1mo ago

Costco shuts down shareholders demand to ditch DEI hiring practices

www.independent.co.uk Costco shuts down shareholders demand to ditch DEI hiring practices

‘Our Board has considered this proposal and believes that our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary,’ Costco stated

Summary

Costco’s board rejected a shareholder proposal to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, arguing they foster respect, innovation, and cultural alignment with customers and employees.

Shareholders claimed DEI could lead to lawsuits citing "illegal discrimination" against white, Asian, male, or straight employees, referencing legal cases like Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

Costco countered that its DEI efforts comply with the law and enhance its culture, rejecting claims of legal risk.

The proposal will be voted on at Costco's January 23 shareholder meeting.

157 comments

Like great that Costco shut this down, because of decency and what is right but also… good fucking god the bar is so low.
- I also forgot to say that a new Costco recently went in in my city, bulldozed yet another black neighborhood. So excuse me while I see some PR covering up some structurally racist hubris. Like i said, the bar is exceedingly low.
  
  If they were going to bulldoze an inner city neighborhood, it's likely that neighborhood was going to be predominantly black whether they like it or not. The white flight phenomenon predates Costco by a wide margin, and that fuckery already happened decades ago. While there were already inroads to corralling the country's black population in cities around the turn of the century, the ball really got rolling on that in the post-war period following WW2 with redlining, block busting, widespread segregation prior to the civil rights movement, and the white middle class retreating to the then-new suburbs.

DEI sounds like an incredibly easy and cheap policy to follow if you weren't already shitheels to begin with.
- The worst things about DEI is that it has become politicized. What was once another boring HR policy about being fair at work, is now weapon for idiots it get all upset about.
  
  The thing is, DEI was always going to become political. Evey single conservative is some level of white supremacist.
  You cannot hold conservative beliefs and also be a fan of diversity, equity, or inclusion.
  The conservative mind sees people as all innately fitting into social hierarchies. And brown people are always at the bottom.
  Trying anything that changes that hierarchy is seen as a direct attack on conservativism. Because in a very real way, it is. Which is the fucking point. DEI policies were a subtle attack on white supremacy via capitalism.
  The argument was that companies that practiced DEI made more money.
  It worked for a time, but the jackasses would rather throw money away than abandon their social hierarchies.
  They're kind of mask off about it all now.
  
  How was DEI not politicized from the very beginning? It was literally born out of the civil rights movement.

First the hotdogs, now this. Go Costco management, go.
- Don't forget the $5 rotisserie chicken! And paying their employees a livable wage too!
  
  And paying their employees a livable wage too!
  Honestly, that needs to be at the top of the list.
  It shows that it is possible for a company to be very profitable without having to shit on its workers.

Nice. Some good news for a change.
- Don't get used to it.
  
  I like you.

Hey pieces of shit that proposed this, please don't boycott Costco. ! Pleasssseee!!! It would be such a bummer to have shorter lines and to not see you dragging your shitty kids around the store by the arm with you're cart full of cheese and camo jackets.
- What's wrong with a cart full of cheese? I haven't bulk bought cheese in my adult life, but I have bought several bars and several bags of shredded cheese at the same time. I'd do it again, too!
  
  Just the illiteration... Cheese away, my friend!

Shareholders can go get fucked, Costco, do the right thing.
- Costco is one of the very few for profit publicly traded companies that seem to have their head on straight.
  If you haven't already, listen to Acquired's episode on Costco.
  One of my favorite quotes that I'm going to butcher: raising prices is like a drug. Once you start doing it, it's hard to stop. We choose to find value and savings the hard way and to keep our prices competitive. Raising prices is the last thing we do.
  
  I worked there for a few years in college!

You wouldnt think that people who are anti-dei would invest in companies like costco.
Costco has, notoriously, been very "woke", since before they were even told what woke was or to hate it by fox news.
- Costco has, notoriously, been very “woke”
  Like seizing the means of $1.50 hotdog production?
  
  “I came to (Sinegal) once and I said, ‘Jim, we can’t sell this hot dog for a buck fifty," Jelineck said, according to 425 Business. "We are losing our rear ends.’ And he said, ‘If you raise (the price of the) effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out.’ That’s all I really needed."
  I don't have a dog in this race (I've never had a Costco membership), but this quote makes me feel like Costco's leadership has at least one of their priorities straight.

The shareholders argued that the Supreme Court ruling in the case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard found that Harvard’s use of race when choosing who to admit to the school violated the 14th Amendment.
We are just gonna keep paying a godawful price for allowing this vile stacked court.
- For as long as you're alive anyway.
  
  Or until someone Luigi's them during a progressive's term. Not that that will ever happen. The progressive term, not the other thing.
  
  My kids will be suffering from these policies long after I'm gone.
  It takes a long time to rebuild systems and protections.
  And very little time or effort to destroy them..

Hiring is one of the places DEI belongs, I only have a problem when it dictates creative endeavors.
Good on Costco. Get fucked shareholders
- Depends on how it's presented. If it's tied to strict quotas in terms of hiring then that can cause a lot of issues as well.
  
