Summary
Costco shareholders voted overwhelmingly (98%) against a proposal by a conservative think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research, to assess risks linked to the company’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.
Costco’s board supported DEI initiatives, dismissing the proposal as partisan and unnecessary.
This rejection contrasts with trends in other companies scaling back DEI efforts.
The vote comes amid new federal rules from Trump targeting DEI initiatives in federal agencies, potentially impacting private vendors working with the government.
What fucking risks you fucks? Hiring people with the wrong skin colors?
The news cycles since Trump won the election is fucking terrible. Every corporation is mask off and drop anything that might benefit the populace so that they go back to being cowboys and treat employees like shit.
I want to personally say fuck you to everyone that voted for Trump. I hope that you and all the members of your close circle that voted for Trump die a painful death, after being economically fucked out of any little wealth you have.
The world is better off without you cunts.
They think it’s discrimination against straight white males now and think they are going to get sued by someone with a rejected job offer because the decision may have been made due to skin colour, gender, or sexual orientation.
A gay man can sue if he was not hired because he was gay, these people think eventually a straight man can sue if he wasn’t hired because he wasn’t gay.
Which may happen with Trump in power now, I wouldn’t be surprised if he started working on laws that will allow people to do that
The gulags were populated for good reason. “Waaahhh communists killed millions in their gulags,” yeah, millions of Nazis. Yet apparently that still wasn’t enough.
Buddy, I’m with you on Communists being antifascist, but the gulags are not something to be praised. Many innocent people were sent there for simply displeasing Stalin in some way.
Yes, WW2 would have been much longer and likely unwinnable without Soviet involvement, but praising the Gulags is just picking which concentration camp you like best.
Stalin should’ve gone to the gulags.
No. The Gulags, like the Nazi concentration camps, shouldn’t have existed at all. Stalin should have been deposed and forced to live out his days in obscurity or killed outright. No one should be tortured.
Should have never come back from Siberia.
Lol no, they killed literal civilians, the ones they swore to protect
That’s because they didn’t put enough fascists in the gulags, including the ones that turned on their own people and put them in the gulags.
I think you need to read The Gulag Archipelago. Or are you going to claim that Solzhenitsyn, who was literally a battery commander in the Red Army, was also a fascist? Because I’d love some evidence of that.
Isn’t that the book Jordan Peterson keeps going on about?
You missed a couple history lessons, there, bro.
Is that who you think Stalin put in them…? Really?
Yeah he should’ve put himself in there too while he was at it. America didn’t put any fascists in gulags though, they hired them to help fascists continue the fight and they’ve been winning ever since.
Were the over 1.5 million Red Army POWs that had spent years in Nazi camps before Stalin decided they were traitors for getting captured and put in gulags for it all fascists?
I mean if we want to keep doing whataboutisms, what country today has 25% of their population in prison?
Talking about who was in the gulags in a thread about the gulags is not whataboutism and I have no idea why you think it is.
Interesting how you didn’t mention that Stalin also sent a huge number of Jews to the gulags.
What was the good reason for that?
Same reason the Nazis targetted them - they were marxists.
Well now I understand why you’re saying all the things you’re saying- disgusting bigotry.
Finally, some good fucking news
Fwiw, my company said similar. We’re not public or that big so I’m not naming it, but they have sent several broadcasts and discussed during a company meeting, that these are core values they are sticking with
Nice. My company isn’t likely to drop their DEI policies either. Public but not well-known.
Public but not well known but keeping DEI? Be nice if we could get the stock info so we can invest…
All right, I got the OK from PR. The company I work for is called Olo (stock symbol: OLO). We’re not well-known because we operate behind the scenes in the restaurant industry, enabling online food orders to appear directly in our clients’ POS systems rather than on a separate tablet. We do a lot more than that now, but those are our roots.
