JUST CapitalBeta
Fosters an inclusive workplace
Workers
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
Whether a workplace offers equal opportunity is settled inside the employer, in who is hired, what they are paid, who is promoted and how people are treated day to day, so the companies themselves hold nearly the whole of this outcome and their owners can direct it. Owners have already done so. Lowe's shareholders backed a pay gap proposal from Arjuna Capital with 58 percent support in May 2022, and that December the company published median and adjusted race and gender pay data covering 92 percent of its employees, with a commitment to update it every year. The New York City Comptroller and the city pension funds asked large companies to release their consolidated EEO-1 workforce reports, won 84 percent support at DuPont and 86 percent at Union Pacific, and 62 companies agreed to publish. Apple's shareholders approved an independent civil rights audit in March 2022 over the board's objection, with just under 54 percent of the votes cast, on a proposal backed by the SOC Investment Group with the Service Employees International Union and Trillium Management, and Apple's own proxy records that the assessment, written by former Attorney General Eric Holder and a team from Covington and Burling, was published in July 2023. The vote decides this in both directions: at Apple's meeting in February 2025 a proposal from the National Center for Public Policy Research asking the company to cease its diversity efforts drew 210 million votes for and 8.8 billion against. A political fight runs alongside and it is the secondary one. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 26 other business associations, including the National Association of Manufacturers, the National Retail Federation and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, asked the White House budget office in March 2017 to stay the federal collection of employer pay data, and that August the budget office stayed it under the exact regulation the associations had cited. A court later found the stay illegal, the data was collected for two years, and the Chamber's separate campaign against the Paycheck Fairness Act ran alongside a Senate cloture vote that fell 49 to 50 against a sixty vote threshold, which is an obstacle no shareholder vote reaches. Federal reporting can be delayed that way, and the underlying decisions cannot be, since every hiring, pay and promotion call this issue turns on is made by the employer and can be changed by the people who own it, which is why it sits at the top of the scale.
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
- We Asked the American People What They Want From Corporate America, Here's What They Said, JUST Capital
- JUST Capital 2025 Ranking Methodology, JUST Capital
- Following Majority Shareholder Vote, Lowe's Releases Racial and Gender Pay Gap Data, Arjuna Capital
- Comptroller Stringer and NYC Funds' Proposals Win Majority Vote for Workforce Demographic Disclosures at DuPont and Union Pacific, Office of the New York City Comptroller
- Shareholders vote for Apple to conduct a civil rights audit, bucking company's recommendation, CNBC
- Apple Inc. Notice of 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareholders and Proxy Statement (DEF 14A), Apple Inc. via SEC EDGAR
- Apple Inc. Form 8-K, Item 5.07 Submission of Matters to a Vote of Security Holders, Apple Inc. via SEC EDGAR
- U.S. Chamber Key Vote Letter on H.R. 7, 'Paycheck Fairness Act', U.S. Chamber of Commerce
- U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes, 117th Congress, 1st Session, Vote 227, United States Senate
- Request for Review; EEOC's Revision of the Employer Information Report (coalition letter to OMB Director John M. Mulvaney), U.S. Chamber of Commerce and 26 other associations
- Stay the Effectiveness of the EEO-1 Pay Data Collection, 82 FR 43362, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Federal Register
- Resource Collection: EEO-1 Pay Data Collection, National Women's Law Center
- EEOC Releases Data Dashboard for 2017 & 2018 Pay Data Collection, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
- Verizon Political Engagement Report 2024, Verizon Communications Inc.
- Board of Directors, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
- New Analysis Reveals U.S. Chamber of Commerce is Primarily Funded by a Few Deep-Pocketed Donors, Public Citizen
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Files resolutions asking companies to disclose workforce diversity, retention rates by protected category and inclusion practices, including 2025 filings at Workday, Coca-Cola, Berkshire Hathaway and others, and withdrew a 2025 Deere resolution after dialogue.
11 campaigns on record
Disclose the company's efforts to develop a productive and meritocratic workforce after concerns that it had abandoned diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Result: Withdrawn after dialogue
Deere stated that a diverse workforce enables it to meet customer needs and confirmed it would continue tracking and advancing organizational diversity.
As You Sow Withdraws Meritocracy Shareholder Resolution at Deere, As You Sow, 2025-02
Asked the board to evaluate and report on how the bank's public promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion affects its risk of discriminating against people on the basis of race, colour, religion including religious views, sex, national origin, or political views.
Result: Filed under Rule 14a-8 on 9 December 2024 for the 2025 annual meeting. East West Bancorp asked the SEC staff on 13 February 2025 for permission to leave the proposal off its proxy card, arguing under Rule 14a-8(b) and Rule 14a-8(f)(1) that Inspire had not proved a full year of continuous share ownership, since the custodian letters covered different periods and named clients rather than Inspire itself. Inspire withdrew the proposal, and on 1 April 2025 the SEC staff said the matter was moot and it would have no further comment. The proposal was not voted on.
We found no documented change by East West Bancorp.
