JUST CapitalBeta
Protects worker health and safety
Workers
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
Whether a job is safe is settled by how a company staffs, equips, trains and maintains the place where the work happens, and none of that waits on a regulator, which is why this rates at the top of the scale. Shareholders have already moved a company on exactly that question. At Dollar General's annual meeting in May 2023, investors led by Domini Impact Investments passed a resolution calling for an independent audit of worker safety, over the board's recommendation to vote against it, and the company went on to publish that audit, carried out by the law firm Jackson Lewis with the independent safety consultancy FDRsafety, and said it intended to add more than 100 new district managers during 2024. Investors coordinated by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility pressed Walmart on worker safety before its 2024 meeting; ICCR describes itself as a coalition of more than 300 institutional investors representing over $4 trillion, and the assets behind that particular statement's signers are not published separately. The political fight is real without being what stands in the way. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, whose board seats are held by executives of publicly traded companies including Abbott Laboratories, Shell USA, Verizon, Pfizer and Dow, has asked the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to withdraw its proposed heat injury and illness prevention standard and start again with a looser one, and that standard has been neither withdrawn nor finished. State preemption has achieved more. Texas House Bill 2127, signed in June 2023, stripped construction workers in Austin and Dallas of the water and shade breaks their cities had already guaranteed them, and Florida's HB 433 bars local governments from setting heat protections at all, a ban reporting found appeared to target the heat exposure standard Miami-Dade County was weighing after agricultural industry lobbyists had watered it down and delayed the vote. Those accounts name legislators, a governor and an industry rather than a listed company or an association shown to be funded by one, so that spending narrows the public route without being the obstacle itself. A company that decides how many people are on shift, what they are trained to do and whether the fire exit is clear can fix this on its own, which is why the outcome rests on corporate conduct above all.
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
- Dollar General shareholders pass proposal to improve worker safety, CNBC
- Report on Audit of Dollar General Safety Policies and Practices, Dollar General
- In Advance of Walmart's 2024 Shareholder Meeting, Investors Call on the Company to Address Worker Safety and Racial Inequity, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
- Chamber Comments on OSHA's Proposed Heat Rule, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
- U.S. Chamber Board of Directors, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
- Backlash brews against Texas law that eliminates mandatory water breaks, NBC News
- Florida Legislature approves bill blocking local workplace heat protection standards, Orlando Weekly
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinated more than 300 institutional investors with over 4 trillion dollars in assets to back four 2024 Walmart proposals, including a workplace safety assessment focused on violence prevention.
Filed repeated proposals at Amazon asking for an independent audit of warehouse working conditions and worker treatment.
7 campaigns on record
Audit internal policies to protect employees from workplace violence, particularly gun violence.
Result: 19.1 percent in 2024, down from 23.8 percent in 2023
Walmart Shareholders Lose Support for Gun Safety Proposal, Bloomberg Law, 2024-06
Commission an independent audit and report on warehouse workers' conditions and treatment and the effect of Amazon's policies, management practices, performance metrics and targets.
Result: 31.2 percent of votes cast in favor
Commission an independent outside review of how company policies and practices affect safety and violence in its stores, including gun violence.
Result: Voted down at the June 5, 2024 annual meeting with about 19.1 percent support, after 23.8 percent the year before.
we found no documented change
Walmart announces 2024 annual shareholders meeting voting results, Walmart, 2024-06-05
Report on working conditions, citing constant surveillance, demanding quotas and the punitive time-off-task tracking system.
Result: 35.4 percent
Hire an independent outside firm to audit how company policies and practices affect the safety and well being of workers, and publish what it finds.
With Adrian Dominican Sisters, Portico Benefit Services, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Trinity Health, United Church Funds
Result: Approved over the board's opposition at the May 31, 2023 annual meeting with 67.7 percent of the vote.
Dollar General commissioned the audit from the law firm Jackson Lewis and the safety consultancy FDRsafety, published a report on it, and said it would add more than 100 district managers during 2024, create a trained assistant manager role for inventory handling, and add staff to its safety function.
Dollar General worker safety proposal passes at shareholder meeting, CNBC, 2023-05-31
Asked Tyson's board to prepare a report on human rights due diligence, covering whether the company was doing enough on paid sick leave, COVID-19 testing and case counts, workload, and meaningful engagement with workers after over 12,500 workers were infected and dozens died during the pandemic.
With 22 co-filing institutional and faith-based investors
Result: Sources disagree on the exact figure. Investor Advocates for Social Justice reported the proposal won 78.7% support among independent (non-Tyson-family) shares but only 18.4% of total votes cast, because the Tyson family's Class B supervoting shares give it majority voting control regardless of other shareholders. PR Newswire separately reported 'nearly 82 percent' support among independent shareholders for a package of proposals that included this one plus a lobbying-disclosure resolution.
Investor Advocates for Social Justice reported that Tyson 'largely failed to engage meaningfully,' did not address the concerns raised, withheld preliminary vote results at the meeting, and gave no opportunity for questions; the annual meeting lasted less than 30 minutes. We found no documented policy change at Tyson attributable to this vote.
A coalition of over 120 organizations demanded Tyson Foods provide personal protective equipment, paid sick leave, slower slaughter-line speeds, comprehensive COVID-19 testing, physical distancing, protection from retaliation for workers who organize, and elimination of a punitive attendance point system, after over 8,500 workers across 37 facilities tested positive for COVID-19 and more than 25 died.
With Friends of the Earth, HEAL Food Alliance, The Humane League, Venceremos, 120+ other organizations
Result: This was a public pressure campaign and sign-on letter directed partly at Tyson's institutional investors, not a shareholder resolution put to a vote.
We found no documented company-wide policy change directly attributed to this July 2020 campaign; continued investor dissatisfaction with Tyson's response is documented in the February 2021 shareholder vote listed separately above.
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.