Protesters for and against affirmative action demonstrate on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Ge)
New York: For conservative groups, losing big at company annual meetings is still winning.
That’s because their growing presence at the shareholder gatherings is simultaneously disrupting management plans and generating headlines, even as their proposals to end corporate diversity programmes attract scant support from investors.
Each year, companies face hundreds of resolutions from progressive groups to change their policies to be more supportive of employee diversity, labour rights and other social issues.
Until 2022, there were just a few proposals from groups that opposed these initiatives. But as the backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) has intensified in the United States, the number of so-called anti-DEI proposals have multiplied.
There were 42 proposals filed this year by prominent conservative investors that are considered anti-DEI, compared with just one in 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Although they make up more than a third of the resolutions related to social issues filed in 2024, overall support for anti-DEI resolutions averaged 2% this year – a fraction of the 18.5% backing for pro-DEI proposals.
But the conversations the resolutions generate can have “as much of an impact” as the vote itself, according to Luke Perlot, whose National Legal Policy Centre (NLPC) was one of the leading anti-DEI filers this year.
“We come in and we start hitting them from the right with proposals that are pretty much anti to proposals being brought by the left, and it’s almost like they can now cancel each other out,” Perlot said.
For him, the gap between the support levels for pro- and anti-DEI resolutions is further evidence that corporate America has moved “mostly to one side and is neglecting the other side of these issues”.
Conservative filers led by NLPC and the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR) submitted 62% of this year’s anti-DEI proposals. It’s a coordinated campaign to target certain companies including Boeing Co, Alphabet Inc and PepsiCo Inc.
The effort comes as corporate America grapples with a slew of complaints and lawsuits that have taken aim at diversity practices following the Supreme Court’s decision last year to ban affirmative action programmes in college admissions.
One of the anti-DEI initiatives that garnered the largest backing was a request from NCPPR for Boeing to report on the risks created by its DEI strategy.
Some 5.3% of shareholders supported that proposal.
It was among three anti-DEI resolutions to reach the 5% threshold required by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for a shareholder to file the same proposal twice over a five-year period.
The proxy effort isn’t anti-DEI, it’s “pro-fiduciary” and aimed at returning companies to “neutrality”, according to Stefan Padfield, director of the Free Enterprise project at NCPPR.
Groups such as NCPPR say their proposals are formulated to ensure business leaders are considering whether their DEI initiatives detract from the company’s fiscal responsibility, and any legal and reputational risks risks associated with those programmes.
Progressive activist groups label these proposals anti-DEI because they often ask companies to consider whether a policy favours workers of colour over other groups, rather than asking the companies to ensure they are treating Black and Hispanic workers fairly.
That sometimes means the nuance can be difficult to detect in the language of the proposal’s summary. A language analysis by Bloomberg found that the wording in proposals from pro-DEI and anti-DEI shareholders was very similar, despite their opposing objectives.
On certain topics – like slave labour in the Congo or human rights in China – the wording can even suggest a common cause.
Creating that confusion can be part of the strategy from these groups whose main objective is not to win broader investor support, but to pressure companies, said Heidi Welsh, who runs the non-profit Sustainable Investments Institute, and has been monitoring shareholder votes for more than three decades.
She tracked more than 80 proposals from conservative groups this year that object to environmental, social and governance topics, including DEI. These recommendations are coming at it from “a wreck-the-system perspective”, she added.
“There are people who are actually serious about this and are making policy proposals that they think will make things better,” Welsh said.
And there are anti-DEI groups that “just want to blow it up”. — Bloomberg