  True it would be awkward to be in the situation where you have a white male candidate who exceeds the qualifications, and a black female candidate who barely meets them.... Doubly so if DEI people are pressuring you to deliver, but unfortunately your company is in a position where it absolutely needs someone who can give them a homerun.
  Now I'm not saying white male candidates are always more qualified than black female candidates. I know someone will take this comment that way. What I'm saying is, talent doesn't care what color you are before it decides to bestow itself upon you, unfortunately DEI Hiring practices do.

Sounds like there's one company that cares more about employees than Nazi investors.
- Bruh..

let's not hire people from color to avoid lawsuits about racism
Awesome proposal

Costco knows their customers stan DEI because on average they’re more wealthy and educated.
- Doubt it. Costco as a corporation has been very employee-friendly for a long time. I've heard Costco employees call the job a career killer because many who have aspirations for another career after they finish their degree (I've heard they have good education programs too) wind up working for Costco corporate because the pay and benefits are so good and Costco prefers to promote from within when possible.
  
  How would that be a career killer? That’s a career.
  
  Golden Handcuffs

Ok, but biggest owners are Blackrock & Vanguard megavultures (like all the everythings).
The proposal came from a racists NCPPR group, so without significant support & the board just jumped at the free PR opportunity.
- How is Vanguard a mega-vulture? Their ownership stake derives from their index funds, which make up American retirement funds like 401ks and IRAs. They mostly vote according to board recommendations, but have increasingly tried to offer customers other voting options.
  
  You might be able to answer this for me as I don’t really understand.
  What is the value of shareholders for massive corporations? Is it that they fund retirements of future generations?
  Surely there has got to be a better way. The way I see companies structured with shareholders seems to inevitably make the product or service worse due to demand for increase growth and return for shareholders and it really frustrates me.
- Thanks for the quick deep dive nfo

Pressure from the rich racist fucks who own everything. Something is clearly wrong with them.
- Technically, shareholder votes allow everyone who owns a stock share to vote. I regularly vote on Volkswagen, VYM, and others because a third of my savings are in stocks. It ain't much but it's honest work.
  With that in mind, that means these votes very well could be from racist common folks, which is an even more grim scenario.
  
  Common folks don't own very much of the stock market.
  Three Wall Street firms control the majority share of 95% of S&P500 companies
- Costco stock price is about $930, so to become "a group of shareholders", you'd technically need three people to spend that much money and then start making their demands.
  Or at least I wasn't able to find how large this "group of shareholders" was. If it had been a significantly large one, Costco wouldn't have been able to brush it off so easily, I believe.
  
  It's a stupid conservative activist organization, not some random investors.
  Costco's most recent "Notice of Annual Meeting of Shareholders," which contains information about business matters that will be voted on at the January 23, 2025 meeting, included an anti-DEI shareholder proposal that was submitted by the National Center for Public Policy Research.
  Value Edge Advisors describes the National Center for Public Policy Research as a "reprehensible radical right" organization that has a history of filing anti-DEI lawsuits against various companies, including Starbucks, Nasdaq, and more. Its funders include right-wing groups like the Coors foundation.
  https://boingboing.net/2024/12/28/costco-claps-back-at-reprehensible-radical-right-organizations-anti-dei-demand.html

I still don't understand why everyone's so obsessed with Dale Earnhardt, Inc. He's been dead for over 20 years.
- Reminds me of Fans Against Gordon.

With Jelinek no longer at the reins, this might be the beginning of the end for Costco's progressiveness. It'll depend on which shitbirds are pushing for the anti-DEI resolution. Jelinek would have told them to go fuck themselves, much as he did throughout his tenure when there were pushes for typical line-goes-up enshittification policies.
- How long until after the founder dies until the $1.50 hotdogs go away.
  I wouldn't be surprised if they did it before he was buried.
  
  Jelinek wasn't a founder, they're long gone. He was CEO from 2010 or so until last spring when a large part of the growth occurred.

A lot of the votes are controlled by mutual fund managers and investment firms - this could go bonkers.
- this could go bonkers
  In what sense? I doubt that the voting or its consequences will be particularly dramatic regardless of the outcome. Costco wouldn't be the first company to keep a DEI program, and it wouldn't be the first company to ditch one either. In both cases, most outrage will probably come from a small but vocal group of people on the internet rather than anyone who could have a significant economic effect on Costco's bottom line.
  (There's a small chance that the outcome snowballs into a public-relations problem, but I'm not sure what the safer outcome is in that context. Probably keeping the program, at least because maintaining the status quo attracts less attention, but with Trump as president, who knows...)

It's a conservative activist organization, not some random investors.
Costco's most recent "Notice of Annual Meeting of Shareholders," which contains information about business matters that will be voted on at the January 23, 2025 meeting, included an anti-DEI shareholder proposal that was submitted by the National Center for Public Policy Research.
Value Edge Advisors describes the National Center for Public Policy Research as a "reprehensible radical right" organization that has a history of filing anti-DEI lawsuits against various companies, including Starbucks, Nasdaq, and more. Its funders include right-wing groups like the Coors foundation.
https://boingboing.net/2024/12/28/costco-claps-back-at-reprehensible-radical-right-organizations-anti-dei-demand.html
- If they're a nonprofit, they should lose their status. And their funders' corporate charters should be revoked.

