Target 8.5: Full employment, decent work, equal pay
By 2030, achieve full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
Employers set pay, hiring and job quality. The ILO reports global unemployment steady at 4.9 percent in 2024, with women facing disproportionately larger jobs gaps. The conduct of large listed employers is therefore decisive for equal pay and decent work within the formal economy. Shareholder voting has a documented track record. Arjuna Capital's pay-gap proposal won 58 percent at Lowe's in 2022 and 51 percent at Kroger in 2023. After the Lowe's vote, the company disclosed median gender and racial pay gaps. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility runs a standing worker justice program that presses companies on living wages, freedom of association, paid sick leave and protections for gig and platform workers. Employer lobbying on wage and scheduling rules is a contributor rather than the blocking obstacle. Owners can move equal pay and job quality at listed employers, as the Lowe's and Kroger votes show. 'Full and productive employment for all', however, is set mostly by macroeconomic policy and by the informal economy where most of the world's workers are employed, so corporate conduct is a necessary input and governments must also act.
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
- World Employment and Social Outlook: Trends 2025 in figures, International Labour Organization, 2025-01
- Following Majority Shareholder Vote, Lowe's Releases Racial and Gender Pay Gap Data, Arjuna Capital via Business Wire, 2022-12-14
- A Majority of Kroger's Investors Vote for Racial & Gender Pay Equity Proposal at Annual Meeting, Arjuna Capital via Business Wire, 2023-06-22
- Advancing Worker Justice, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, accessed 2026-08-28
10 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.
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.
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
Asked Amazon to disclose its workforce turnover rates as an indicator of job quality.
Result: Amazon reported that shareholders voted against every proposal on the ballot at its May 25, 2022 annual meeting. The sources reviewed did not include the exact vote percentage for this specific proposal.
We found no documented turnover-rate disclosure published by Amazon that sources attribute to this proposal.
Asked the board to publish an analysis of what it would take to raise tipped workers' starting pay to the full state or federal minimum wage, with tips on top, rather than relying on the lower tipped minimum wage (the 'tip credit').
With Benedictine Sisters of Mount St. Scholastica
Result: 12.4% of votes cast were in favor, on a for-and-against basis excluding both broker non-votes and abstentions, at the May 12, 2022 annual meeting; the proposal did not pass. The SEC Form 8-K reports 1,697,217 votes for, 11,951,398 against, 216,418 abstentions and 1,477,256 broker non-votes; including abstentions in the denominator gives 12.2%.
We found no documented change to Dine Brands' tip-credit policy following this vote. Dine Brands' board had opposed the proposal, arguing the tip credit lets servers earn above minimum wage.
Dine Brands Global, Inc. Form 8-K (Item 5.07, voting results), SEC EDGAR
Asked Walmart's board to report on whether the company's starting hourly wages for new associates are consistent with Walmart's own racial-justice commitments.
Result: 13.4% of votes cast were in favor at the June 1, 2022 annual meeting; the proposal did not pass. Filed under SEC Rule 14a-8.
We found no documented change to Walmart's starting-wage policy that any source attributes to this vote. Walmart's CEO cited an average hourly wage above $17 (as of April 2022) in opposing the proposal, not as a result of it.
Walmart Announces 2022 Annual Shareholders' Meeting Voting Results, Business Wire
Asked Amazon's board for an independent examination of the company's policies, practices and products on civil rights, equity, diversity and inclusion, including pay and advancement and the disparate racial impacts on hourly warehouse workers, and how those affect the business.
Result: Sources give slightly different figures for the same vote. The Comptroller's office reports 44.18% support, which it described as a record level of support for an environmental or social shareholder proposal at Amazon at that time. ICCR reports 44% of total shares voted and 55% of independent shareholders' shares in favor. The proposal was refiled for the 2022 proxy season and then withdrawn before that vote.
Amazon agreed to commission an independent racial equity audit led by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch. We found no documented publication of the completed audit's findings and no other resulting policy change that sources attribute to this vote.
Shareholders' ESG Proposals Make Significant Gains at Amazon, ICCR
Pressed Citigroup, through a shareholder resolution and direct engagement, to disclose its median (unadjusted, company-wide) gender and racial pay gap rather than only a narrower 'equal pay for equal work' adjusted figure.
Result: On January 16, 2019, Citigroup became the first major U.S. bank to disclose median pay gap data: women earned 29% less than men and minorities earned 7% less than non-minority employees on an unadjusted, company-wide basis.
Citigroup committed to increasing female representation in mid-to-senior roles to 40% by 2021. Separately, per HR Dive, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Mastercard, Wells Fargo and Bank of New York Mellon each agreed to work on closing pay gaps for women and non-white employees following similar shareholder pressure from Arjuna Capital, though the sources retrieved do not give those banks' specific disclosure figures.
Citigroup reveals it pays women 29 percent less than men in unprecedented disclosure, CBS News
Mondelez had already decided to move about 600 Nabisco factory jobs from Chicago's South Side to Salinas, Mexico. At the company's May 2017 annual meeting, the AFL-CIO's shareholder proposal asked the board to set up a joint labor-management committee to look at alternatives to plant closings in the future.
Result: Vote percentage not found in the sources retrieved for this research; the proposal was raised and voted on at the May 17, 2017 annual meeting. Filed under SEC Rule 14a-8.
we found no documented change: the relocation to Salinas, Mexico proceeded as planned; no source retrieved shows Mondelez reversing the move or adopting the requested labor-management committee.
Offshoring of Oreo-Maker Jobs Dominates Mondelez Shareholder Meeting, AFL-CIO
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.