Article 23: Right to work, just remuneration, equal pay, and to form and join trade unions
Pivotal
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
Millions of low-wage jobs in retail, fast food and warehousing sit above the legal minimum wage only because a company chooses to pay more. Whether a worker can join a union without retaliation depends heavily on how aggressively management resists organizing, since federal labor law is only weakly enforced. Investors have used their votes here. Shareholder votes won pay-gap disclosure at Disney and Lowe's. A shareholder vote at Starbucks on respecting workers' right to organize led to a board oversight committee, though Starbucks later dissolved it and investors are still working to reverse that. On the political side, the restaurant and retail lobby, led by the National Restaurant Association alongside the U.S. Chamber and NFIB, has fought federal minimum-wage increases for over a decade and has helped pass state laws blocking local worker-pay ordinances. Since both company pay decisions and this lobbying operate largely outside legislative reach in practice, shareholder pressure is one of the few levers that can move either one.
How this was scoredPivotal
Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Wage levels above the legal floor, pay-equity practices and whether management tolerates or resists unionization are set inside companies. A statutory minimum wage, the Equal Pay Act/EEOC framework and the National Labor Relations Board's enforcement of organizing rights are also required. Corporate conduct is a necessary but not sole determinant.
Trade associations for the largest low-wage employers, especially the National Restaurant Association working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, NFIB and ALEC, have been a documented, organized and often successful obstacle to raising the federal minimum wage (stuck at $7.25 since 2009) and to local labor-standards ordinances, making corporate political activity a primary blocking force here.
2 and 2, higher of the two, gives Pivotal
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
- Arjuna Capital: 59% of Disney Investors Vote for Racial and Gender Pay Equity Proposal at Annual Meeting, Business Wire, 2022-03-09
- Arjuna Capital: Following Majority Shareholder Vote, Lowe's Releases Racial and Gender Pay Gap Data, Business Wire, 2022-12-14
- Starbucks Shareholders Vote to Support Worker Rights Assessment Proposal, Office of the New York City Comptroller, 2023-03-29
- Starbucks challenged by labor-friendly activist investors, Restaurant Dive, 2026 (accessed 2026-09)
- National Restaurant Association Opposes H.R. 582, "Raise the Wage Act", National Restaurant Association, 2019-03-05
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Filed racial and gender pay-gap disclosure proposals at Disney (59% support, 2022) and Lowe's (58% support, 2022), leading to new pay-gap disclosures.
Mounted a proxy challenge against two Starbucks directors after the company dissolved the labor-oversight committee created by the 2023 vote.
Starbucks challenged by labor-friendly activist investors, Restaurant Dive, 2026 (accessed 2026-09)
Co-filed the 2023 Starbucks worker rights proposal and joined the later proxy challenge over labor oversight.
Starbucks challenged by labor-friendly activist investors, Restaurant Dive, 2026 (accessed 2026-09)
Formally opposed the federal Raise the Wage Act, arguing a $15 minimum wage would cost jobs and harm small operators.
Filed the 2023 Dollar General worker-safety and wages audit proposal, approved with 67.7% support.
Dollar General worker safety proposal passes at shareholder meeting, CNBC, 2023-05-31
4 campaigns on record
Commission an independent third-party assessment of whether Starbucks' actual practices match its stated commitments to workers' freedom of association and non-interference with unionizing.
With PIRC, SHARE (for the Catherine Donnelly Foundation), Trillium ESG Global Equity Fund
Result: Over 52% of shares voted in favor, March 29, 2023.
Starbucks created a board-level Environmental, Partner and Community Impact Committee to oversee labor relations after the vote; under CEO Brian Niccol the company later dissolved that committee, prompting a fresh 2025-26 investor proxy fight (SOC Investment Group, NYC Comptroller, Trillium) against two directors and a company proposal to resume in-person bargaining with Workers United starting March 30, 2026.
Report median and statistically adjusted pay gaps by race and gender.
Result: 58% of votes cast in favor, May 2022.
Lowe's published pay-gap data (women's median pay about 97% of men's, minority employees' median about 99% of non-minority, both about 100% on an adjusted basis) and committed to update the disclosure annually.
Report median and statistically adjusted pay gaps by race and gender across the company.
Result: 59% of votes cast in favor, March 9, 2022.
We found no documented pay-gap disclosure or policy change from Disney following the vote in the sources reviewed; Disney did not publicly respond to the vote at the meeting.
Have the board oversee a report on whether starting pay for all job categories aligns with Walmart's racial-justice commitments.
Result: 22.8% of independent shares and 12.7% of all votes cast in favor; proposal failed.
We found no documented change traceable to this proposal. Walmart later raised its starting wage (to $14 in January 2023) citing a tight labor market, not this resolution.
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 Universal Declaration of Human Rights's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.