Article 3: Life, liberty and security of person
Helpful
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
This right covers almost every way a person's life or safety can be threatened. The list runs from violent crime, war and policing to disease, accidents and unsafe products. Companies control only a slice of that picture. Gun makers Sturm, Ruger and Smith & Wesson decide how firearms are designed, marketed and sold, and shareholders including Catholic and Episcopal investors have pushed both companies to study the human cost of their products. Amazon and Boeing have faced shareholder votes and lawsuits over warehouse injuries and the 737 MAX crashes. But most death and injury covered by this article happens outside any listed company's reach, in policing, war, disease and the home, and the firearms industry's trade group has funneled over a million dollars into political campaigns opposing regulation. Corporate change would help. It would not decide the outcome.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Corporate decisions about product design, marketing and workplace safety (firearms, aviation, warehouse operations) affect how many people are killed or injured. But the vast majority of threats to life, liberty and security worldwide come from crime, policing, war, disease and household harm. No company controls those, so corporate conduct helps at the margin rather than sitting on the critical path.
Firearms-industry trade funding of political campaigns and boardroom failures that put profit ahead of safety narrow specific reforms (gun regulation, aviation oversight), but they are not documented as the primary obstacle to realizing security of person across the whole range of threats this article covers.
1 and 1, higher of the two, gives Helpful
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
- Ruger Shareholders Take A Stand: Human Rights Resolution Passes at Annual Meeting, InDepthNH.org, 2022-06-06
- 44% of Smith & Wesson Shareholders Seek the Adoption of a Human Rights Policy, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2021-09-30
- Gun companies arm trade association with cash to influence 2016 elections, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), 2016
- Boeing Directors Settle Shareholder Lawsuit Over 737 MAX Crashes For $237.5 Million, Forbes, 2021-11-05
- USA: Amazon shareholders reject all investor-led proposals on workers' rights, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, 2022-05
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Led the 2022 shareholder proposal asking Sturm Ruger to conduct a human rights impact assessment of its firearms products, which passed with 68.5% support.
Co-filed the 2022 Sturm Ruger human rights impact assessment resolution alongside CommonSpirit Health.
Filed a 2021 shareholder proposal (their third such filing since 2018) asking Smith & Wesson to adopt a comprehensive human rights policy; it received 43.9% support.
Filed the 2022 Amazon shareholder proposal for an independent audit of warehouse workers' wages and working conditions, which drew 44% support.
5 campaigns on record
Assess whether Amazon's health and safety practices produce racial and gender disparities in warehouse injury rates and disclose injury rates broken down by race, gender and ethnicity.
Result: The SEC rejected Amazon's request to exclude the proposal, and it went to a vote at the May 2022 annual meeting; the specific vote tally was not found in the sources reviewed.
we found no documented policy change directly tied to this proposal in the sources reviewed.
Commission an independent audit and report on the wages, safety and working conditions of Amazon's warehouse workers.
Result: Received about 44% support; failed to pass.
no binding commitment; CEO Andy Jassy said the company would keep working to improve injury rates but did not commit to the requested independent audit.
Conduct a human rights impact assessment examining the risks associated with the company's firearms products.
With Mercy Investment Services, Episcopal Church
Result: Passed with about 68.5% of shares voted (7,840,251 shares) at the June 1, 2022 annual meeting.
we found no documented report or policy change published by Sturm Ruger as a result, in the sources reviewed.
Adopt a comprehensive human rights policy describing how the company will identify, assess, prevent and mitigate adverse human rights impacts of its products.
Result: Failed, with 43.9% of shares voted in favor.
no documented change; management said existing ESG efforts were adequate and did not adopt a human rights policy.
Prohibit sales of facial recognition technology to government agencies unless the board concludes, based on independent evidence, it does not cause or contribute to civil and human rights violations.
With Open MIC (campaign organizer, non-shareholder)
Result: The proposals did not pass. The cited source is a pre-meeting report; we did not locate a source stating the final tally.
we found no documented policy change directly resulting from this specific vote.
Nuns and other Amazon investors pressure Jeff Bezos over face recognition, Fast Company
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.