I think I’d best run that by our PR folks first lol
Today my CEO at a large corpo org stood in front of a packed room of minority employees and assured us that the company would continue DEI policies regardless of the government and essentially said “fuck Trump” in the most politically correct way possible. It feels good that my workplace is such a safe space. I think we’re about to find out what companies actually give a shit versus those using optics to prey on the LGBTQ community, disabled people, and racial minorities.
I also work for a large corpo org here, but instead of “DEI” we have “Belonging.” Under that label we have a council that informs and recommends things to our senior leadership, groups which offer support and community (LGBTQ+, Latinx, women, etc.), and provides learning resources. Overall I’m proud of the work we do. (I’m also proud of the two of people I’ve hired internally who were chairs in Belonging groups at some point!)
A couple months ago at a large event, someone asked if we’d be getting rid of DEI. Our Chief People Officer was able to say something to the effect of, “We’ve never had a DEI program but we are committed to continuing our Belonging practices.”
So basically we’re not backtracking on anything, and we have pretty good DEI, but because we never used the term “DEI” she was able to deflect the challenge to it. I never thought about it before that happened, but it made me wonder if it was an intentional choice to avoid the buzzword and so some of the criticism that comes of it.
Anyway, cheers to you also having a safe place of work!
“fuck Trump” is pretty politically correct.
It genuinely gladdens my heart to hear you say this, because it suggests that there is at least some length of genuinely caring about inclusion by the people in charge at your workplace; I have seen too many instances of corporations paying lip-service towards DEI whilst fostering a truly toxic workplace culture. It’s nice to hear a story from somewhere that’s different and that it makes a difference to how safe your workplace feels
My work is just packed with conservatives licking trump’s boots every news they hear
I don’t understand the hate on DEI initiates. DEI is just make sure you hire a diverse work group. So if these dei employees are bad, that’s 100% on the company for hiring them. Nobody made them hire that specific person and 99/100 times employees are bad because no one trains them.
You have to understand something about fascism’s base: its the mediocre. It really speaks to the sort of people who feel like they’re owed more (including personal achievements) but think that as a them specifically trait. It’s the sort of person who see a black woman being an engineer and think that they deserve that position not her, despite her having gone to engineering school and them having been a D student in high school who didn’t go to college or someone who failed out of an engineering program. They look at any success from historically marginalized groups as unearned because clearly they deserve that success more. And so DEI which seeks to encourage more diversity in successful positions out of an acknowledgement that diverse groups are more successful infuriates these people
I’m going to use TERFs as an analogy to explain what I think it is (and I do mean TERFs, not your garden variety transphones). There used to be a subreddit called /r/GenderCritical, before it got (rightfully) banned for hate speech. I had a look around there a few times, trying to understand their incomprehensible ideology.
At first, I only became more baffled. I saw so many stories that had the rough shape of “I am a women who was abused, victimised or otherwise oppressed by a cis man and/or men and that’s why I now hate trans women”. I just didn’t understand how those two things connected. I get that radical feminists tend to take a biologically essentialist view that undermines trans identities. However, I couldn’t understand why they put such effort into distilled down their bitterness and resentment into the vitriol to throw at trans women, as opposed to the men who hurt them (and the patriarchal systems that hurt them).
Over the years, I’ve come to understand that many TERFs have experienced trauma such that they feel powerless and small when looking at the actual cause of their systemic oppression (i.e. the patriarchy), so through a trick of transference, they direct their rage and grief onto transness instead. Fighting an already marginalised foe means that they get both the feeling of fighting something ideological that’s larger than them, but also they don’t have to confront how small they actually are when fighting against oppression (because each of us is small and helpless against systemic oppression; we can’t do shit without solidarity with other people). To be clear, I don’t consider this absolutely isn’t a legitimate excuse for someone to be an awful person; however, it does help me to understand why someone who calls themself a feminist would take such a stance (as much as I’d like to consider them “no true feminist”, I feel like I need to acknowledge the complex baggage of the term “feminist” if I’m to identify as one).
