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.
98%?? I love costco
Welcome to Costco. I love you.
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.
FYI: for normal corporations (i.e. not ones with individual majority stockholders like Musk) shareholder votes are almost always dominated by votes from the big mutual funds, and the managers of those funds always vote for whatever the board recommends as a matter of policy. The actual mom & pop investors who own the shares through those mutual funds in their 401(k)s etc. are entirely disenfranchised.
In other words, the actual owners of Costco had mostly fuck-all to do with this. We’re just lucky that Costco’s board of directors isn’t terrible, for once.
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.
“fuck Trump” is pretty politically correct.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
As a straight, white male, I think DEI is fantastic.
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.
Only 2% of Coscosians are racist…Coscosians are Costco Shareholders.
Remember, the Senate is DEI for white suburbia.
And the hot dog is still the same price.
The whole dei firing thing doesn’t make any sense. It’s not like unqualified people were hired.
Actually, that’s exactly what they think.
The anti-DEI crowd thinks exclusively in zero-sum outcomes. There is exactly one Best Candidate for a position, who happens to look like them. If a different candidate is hired, then the whole process is obviously unfair, because they didn’t hire the one
whiteright candidate.Right. Not sure why I used logic…
Once again, Costco surprises me with basic human decency that is largely missing in the corporate world. I know it’s not a high bar, not as if they’re on the forefront of progressivism, or anything. But it’s well beyond the average in the profit-driven and labor grinding society, and that sort of corporate action, among their other positives as an employer, should be recognized and supported. Good on you, Costco.
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 @danc4498@lemmy.world
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.
That sounds like a good and well thought out DEI program. But there are also DEI programs that were just quotas. I’m not saying they are the majority or even common but just one lends credence to the “it’s racism” narrative.
…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).
I mean, I guess, yeah, the wrong metrics issue is a little tangential, but papering over the spiraling inequality sure isn’t helping the proverbial white working-class guy stop misattributing his failure to get ahead.
Rare corporate W
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.
I commented this earlier but quite a few corps that tend to beat the market in returns have not abandoned DEI initiatives. These are corporations that will not bat an eye to plunge thousands into poverty or worse to save .007 cents on manufacturing costs. This tells you that they believe that DEI has some tangible value on their performance whether it’s through marketing opportunity or because their workforce is actually better.
But I think abandoning DEI for many companies is the right choice, as bad DEI is magnitudes worse than no DEI.
I would a source to back this up if possible please.
Apple, Microsoft, Costco, and I don’t know if they are mentioned there but JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs too.
Nothing there, asides from corelation with capitalism being bad. Dei doesn’t seem to factor into your claim there.
Maybe I didn’t understand. For which comment do you want source on?
I wish you would better articulate what part of this you would like me to address because I believe the link I shared addressed this. Use words, or highlight the specific statement you’d like me to clarify.
You said these corps that like DEI are happy to plunge thousands into poverty. That is what I need a source for that DEI is the root cause of this, not just shitty corpos in general.
