archive capture of 24 August 2019), AFL-CIO
- Mondelez International, Inc. Form 8-K, 2017 annual meeting voting results, Mondelez International, Inc., filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- Mondelez International, Inc. Form 8-K, 2018 annual meeting voting results, Mondelez International, Inc., filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- United Technologies Corporation Notice of 2020 Annual Meeting of Shareowners and Proxy Statement (DEF 14A), United Technologies Corporation, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- Raytheon Technologies Corporation Form 8-K, 2020 annual meeting voting results, Raytheon Technologies Corporation, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- Sprint Corporation Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2004, Sprint Corporation, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- General Electric Company Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2004, General Electric Company, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- International Business Machines Corporation 2004 Proxy Statement (DEF 14A), International Business Machines Corporation, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- International Business Machines Corporation Form 10-Q for the quarter ended 30 June 2004, International Business Machines Corporation, filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- Shareholders Focus on Offshoring at Sprint, IBM, GE, Communications Workers of America
- GOP senators block top Obama jobs initiative, CNN Politics
- Board of Directors, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
- Employment in S&P 500 companies is 18% of total US employment, Apollo Academy
8 campaigns on record
Asked Amazon's board to commission an independent third-party assessment of how the company's use of artificial intelligence, including algorithmic productivity quotas, affects the human rights and safety of Amazon's own workforce, including warehouse workers.
Result: Proposal failed; exact vote percentage not confirmed in the sources retrieved for this research. Filed under SEC Rule 14a-8.
we found no documented change confirmed in the sources retrieved.
Asked the company to address housekeeping starting wages cited at $12.00/hour against a benchmark $20.40/hour living wage, alongside racial-representation gaps in leadership and a large CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio (cited at 346 to 1).
Result: Vote percentage not confirmed in the sources retrieved for this research. Filed under SEC Rule 14a-8.
we found no documented change confirmed in the sources retrieved.
Cost Externalization: A Bad Trade for Diversified Shareholders, Proxy Preview
Asked the company to address a starting wage described as more than 32% below a 2019 calculation of a living wage, on the argument that poverty wages impose costs (public-assistance reliance, turnover, lower consumer spending) that diversified shareholders ultimately bear.
Result: Vote percentage not confirmed in the sources retrieved for this research. Filed under SEC Rule 14a-8.
we found no documented change confirmed in the sources retrieved.
Cost Externalization: A Bad Trade for Diversified Shareholders, Proxy Preview
Asked Walmart's board to report on whether the company's starting hourly wages for new associates are consistent with Walmart's own racial-justice commitments.
Result: 13.4% of votes cast were in favor at the June 1, 2022 annual meeting; the proposal did not pass. Filed under SEC Rule 14a-8.
We found no documented change to Walmart's starting-wage policy that any source attributes to this vote. Walmart's CEO cited an average hourly wage above $17 (as of April 2022) in opposing the proposal, not as a result of it.
Walmart Announces 2022 Annual Shareholders' Meeting Voting Results, Business Wire
Mondelez had already decided to move about 600 Nabisco factory jobs from Chicago's South Side to Salinas, Mexico. At the company's May 2017 annual meeting, the AFL-CIO's shareholder proposal asked the board to set up a joint labor-management committee to look at alternatives to plant closings in the future.
Result: Vote percentage not found in the sources retrieved for this research; the proposal was raised and voted on at the May 17, 2017 annual meeting. Filed under SEC Rule 14a-8.
we found no documented change: the relocation to Salinas, Mexico proceeded as planned; no source retrieved shows Mondelez reversing the move or adopting the requested labor-management committee.
Offshoring of Oreo-Maker Jobs Dominates Mondelez Shareholder Meeting, AFL-CIO
Review whether the company's executive pay formulas reward short term decisions, such as moving work overseas to lift earnings per share.
Result: Placed on the proxy for the April 17, 2004 annual meeting. We found no record of the vote tally in the sources we could retrieve.
we found no documented change
Shareholders Focus on Offshoring at Sprint, IBM, GE, Communications Workers of America, 2004
Investigate and report on how sending work offshore affects the company's reputation and the value of shareholders' investment.
Result: Placed on the proxy for the April 28, 2004 annual meeting. We found no record of the vote tally in the sources we could retrieve.
we found no documented change
Shareholders Focus on Offshoring at Sprint, IBM, GE, Communications Workers of America, 2004
Investigate and report on how sending work offshore affects the company's reputation and the value of shareholders' investment.
Result: Placed on the proxy for the April 20, 2004 annual meeting. We found no record of the vote tally in the sources we could retrieve.
we found no documented change
Shareholders Focus on Offshoring at Sprint, IBM, GE, Communications Workers of America, 2004
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 JUST Capital's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.