I think people who crusade against DEI initiatives are doing a similar sort of transference, where their real enemy is in fact Capitalism, but that feels like so impossible of a foe that they feel hopeless; it reminds me of that widely shared Mark Fisher quote about how it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. And so they tell themselves that there must be some big, bad, insidious force at work, making organisations opt into DEI initiatives, and it must be the same force that’s responsible for the deep unease they feel when they look at the world, or contemplate the future their grandchildren have to look forward to.
In a sense, they’re right in that there are nefarious forces at play and the game is indeed rigged. The problem is that they’ve picked the wrong target and would be better served going after the oil barons and billionairess. In terms of my background, I probably have far more in common with the average Trump voter than I do the average Democrat, so I relate to the hopelessness that their misplaced rage protects them from feeling. The tragedy is that their ignorance hurts everyone, including themselves; None of us are free until all of us are free.
I’d say this is true, but it isn’t some accidental mind trick that people pull on themselves. It is the core tenet of the right wing narrative to deflect from how capitalism is failing regular people and pin the blame on some progressive boogey man. They blame bad pay and bad jobs on immigrants “stealing” the good jobs, and now POC doing the same through DEI. They tell men it’s not their learned misogyny that is keeping them from a meaningful relationship, no, it’s the feminists with their radical ideas about equality, body autonomy, and safety. And this can go on for every I’ll brought about by the current system. The tough trick though, is that this doesn’t just fool those who believe it, it also keeps those who disagree busy fighting over bigoted bullshit, and makes it nigh impossible to build any sort of coalition
Awesome comment. Thank you! This is where something starts to become visible: the weird indirect physical and psychological violence of liberal ideology.
It’s base claim is: If everyone, as a single enlighted decent individual agent, would just play by the rules (fair markets), everything would be at it’s best. All of them shall thrive.
Now all those good christians go through life working their ass of, actually trying to be “a good person”, but after decades they have to painfully find out: It doesn’t work out. Most of them get more stressed, poorer, there’s ecological destruction, war and so on. Almost no one get’s to thrive.
As you pointed out, finding out about capitalism and (neccessarilly collectively) paving a way to more rational production and fairer distribution, is difficult. You could almost say it’s practically and ideologically out of reach. You know, because your freedoms depend on liberal individualism.
They end up with two options: 1. Look for an outside menace to the otherwise funtional market game (immigrants, jews, or heck why not trans people) 2. Get more of the same: more privatizarion, less social welfare etc.
They cling ever harder to a political decision, the more it harms them. This is brutal and sad af imo.
Real agency is possible, just not the individualist kind liberalism is successfully promising them in their despair of heteronomy.
It feels like the phase of the fantasy arc wherein the “minor bad” admits that he was lied to by the big bad, and that they believed that sacrificing 100 babies on the altar of Better Future would actually lead to a Better Future, and not summon ArchVillaeous, demon god of suffering.
Learning about the truth doesn’t mean I feel for that person being lied to. It means now I’m just angry at how willingly gullible they were. It really, really doesn’t change the act of sacrificing 100 babies.
If you read hard right tweets, you’ll see they use DEI in place of slurs for any minority. Just like critical race theory, they’ve twisted the meaning to whip up a frenzy and have something for the masses to hate.
“Kamela would be the DEI hire for President” is easier for the center to swallow than “Cmon, do we really want a [N-Word] [Synonym for Female Dog] running a white man’s show?”
Though the latter is what they mean
Same as what they did with BLM. They jump from one liberal cause to another, changing its meaning and context into something they can use to fuel their misinformation campaigns for the purpose of creating hate and fear amongst their more ignorant numbers.
Also happened to the word “woke”. Nobody says “stay woke” anymore cause they demonized the word.
Good point.
I don’t understand the hate on DEI initiates.
It’s hate, that’s all.
Hate and ignorance
Willfull ignorance at that.
