Article 6: Recognition as a person before the law
Helpful
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Recognition as a person before the law is decided mostly by governments: whether someone is on a civil register, holds citizenship or refugee status, and can act in their own name in court. Corporations touch this only at the edges. The International Labour Organization lists retention of a worker's identity documents, passports confiscated by an employer or recruiter, as a core indicator of forced labor. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility has asked apparel, footwear, food and technology companies to end the practice, winning no-confiscation policies from more than twenty companies. Separately, mandatory arbitration clauses route employee and consumer disputes into private forums instead of courts. The Nathan Cummings Foundation's 2021 push got Goldman Sachs to agree to review its policy, and Nia Impact Capital won 66 percent of independent votes on a similar request at Tesla in 2022. The Chamber of Commerce has lobbied hard against bills banning forced arbitration outright. Neither lever reaches the core of the right, which stays a matter of state law.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
The right's core content, being recognized as a legal person able to hold and assert rights, is decided almost entirely by state civil-registration, immigration and legal-capacity systems. The clearest corporate link is narrower: employers and recruiters who confiscate migrant workers' identity documents (an internationally recognized indicator of forced labor), and arbitration clauses that route disputes away from courts. Both are real but marginal levers rather than the main determinant.
The business lobby, led by the US Chamber of Commerce's Institute for Legal Reform, has actively fought federal bills that would ban mandatory arbitration. That narrows one avenue people have to assert legal claims. But it is a contributing pressure on a narrow procedural question, not a block on legal personhood itself.
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
- ILO Indicators of Forced Labour, International Labour Organization, 2012
- Using investor leverage to eradicate forced labour and slavery, Freedom Fund, n.d.
- Goldman's Flip on Harassment Followed Campaign by Tiny Activist, Bloomberg Law, 2021
- USA: Tesla's mandatory arbitration policy for employees challenged by shareholders, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, 2022
- Coalition Letter on H.R. 963, the FAIR Act, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, n.d.
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Filed a 2021 shareholder proposal asking Goldman Sachs to report on the impact of mandatory arbitration on employees and workplace culture.
Goldman's Flip on Harassment Followed Campaign by Tiny Activist, Bloomberg Law, 2021
Filed a 2022 shareholder proposal asking Tesla's board to report on its use of mandatory employee arbitration, including discrimination and harassment cases.
Coordinated investor engagement with more than 70 companies across six sectors on migrant recruitment practices, resulting in over 20 companies adopting policies against confiscating workers' identity documents.
Using investor leverage to eradicate forced labour and slavery, Freedom Fund, n.d.
2 campaigns on record
Publish a report on Tesla's use of mandatory employee arbitration, including how many discrimination and harassment cases go to arbitration.
Result: 37.8% of overall vote, 66.4% of votes cast by shareholders independent of Elon Musk
we found no documented change: sources do not indicate Tesla altered its arbitration policy following the vote.
Tesla Inc: Report on Impact of Use of Mandatory Arbitration, As You Sow, 2022-04
Publish a report on how mandatory arbitration affects employees, workplace culture, and the ability of employees to seek remedies for harassment and discrimination.
Result: Narrowly defeated with 49% support in April; management reversed position by June
Goldman Sachs agreed to conduct a comprehensive review of its mandatory arbitration policy, its first documented reversal on the issue.
Goldman's Flip on Harassment Followed Campaign by Tiny Activist, Bloomberg Law
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.