Asked the company to publish a report evaluating how its policies affect employees on the basis of protected characteristics, which Inspire framed as a question of respecting the civil liberties of the workforce.
Result: Voted on at the annual meeting of 21 May 2025 as Item 8, 'the stockholder proposal regarding a report on respecting workforce civil liberties'. The company reported 1.50% in favour, which is the share of votes cast for and against (11,233,860 for, 738,347,843 against, 7,943,266 abstentions, 182,350,030 broker non-votes). The proposal was not approved. Three other shareholder proposals were voted at the same meeting, on a simple majority vote standard (44.60%), fossil fuel disclosure (7.34%) and a net zero audit (1.71%). Inspire also filed a notice of exempt solicitation urging a yes vote, signed by about fifty investors and financial professionals.
We found no documented change by The Southern Company that any source attributes to this vote.
Form 8-K, results of the 2025 annual meeting of stockholders, The Southern Company via SEC EDGAR
Asked Deere to publish a report on its charitable giving, and in particular on how its employee matching gift programme treats religious organisations. Bowyer Research says Deere's rules exclude seminaries, schools of theology, Bible schools and organisations working only for sectarian purposes from matching, which the firm describes as inconsistent treatment of employees of faith.
Result: Precatory proposal filed under Rule 14a-8 and voted on as Proposal 8 at the annual meeting of 26 February 2025. Votes for 2,549,298; votes against 200,450,816; abstentions 2,066,411; broker non-votes 31,663,030. That is 1.26% of the votes cast for and against, or 1.24% if abstentions are counted in the base. The proposal was not approved. Deere's board recommended a vote against it.
We found no documented change to Deere's charitable giving or matching gift rules that any source we retrieved attributes to this proposal.
Analyze and report on gender and racial pay disparities.
Result: not stated in source
The 2024 Amazon Proposals, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2024-05
Publish the pay gap between women and men and between minority and non-minority staff, both the raw median gap and the gap adjusted for role and experience.
Result: Backed by 58 percent of shareholders at the May 2022 annual meeting.
Lowe's published median and adjusted race and gender pay data in December 2022, covering 92 percent of employees, with a commitment to update it every year.
Asked McDonald's board to commission a third-party audit of the company's policies and practices and their effects on franchisees, corporate and franchise workers, and consumers.
With CalPERS, New York City Retirement Systems, Color of Change (supporting)
Result: Passed with 55.1% of shares voted in favor (June 2022).
McDonald's said it would 'engage a third party to conduct an assessment,' calling it a civil rights 'assessment' rather than 'audit.' By September 2023 the company had begun focus groups with franchise owners as part of that process, per CNBC. We found no documented publication of final assessment findings in the sources retrieved.
McDonald's engages third-party diversity audit after shareholder vote, Nation's Restaurant News
Hire an outside firm to examine how company policies and practices affect the civil rights of workers and other stakeholders, and recommend improvements.
With Service Employees International Union, Trillium Asset Management
Result: Approved at the March 4, 2022 annual meeting against the board's recommendation. CNBC reported that the exact tally had not been released at the time.
Apple committed in April 2022 to move ahead with a civil rights audit.
Publicly release the consolidated EEO-1 report showing workforce composition by race, ethnicity and gender across ten job categories including senior management.
Result: 84 percent at DuPont and 86 percent at Union Pacific
62 S&P companies agreed to disclose or committed to disclose EEO-1 data as a result of the campaign.
Asked Amazon's board for an independent examination of the company's policies, practices and products on civil rights, equity, diversity and inclusion, including pay and advancement and the disparate racial impacts on hourly warehouse workers, and how those affect the business.
Result: Sources give slightly different figures for the same vote. The Comptroller's office reports 44.18% support, which it described as a record level of support for an environmental or social shareholder proposal at Amazon at that time. ICCR reports 44% of total shares voted and 55% of independent shareholders' shares in favor. The proposal was refiled for the 2022 proxy season and then withdrawn before that vote.
Amazon agreed to commission an independent racial equity audit led by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch. We found no documented publication of the completed audit's findings and no other resulting policy change that sources attribute to this vote.
Shareholders' ESG Proposals Make Significant Gains at Amazon, ICCR
Pressed Citigroup, through a shareholder resolution and direct engagement, to disclose its median (unadjusted, company-wide) gender and racial pay gap rather than only a narrower 'equal pay for equal work' adjusted figure.
Result: On January 16, 2019, Citigroup became the first major U.S. bank to disclose median pay gap data: women earned 29% less than men and minorities earned 7% less than non-minority employees on an unadjusted, company-wide basis.
Citigroup committed to increasing female representation in mid-to-senior roles to 40% by 2021. Separately, per HR Dive, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Mastercard, Wells Fargo and Bank of New York Mellon each agreed to work on closing pay gaps for women and non-white employees following similar shareholder pressure from Arjuna Capital, though the sources retrieved do not give those banks' specific disclosure figures.
Citigroup reveals it pays women 29 percent less than men in unprecedented disclosure, CBS News
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.