It’s all about manufacturing consent to do away with the Civil Rights Act
More like getting rid of the renamed Affirmative Action. We already have an EEOC we don’t need this.
I worked at a company that made electronic devices and the diversity of the teams made it so we caught so many glitches white people would have missed before shipping. Sensors that didn’t work right because skin color or makeup. Things that even TurboHitler would have been annoyed at.
It’s illogical and short-sightedly dumb to forfeit knowledge and skill from any shape, size, color, or orientation of a human.
Haters won’t learn, I fear, until they’re truly marginalized as well.
Haters won’t learn, ever, because they will blame their shortcomings on “DEI” and “woke”.
It’s because some people only want to believe in straight white people.
I think the main issue is if you have two candidates for one job, one is white and one is black, even if the best candidate for the job is the white candidate the company might be forced to hire the black candidate to meet the DEI policies.
I have no idea if that actually happens or not, but I think that’s what the entitled white people think and get upset about. They feel is discrimination against white people now.
the company might be forced to hire the black candidate to meet the DEI policies.
This is not what actually happens though, at least not at larger companies. It’s more about treating them equally regardless of race, because the white person won’t always be the best candidate for the job.
The reality is that most of the time it’s the complete opposite. The white candidate gets chosen even though the black candidate is more qualified.
Combating this is why DEI exists in the first place. It’s also why the magats hate it. To acknowledge that DEI is necessary is to acknowledge the racism inherent in their hiring processes.
It’s mostly elites that think they’re losing elite status–which to them feels like persecution. Additionally, I do think a lot of DEI initiatives at companies are poorly designed.
It depends on the implementation and the PR …. I’ve had several conversations with my conservative brother.
I describe how it’s a strength of my company to have a “melting pot” of different perspectives, getting the best skills from all people, we work better together when everyone is safe and comfortable being who they are …. I’m specifically happy that they plucked my coworker, as a woman in a male dominated field, out of the trenches because she’s an excellent manager
My brother sees unskilled workers forced on him by management fiat. He sees having to do more to make up for their lack of ability, motivation or work ethic. He sees a double standard where they can get away with stuff that would get him fired.
I dont know how much of this is the implementation and how much is the person reacting but we have very opposite perspectives
For example, using gender discrimination, there is a great pressure to hire female workers to ensure diversity but, in some areas, there are simply no female candidates. Companies should absolutely make an effort to hire the best for their needs and keep an eye for diversity, but if they should not be forced to hire a less capable female if other capable candidates exist just because the management is being forced to hire a certain diversity target among their ranks
This is sexism in disguise.
How many females want to work in concrete? Or oil refineries? Or underwater welding? Or even in the infantry?
Females can do it. Doesn’t mean they should.
I don’t even know what point you’re trying to make but you say “females” so it’s clearly not a good one.
This is how I feel, actually. Free education and paid training can rule out the need for any DEI initiatives, no matter what color/ethnicity, they’re qualified because they received the education and training that they need.
But then again, I can understand why a white manager would rather hire a white person.
But whose to say a black manager wouldn’t do the same and just hires black people. Or any race. Wouldn’t you feel more comfortable with like minded people rather filling up your store with “diverse employees” ?
It’s a crutch that MOST people have. Like leftists only hiring leftists. Or conservatives only hiring conservatives.
Like you said, if the “diverse employee” is less qualified than his white counterpart, hire the more qualified individual.
If you’ve ever visited any VA hospital, you can see how many shitty people they hire, especially when half of the doctors are just interns. And no one gets fired.
But whose to say a black manager wouldn’t do the same and just hires black people. Or any race.
The DEI initiatives you’re talking crap about in that comment
Wouldn’t you feel more comfortable with like minded people rather filling up your store with “diverse employees” ?
Nope, I’m not a racist. Diversity of experience and opinion is almost always a good thing
Sure. If skin color and ethnicity is the deciding factor of who to hire, then it’s “almost always a good thing.”
