Target 10.4: Fiscal, wage, and social-protection policies
Adopt policies, especially fiscal, wage and social protection policies, and progressively achieve greater equality
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Fiscal, wage and social-protection policy is written by legislatures, but organized corporate lobbying is the standing obstacle to adopting it in the largest economies. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce in June 2025 pressed the Senate to keep the 21 percent corporate rate and make business tax cuts permanent. The National Restaurant Association and NFIB opposed the Raise the Wage Act, while the federal minimum has stayed at 7.25 dollars since 2009. As You Sow's annual report The 100 Most Overpaid CEOs documents the pay gap inside companies themselves, finding S&P 500 chief executives earned 324 times their median worker's pay in 2022, and urges investors to vote against excessive pay packages. The Tax Justice Network estimates that multinational profit shifting costs governments about 348 billion dollars a year, two thirds of global tax losses. Suppose listed companies paid taxes where profits are earned, raised their own wage floors and lobbied for progressive taxation and stronger social protection. The political cost of these policies would collapse and public revenue would rise. Shareholder votes on lobbying alignment and country-by-country tax reporting reach exactly this conduct. More than 21 percent of Amazon's independent shareholders backed country-by-country tax reporting in 2022. Voters, parties and treasuries must still design and pass the policies, so owners remove a necessary obstacle rather than deliver the outcome.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
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
- Letter to Senate Finance Committee on the Tax Subtitle of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 2025-06-20
- National Restaurant Association Opposes H.R. 582, 'Raise the Wage Act', National Restaurant Association, 2019-03-05
- U.S. House Votes Against Small Businesses by Passing Raise the Wage Act Legislation, National Federation of Independent Business, 2021-02-27
- Sanders, Scott, 175 Colleagues Introduce Bill to Raise Minimum Wage to $17 by 2030, U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, 2025-04-09
- World losing half a trillion to tax abuse, largely due to 8 countries blocking UN tax reform, annual report finds, Tax Justice Network, 2024-11-19
- The Amazon Shareholders Representing $144 Billion Endorse Tax Transparency Shareholder Proposal Co-filed by FACT Coalition Member, FACT Coalition, 2022-05-25
- Pay for Performance Is Broken: The 100 Most Overpaid CEOs Report Shows, As You Sow, 2023-02-15
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Publishes The 100 Most Overpaid CEOs report, which identifies the most overpaid executives and the money managers that approved their pay packages, and encourages foundations and public funds to adopt stringent proxy voting guidelines on compensation.
Organized a November 2023 investor statement, endorsed by 136 investors representing $4.5 trillion in assets, calling on US companies to take steps toward paying a living wage, and uses it in company engagements through its Advancing Worker Justice program.
Publicizes and tracks shareholder proposals asking large US multinationals to report tax and operational data on a country-by-country basis, and reports the vote results.
7 campaigns on record
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.
Take concrete steps toward paying all workers a living wage sufficient to afford a decent standard of living, and task board compensation committees with closing the gap between chief executive and median worker pay.
Result: not stated in source
Publicly report tax payments and operational data for each country in which the company operates.
Result: 14 percent of outstanding shareholders at ExxonMobil, 14 percent at Chevron, 17 percent at ConocoPhillips and 21.4 percent of independent shareholders at Amazon, in votes held in May 2023.
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.
Publicly disclose information about offshore operations and tax practices on a country-by-country basis.
Result: Cisco: 27 percent of shareholders, representing $38.3 billion. Microsoft: investors representing more than $305 billion voted in favor; percentage not stated in source.
Asked the company to address housekeeping starting wages cited at $12.00/hour against a benchmark $20.40/hour living wage, alongside racial-representation gaps in leadership and a large CEO-to-median-worker pay ratio (cited at 346 to 1).
Result: Vote percentage not confirmed in the sources retrieved for this research. Filed under SEC Rule 14a-8.
we found no documented change confirmed in the sources retrieved.
Cost Externalization: A Bad Trade for Diversified Shareholders, Proxy Preview
Asked the company to address a starting wage described as more than 32% below a 2019 calculation of a living wage, on the argument that poverty wages impose costs (public-assistance reliance, turnover, lower consumer spending) that diversified shareholders ultimately bear.
Result: Vote percentage not confirmed in the sources retrieved for this research. Filed under SEC Rule 14a-8.
we found no documented change confirmed in the sources retrieved.
Cost Externalization: A Bad Trade for Diversified Shareholders, Proxy Preview
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 UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.