Tesla (which has had a rough year in terms of reports of racial equity in the workplace) will face a vote on a civil rights audit proposal on August 4th. Proposals at UPS, Wells Fargo, Nike, and Oracle received over 30% of the vote, while similar proposals at Berkshire Hathaway, Alphabet, Comcast and Intel all did poorly. The proposals nearly passed at Chevron (48%), Charter Communications (45%), and Anthem (41%). Amazon, Apple, Home Depot, and Johnson & Johnson are committed to conduct audits (note: Amazon’s proposal vote was withdrawn after the company agreed to a racial equity audit ). In the 2022 proxy season, 17 companies on the F100 faced such shareholder proposals. Will they endure?Īnother trend continuing this season is shareholder pressure to conduct civil rights or racial equity audits, or to increase their diversity reporting.

However, Microsoft has agreed to begin disclosing the pay gap to avoid future proposals.Ĭivil rights audits / diversity reporting continue. The proposal fared better at Microsoft though it was not successful with 40% of votes. At Apple, Amazon, and Cigna the proposals earned around 30% of votes, and 18% at Nike. At two of the F100, the pay gap report proposals succeeded: Walt Disney and Lowe’s. This year, seven F100 companies faced pay gap disclosures. According to activist investor Arjuna Capital, three others have voluntarily committed to disclosing unadjusted pay gaps in 2022: Microsoft, Home Depot, and Target. Only a handful - Pfizer, Citigroup, Dow, and American Express - disclose their median pay gap (the so-called unadjusted pay gap), reflecting the difference in typical earnings between women and men or white and BIPOC employees. By our count, 23 of the F100 currently disclose their pay equity statistic, also known as their adjusted pay gap, comparing workers in similar roles and location to get a statistically controlled difference between groups. They’ve been featured in the proxy season since 2015. Shareholder proposals requiring companies to disclose both adjusted and unadjusted pay gaps isn’t anything new. In these cases, shareholders are showing strong support, and many companies are taking proactive measures to ward off the necessity of taking such decisions to a vote next year. The big takeaway? Social reporting proposals not only passed for several companies, but what’s equally interesting is the impact on companies where they aren’t yet passing.

To get some insight into the appetite for these proposals, we analyzed* the proposal and voting trends for the Fortune 100’s 2022 proxy season. This year, we were watching two types of shareholder proposals with great interest: those requiring unadjusted pay gap disclosures, and those proposing either racial equity audits or disclosure of workforce demographic statistics.

Proxie pay