But it’s not racist.
The fact that DEI has to become a policy is sad in and of itself.
I just don’t understand how a person can be proud of being hired based on a policy rather than being hired because they’re the best qualified individual.
It just doesn’t seem to solve the bigger problem of education and opportunities. And availability thereof.
Meh it’s alright. Just a policy that white people created so they can tell themselves that they’re not racist. Which is why you had to state it yourself.
Hey, maybe you should actually understand what DEI is and how it works before you comment on it, because it’s very clear that you dont
As a straight, white male, I think DEI is fantastic.
And the hot dog is still the same price.
Remember, the Senate is DEI for white suburbia.
Even Costco’s shareholders are based. Love it.
Only 2% of Coscosians are racist…Coscosians are Costco Shareholders.
I wonder if Costco stock is a good buy right now. Currently $937 up from $300 in 2020. A P/E of 55, with 0.5% annual dividends paid quarterly.
With the new risk of being targeted by MAGAs for a boycott, I could see that being a problem. I don’t think Costco’s survival as a corporation depends on its stock. They do stock buybacks, which is going to be artificially inflating the price a bit.
If it drops significantly, I could see it being worth the pickup. Maybe I’ll sell some long put options.
US stocks are incredibly expensive right now based on their earnings. If Trump messes up just slightly on the economy, the market will take a huge hit. To prop up the market and thereby his own ego, he’s going to try to force Powell to lower interest rates even if it’s not supported by the numbers.
He may or may not be successful. Good luck.
To prop up the market and thereby his own ego, he’s going to try to force Powell to lower interest rates even if it’s not supported by the numbers.
Ah, just like in 2019, which is why they were already at damn near 0% and had nowhere to go when the pandemic started.
(Just in case people need a reminder of where all that “covid” inflation really came from.)
I bought stock for like $650 a few years ago and then sold it at $800. Sort of regret it.
DEI is also just called “teambuilding”. All successful companies do it in some form
Shareholders or board? I think they’re one in the same since they’re mostly held by institutional investment. I’m so curious what their thought processes are.
Rare corporate W
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Sounds like your boss was the problem, not the DEI hires. But that’s okay, the racist conclusion is the most sensible one to jump to.
Yeah… No. It’s a Costco problem. Our stores general manager is best buddies with all the Costco higher up and most importantly the new CEO. So any attempt to report him or the other managers for the multiple things they were doing wrong would just end up with you getting less and less hours until you eventually quit on your own. I attempted to go over my bosses head and contact the regional manager and guess what. My hours were cut and I got a write up for something that I never did the very next week.
Again, sounds like the problem is the bosses and not the minorities who are just employees like you.
Is it really just my bosses when those minority or female employees repeatedly took advantage of the biases of those bosses once they realized how that power structure worked?
Every time we got a new hire and we saw them outside or doing shitty jobs like us we thought maybe they weren’t going to be the same but as soon as they realized they could suck up to the bosses and get outta shit constantly they would almost always take advantage of the preferential treatment. The few minority and female employees that also called them out for their shit also had their hours cut and had to leave for something else or transfer stores.
If you’re out there Ramona you were a real one homie.
Is it really just my bosses when those minority or female employees repeatedly took advantage of the biases of those bosses once they realized how that power structure worked?
Sounds like you’re not blaming your bosses, and are blaming the minority and female employees.
Blaming them for taking advantage of an imbalanced system for their own gain. Not blaming them for their race or gender. Come on now.
You’re blaming women and minorities for taking advantage of an inbalanced system but it has nothing to do with their gender or race? I agree, I blame the bosses.
Yeah, what are women doing working when they should be barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen, am I right?
they realized they could suck up to the bosses and get outta shit constantly they would almost always take advantage of the preferential treatment.
Sounds like your bosses, yeah. They couldn’t do that if not for your bosses. They’re probably paid less too, making them more valuable to the company than an expensive white boy.
There it is lol.