I see Costco as simply a place to buy groceries but I got to give them credit for not giving into culture war bullshit.

OMG, a capitalist structure that succeeds through ethical practices? The world ends.../s

The shareholders are clowns.

Costco W

Okay... but "Shareholders" means just one group of its many shareholders. It's not like they are rejecting the consensus of their shareholders or something.
I could buy some shares and then send them a letter suggesting they leave the wholesale food market and they could reject that proposal.

I think a MAGA-tard boycott would be just fine.
- Oh please, please do boycott them, maga. Not having to shop alongside them sounds great to me.
  Might even make finding a parking spot take one less lap around the lot.
  Gas line will still stretch nearly to the street, but oh well.

Good for them. There are some serious issues with current DEI policies, but too many places are folding to political pressure and throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

I thought costco was a worker owned co-op? When did it get motherfucking shareholders?
- You might be thinking of WinCo.
- Uh, the year 2000?
- What? That hasn't been the case...

God, I love Costco

Trump isn't even in office and it's already this bad.

I wonder how long until this makes it to the toxic YouTube cycle.

I hope they intend to eat the board at the earliest possible opportunity
- They could always grind them up to make into those $1.50 hot dogs.
  
  Did you misunderstand who's the asshole here, or are you siding with the shareholders who called for the termination of DEI?
  Costco’s board rejected a shareholder proposal to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies

Replace "shareholders" with "racist trolls" to get a better picture of what happened.

At least Costco isn't building planes.

You truly need top racial talent to…. Stock shelves?

I think DEI was good in practice but has been awful in execution.
- Which company? Every company is implementing it differently.
  I'm skeptical that every company that hired some suit to sit being a DEI title did it for anything more then appearances or that every company even needs a dedicated position to handle it when a memo to HR could suffice, but what examples can you cite that have been a disaster? Have you been in a company where it didn't work or are you just parroting social media?
  Also, "practice" and "execution" mean the same thing in your context.
  
  I don't know about the last part. When I practice, I'm just splitting firewood. The executions are a whole different vibe.

Shareholders have a point.
They can also just fucking leave.
- Yeah what point is that?
  
  That making hiring decisions based on immutable traits is discrimination. And there's laws against that.

DEI is inherently racist no matter what political affiliation, to hire someone based on ethnicity over qualifications.
It's a flawed policy. Perhaps focus more on free education so all ethnicities can be as qualified as the next "white, Asian, male, or straight employees".
We're all Americans. Can't just say "fuck conservatives" and not compromise to come up with a rational solution. But I digress.
- I understand your sentiment. Can I ask you to consider a scenario?
  Imagine a company needs to hire a new employee. They have 9 white men, and need a 10th person. Whoever is hiring may not think they are prejudiced, but they need to consider how the new hire will fit in with the existing team.
  They may be worried about how hiring a qualified woman will upset the dynamic. A qualified Hispanic with an accent may be overlooked if the hiring manager is concerned about their English skills. Any number of reasons that may not even be conscious, but influence the decision to hire another white man.
  Do you think it is possible for DEI practices to ensure diverse and qualified candidates? Why does hiring a non-white have to mean they are less qualified? If we instead start with the assumption that qualified candidates exist from many backgrounds, hiring them in proportion to their representation in the population doesn't seem like a crazy idea.
- Wait until you see how many white rich people Trump is gonna hire.
  
  Yeah that's the same concept as DEI. It's racist.
- Your argument ignores the value of diversity within a business. A diverse workforce offers much more variety in how to progress the company. Peoples of similar traits and backgrounds tend to have similar ideas and methods. More diversity can increase problem solving, customer relations, and ingenuity by forcing all parties to see things from different perspectives.
  The US has a long history of employers refusing to hire minorities/paying the "othered" less. We are not so far removed from these practices to reliably function without laws and regulations ensuring businesses not fall back to old habits. Slavery in the US ended around 150 years ago. The Jim Crow laws, officially, almost 60 years ago. Sundown towns were still around, though not as common, 45 years ago.
- What makes you think certain line items listed on a resume will guarantee that a person is going to be a better pick than someone else who doesn't have those things listed? Would you argue that someone who's been a cashier for 8 years is more qualified than someone who's been a cashier for 4 years, or do you think it wouldn't really make a difference?
  You can argue that this is a racist initiative, but you could also argue that basing hiring decisions purely off of advantages and opportunities that some people receive inherently based off their ethnicity, in a country full of systemic racism, is also racist. There's also a big component of classism involved here as a result of hundreds of years of systemic racism that kept certain groups locked out of certain classes while other families have had opportunities to build on generational wealth and all the advantages that come along with it.
- People don’t want to wait for the systemic problems to be solved, so “positive discrimination” measures are promoted. I dislike it too.

157 comments