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Pays a fair, living wage
Workers
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
Every employer writes its own pay scale and can raise it tomorrow without another party's agreement, which is why whether a job pays enough to live on is decided inside companies and why this sits at the top of the scale. Investors have organized around exactly that lever: a statement coordinated by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility and signed by 136 institutional investors asks companies to adopt, disclose and implement a living wage policy and to stop paying subminimum wages such as the tipped wage. ICCR itself is a coalition of more than 300 institutional investors representing over $4 trillion in invested capital, and the combined assets of that statement's own signers are not published. Named public companies sit on the other side of the question. Restaurant Brands International, the owner of Burger King, Popeyes, Tim Hortons and Firehouse Subs, belongs to the National Restaurant Association, which lobbies against raising the federal minimum wage and formally opposed the Raise the Wage Act in 2019 and again in 2021, and an investor filing at the Securities and Exchange Commission reports, citing New York Times reporting, that the company and its franchisees put at least $327,385 into opposing California's FAST Recovery Act. Shareholders have put the question directly on ballots, including a 2022 proposal at Denny's from the Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica asking the board to study raising tipped workers to a full minimum wage, which drew 2,196,671 shares in favor against 49,590,375 opposed. That lobbying is real and it is not what stopped the federal bill: the single recorded Senate vote, in March 2021, was a motion to waive a budget point of order against the minimum wage amendment, it needed three fifths of the Senate, and it fell 42 to 58, a threshold no lobbying campaign had to supply. The industry has achieved more in state capitals, where Florida's HB 433, signed in April 2024 and drafted in part by Florida Chamber of Commerce lobbyists according to legislative records obtained by reporters, will void local living wage ordinances from the fall of 2026 and is expected to reach more than 28,000 workers in Miami-Dade County alone, though nothing on the record establishes whether that chamber is funded by companies a shareholder vote reaches. No legislature and no market types the number on a pay stub, a company's own payroll does, so the people who own the company can settle this one without waiting for anybody, which is why it rates at the top.
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
- Investors Call on U.S. Companies to Take Steps Toward the Payment of a Living Wage, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
- Living Wage, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
- National Restaurant Association Opposes H.R. 582, 'Raise the Wage Act', National Restaurant Association
- Policy Brief: Raise the Wage Act, National Restaurant Association
- U.S. Senate Roll Call Votes, 117th Congress, 1st Session, Vote 74, United States Senate
- Restaurant Brands International Inc., Form PX14A6N, SEC EDGAR
- Denny's Corporation, Form 8-K (Item 5.07, 18 May 2022 annual meeting results), SEC EDGAR
- Denny's Corporation, DEF 14A proxy statement, 7 April 2022, SEC EDGAR
- Florida Legislature approves bill blocking local workplace heat protection standards, Orlando Weekly
- HB 433 (2024) bill history, The Florida Senate
5 campaigns on record
Stop supporting the lower minimum wage paid to tipped workers and commit to a living wage across the business and its franchises.
With Mercy Investment Services, Adasina Social Capital, One Fair Wage
Result: No proposal went to a vote. Investors pressed the company directly over several years, backed by a living wage investor statement that ICCR reports carries $4.5 trillion in assets under management and advisement.
McDonald's ended its membership in the National Restaurant Association over that group's continued support for the subminimum wage for tipped workers, and the investors publicly welcomed the decision in September 2025 as a model for the industry.
Investors and advocates called on McDonald's to end subminimum wages for tipped workers and to treat payment of a living wage as a human right.
With One Fair Wage (advocacy partner, not an investor filer)
Result: This was an investor and advocacy engagement, not a proxy shareholder vote; no vote result applies.
McDonald's left the National Restaurant Association. ICCR and other observers linked the departure to McDonald's public criticism of the association's subminimum-wage advocacy, though neither organization confirmed that this was the specific cause.
Asked Dollar Tree's board to produce a report on wages and inequality, after finding that median associate pay ($13,490 a year) fell below the federal poverty threshold for a single person.
Result: Put to a vote at the June 13, 2023 annual meeting; Dollar Tree's board recommended shareholders vote against it. We could not confirm the exact vote count in the sources reviewed.
We found no documented change directly attributed to this proposal. Retail TouchPoints reported that Dollar Tree separately announced plans to raise average wages by about $2 an hour around the same period, but the source does not establish that this increase was a response to the shareholder proposal.
Asked the board to publish an analysis of what it would take to raise tipped workers' starting pay to the full state or federal minimum wage, with tips on top, rather than relying on the lower tipped minimum wage (the 'tip credit').
With Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica
Result: 12.4% of votes cast were in favor, on a for-and-against basis excluding both broker non-votes and abstentions, at the May 12, 2022 annual meeting; the proposal did not pass. The SEC Form 8-K reports 1,697,217 votes for, 11,951,398 against, 216,418 abstentions and 1,477,256 broker non-votes; including abstentions in the denominator gives 12.2%.
We found no documented change to Dine Brands' tip-credit policy following this vote. Dine Brands' board had opposed the proposal, arguing the tip credit lets servers earn above minimum wage.
Dine Brands Global, Inc. Form 8-K (Item 5.07, voting results), SEC EDGAR
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
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.