Took you awhile to admit you’re just racist but I’m glad you got around to it.
Also no despite me being comically over qualified for that position I was paid less than the majority of the minority and female employees there.
You’re doing everything, including calling me a racist and telling me your bosses pay you less, to not blame your bosses. Do you understand how dense that looks?
Wow that’s funny because my sample size experience tells me the exact opposite of your experience. So my experience is also representative of the entire corporation
Your store must have been a nice store. I’m happy for you. My store was not. And yes I blame the higher ups because our GM was all buddy buddy with the new CEO and the top level people at the corporate office.
Meaning any complaints against our GM went absolutely nowhere. HR wouldn’t do anything. The boss of our boss wouldn’t do anything because technically even though he was only the GM of a store he was friends with too many at the top so he sorta had immunity from the district manager as well.
I never claimed my store was representative of all the individual stores. I did say it was a problem with my store and the top level management at Costco. Not the same claim.
No you clearly blamed dei and women and minorities.
I said “Fuck Costco and DEI bullshit”. Please point to where I blamed women or minorities for either of those things.
Here! Instead of blaming management you keep bringing up women and dei
Except for the rest of that comment which you cropped out where I go on to explain what I was blaming the management for. Because itnwas the women. Specifically the minority women who sat around doing the easiest jobs at any given time because the racist and sexist management allowed them to do so if they would play along with his creepy bullshit.
Except for the very top where you blame dei lol.
People downvote you but this is what I was talking about. It doesn’t really matter whether your situation was caused by DEI or not, what matters is that you feel that it happened partially because of DEI, which you wouldn’t if officially there was no DEI program. This is where he backlash is coming from, and people don’t see it because they are too focused on what it is on paper or how it is supposed to work.
Feels over reals, huh?
Well at the individual level, what you feel is your entire reality and none of us are free of that bias. Some politicians or leaders are better than others of taking this feeling and coalescing it into a narrative that drives you to action. The current wave of discontent can be very much be woven into a liberal or left wing (I really don’t like the terms right or left, they are mostly meaningless in current year) narrative that inspires action but instead liberals have become the agents of stagnation in a way and the people saw that, and being low information voters that they are, they chose the only alternative that was at least promising to change things in a big way. They (like always) just didn’t pay enough attention to the fine print to see what the big changes actually entailed.
If I applaud one thing about Trump is that more or less he’s delivering what he promised, albeit with total disregard for public order, safety or legality.
what you feel is your entire reality
No, what I infer from evidence is “my” (everyone’s) reality. I am perfectly aware that my feelings and perceptions can be very flawed. That’s why magic tricks and optical illusions work.
You can “feel” that there’s a bridge across the canyon all you want. You’ll still fall to your death trying to cross it.
Feelings are not reality and do not project your own issues onto others.
I’m not projecting anything. And I think your analogy is apt and does not really refute what I said. Someone could well believe with all their might that there’s a bridge and fall to their death. But the fact that they believed it so much that they tried to cross it against all reason means that to them the bridge was real. This is why I said “at the individual level”. Your truth is not the Truth, but it is still the truth for you until you somehow discover that your belief was wrong. Some never find out, others find out too late to reverse course and fall to their death.
You are 100% projecting. I do not trust my feelings, so my feelings are not reality. Things are not real to me just because I believe they are real. I do my best to get external confirmation.
Your truth is not the Truth, but it is still the truth for you until you somehow discover that your belief was wrong.
Again, projection. I do not automatically accept something is true just because I believe it is true. I come to most situations assuming my belief is wrong and get it confirmed.
You are not me and you do not know how I think and I know that not because I believe it but because I have had enough confirmation in my life that there is no such thing as a psychic.
Belief is not knowledge and it will never be knowledge.
Well when I say you I do not mean you specifically I’m talking about anyone. I’m talking about the indefinite “you” as it were. I can see now how it would be misunderstood, my bad.
