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.
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.
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…)
Nice. Some good news for a change.
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.
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.
It is in a first ring suburb, a suburb that is very multicultural. The black neighborhood is exactly like my jewish working class neighborhood. The developer used questionable blighting tactics to use TIFs. Racist tale old as time. Every time they think their project is the exception to being racist. Every time they know they are lying to themselves.
