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.
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?
Narrator: The Republican politicians did not listen.
Obligatory fuck Reagan
98%?? I love costco
Yeah I was on the fence about getting a Costco membership since I am single and dont shop much.
But just for the few times I need stuff that is available at Costco I will get a membership.
Even if I end up paying a little more overall.
$1.50 hotdog & soda too! The CEO said he’d rather burn the company to the ground than increase that price.
And they are large hotdogs. I eat lunch there more than I should.
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.
Thanks! Your stock is surprisingly cheap and seems to have cratered since its hay days in 2021. Oh well, good for me.
I honestly believe the stock is undervalued. I hope to help take you to the moon! 🚀
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.
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.
I don’t understand the hate on DEI initiates.
It’s hate, that’s all.
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.
Lol no, they killed literal civilians, the ones they swore to protect
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.
The backlash against DEI is at the individual level imo. How people feel is the reality, see the economy (which is also an attribute of using the wrong metrics to measure performance as it relates to the consumer but that is a different topic).
Let’s see if I can explain it: So let’s say you’re an average white guy, and you know your company has a DEI program. You feel like you work very hard, or at least as hard as everyone else in your workplace, but you see that your minority coworkers get promotions or that the new hire for a better paid position than yours is a minority you start to feel as though you’re getting passed over because of your identity. This could be because it is a diverse workplace and so the best people for the promotion may just happen to be of other races or women. It could also be actual racism which I’m sure happens but it’s probably very very rare. But that doesn’t matter, what matters is that you see people who are different from you getting promoted, and you don’t particularly feel they are better than you.
Then you maybe look a little bit into what the theory behind DEI is and you learn that it’s proponents argue that there is systemic favoritism towards white straight males which is why if you have two equally capable candidates but one is white and the other is a minority, you should choose the minority. As a straight white male you won’t feel (and frankly should not, I’m sorry) that you are responsible for your advantage in society, so what you’ll feel is that now you’re the disadvantage one and that DEI is just racism against white straight males. It isn’t but that doesn’t change how the individual feels.
My personal opinion is that DEI is more of a bandaid than a solution and some of the backlash is warranted. The real solution is for people to have equal opportunity at the lowest level, meaning education. There’s no reason for some schools to be better than others, and less for that difference to arise from the value of the houses in the schools district. Of course Trump and co will not fix it either because they campaigned on destroying the education system because they seemingly want a slave caste or something. But if everyone had equal access to good schools and colleges, I don’t think DEI as it is implemented in most orgs would be needed.
Edit: this was supposed to be a reply to @[email protected]
There’s a fundamental truth that certain white people (i would say over 50%) who don’t believe they are racist - will never hire a non-white person for a position, and they aren’t even consciously aware that this is the case.
There’s just a natural subconscious bias towards people that look and sound like you do. DEI helps to overcome that.
I work at a pretty progressive company (comparatively but definitely not perfect) and DEI there has nothing to do with preferential treatment, nor does it need to be.
The fact is that if you want to hire the top X people in the labor market, but your hiring and business practices exclude, say, half of that market, you absolutely will not get the actual top X. You will have to reach deeper into your half and be forced to pick people that are less qualified and/or capable.
So DEI, at least where I’m at, is about widening that pool so that you can actually get top talent. That means reevaluating your business practices to figure out why you’re excluding top talent. Maybe your recruiters always go to specific colleges for recruitment and certain websites. Maybe just the way they’re talking to candidates is more attractive to a certain type of person. Maybe you’ve got hiring requirements and an interview process that is not actually predictive of success. Maybe candidates are looking for some benefit that you’re not offering. Everything needs to be looked at.
For example, “Women just want more flexible working arrangements so that’s why we can’t get them” is something I hear often. Well, have you actually evaluated why your company is so inflexible? Is it actually necessary? Or are your executives a bunch of people who learned how to manage in the 20th century and haven’t changed since then? Maybe there are things you can do to enter the 21st century and make room for more women, not just because they’re women, but because you gain access to people who are actually better at their job than the ones you’ve had. Not every company can be supremely flexible, of course, but the number of times that inflexibility is actually necessary of much smaller than its prevalence.
The demographic breakdown of your workforce is a quick and easy weathervane to help figure out how these efforts but of course they’re not everything. Diversity comes in maybe forms, not just skin color and genitals. But in my company they’re used in a backwards looking manner, to see how new policies are working, not for quota filling and preferential treatment.