But I would argue that in your case that your belief that you are free from false beliefs in all your beliefs because you do not trust your feelings is proof of my assertion. I don’t think it’s possible for any person can make that claim unless they thoroughly dissected every single feeling they feel through the day every day. Sounds exhausting and impossible.
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A corporation not being absolute trash. Let’s hope they deal fairly with their unionized employees.
Not just the corporation, but their shareholders. Republicans have been worshipping at the altar of Shareholder Value since the 80’s.
Here you go, these shareholders just told you what they value! Will Republicans listen?
Obligatory fuck Reagan
Republicans: Not like that.
Narrator: The Republican politicians did not listen.
I want Samuel L for my narrator on this one.
Say “what” again.
Say “what” again.
Not just the corporation, but their shareholders.
The “shareholders” are mostly just Vanguard/Black Rock/etc. mutual fund managers who always vote for whatever the board recommends. So yes, just the corporation.
Shareholder revolts against board proposals are exceedingly rare, and basically only happen when some individual rich fuck owns way too many shares.
Right, but those mutual fund managers don’t just vote “yes” because they aren’t paying attention. If anything, they are paying lots of attention, and get special treatment, since they own so much of the company, and were likely consulted ahead of this move.
And they are most definitely not bleeding-heart liberals. If they voted for this proposal it’s because they think it will lead to better outcomes for the company.
If anything, they are paying lots of attention, and get special treatment, since they own so much of the company
Let’s be clear about this: the fund managers own nothing. They are employed to manage the mutual funds that other people – you and me and everybody else with a retirement account – actually own. They disenfranchise us, the actual owners.
(Yes, technically, it’s true that the individual company shares are owned by the corporate entity of the mutual fund itself, and that what the mom & pop investors technically own shares in that fund. But that does not make it fair to say that anybody but the mom & pop investors deserve to vote the individual company shares, because it’s their money that’s being used for the whole thing!)
And they are most definitely not bleeding-heart liberals. If they voted for this proposal it’s because they think it will lead to better outcomes for the company.
If keeping DEI is better, why didn’t they demand it for all the other corporations whose boards didn’t propose keeping it? The answer is, again, the fund managers almost always just rubber-stamp the board. To claim that fund managers are actually forming their own opinion on the efficacy of DEI and influencing corporate governance accordingly is simply not true.
In theory, mutual fund managers are acting on mutual fund share holders’ behalf. In practice, “shareholders” of most large corporations are effectively asleep at the wheel – the investment industry literally calls shares held in index funds “dumb money” – and boards of directors can do pretty much whatever the fuck they want. In the era of huge mutual funds, especially index funds where the even the choice of which companies to own shares in is no longer a feedback mechanism, the check & balance of shareholder control is basically broken.
The fix is “pass-through voting,” by the way:
To claim that fund managers are actually forming their own opinion on the efficacy of DEI and influencing corporate governance accordingly is simply not true.
That may a fair take, but take a moment to turn that around. The fact that fund managers are not forming their own opinion against the efficacy of DEI and influencing corporate governance accordingly is a sign that it’s simply not as harmful as Republicans let on, and may actually be helpful. Because they know how to wield that influence if they feel they need to in order to preserve their funds’ value.
I didn’t say not forming their own opinion “against;” I said “on” – i.e., not forming their own opinion about the topic at all, in either direction. It is not an argument that can be “turned around” in the way you claim.
When boards oppose DEI, fund managers support the board. When boards support DEI, fund managers support the board. My point this entire time has been that there is no influence being wielded here. The companies that are cancelling DEI policies are doing so on their own boards’/execs’ initiative with no meaningful shareholder control, and the companies that are keeping DEI policies are likewise doing so on their own boards’/execs’ initiative with no meaningful shareholder control.
I hadn’t thought about it quite like this before, so thank you for your comment
YoU sAy ShArEhOlDeRs, I sAy RaDicAl LeFt OpErAtIvEs
