Three publicly traded Atlanta businesses face challenges from their shareholders as they demand an overhaul of the companies’ diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
These proposals come after the Supreme Court ruled on race-conscious college admission policies.
National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), one of Coca-Cola’s stockholders and a right-leaning think tank organization requested the board to commission and create a report if the company engaged in any form of DEI practices “that may create risks of discriminating against individuals who might sue the Company … for illegal discrimination on the basis of protected categories like race and sex,” including the possible cost to the business if discrimination occurred.
NCPPR’s Scott Shepard shared that “our central goal is to get corporations to get out of high-risk, low-reward activities that aren’t directly connected to their fundamental business purpose.”
Shepard is also the director of the Free Enterprise Project (FEP), which opposes “the woke takeover of American corporate life.”
For the NCPPR, while DEI initiatives protect one sector of society, these are also discriminatory on race, sex, or orientation, as they may exclude men, white people, or straight employees.
Shepard criticized Coca-Cola for failing to perform its fiduciary duty by not exploring the risks of implementing such DEI programs.
However, the Coca-Cola board opposed NCPPR, and argued that “We believe that a diverse, equitable and inclusive workplace that is well-prepared to understand, assess and engage with the markets and consumers we serve is a strategic business priority and critical to the Company’s success and that our efforts to achieve this are consistent with applicable law.”
The shareholders of Home Depot, on the other hand, proposed that the company enumerate donations of $5,000 or more on its website, questioning the million-dollar gift it provided to the nonprofit Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law amid the protests of the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
The National Legal Policy Center also proposed a similar resolution requiring the home improvement company to publicize its political and partisan donations.
As expected, the Home Depot junked both resolutions.
With UPS, a shareholder advanced a proposal for the company to create a report on the effectiveness of such equity initiatives and provide data on ” “workforce diversity, hiring, promotion, and retention of employees, including data by gender, race, and ethnicity.”
The resolution also did not pass.
According to research, companies with diversity and equity policies profited better.
In a global analysis led by McKinsey in 2023, companies with gender or ethnic sensitivity programs have a 39 percent likelihood of financially outperforming their rivals who avoided DEI protocols.
Since 2020, according to the Conference Board, companies received a push from the workforce to implement diversity.
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: The Raging Patriot
This content is courtesy of, and owned and copyrighted by, https://theragingpatriot.org and its author. This content is made available by use of the public RSS feed offered by the host site and is used for educational purposes only. If you are the author or represent the host site and would like this content removed now and in the future, please contact USSANews.com using the email address in the Contact page found in the website menu.