Paid Sick Leave | Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility

A group of 37 shareholder proposals centered on worker health & safety, paid sick leave, wages & equity, freedom of association, and workplace sexual harassment will go to votes at upcoming AGMs.

NEW YORK, NY, THURSDAY, APRIL 27^TH, 2023 – This spring, a wave of shareholder proposals seeking improved corporate policies and practices related to a panoply of worker rights issues will be going to a vote at annual meetings of shareholders across the country.

Members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) have 37 worker rights proposals on the proxies of 30 companies, a testament to how investors view risks to workers as material to a company’s financial performance. The proposals, available at this link, collectively reinforce long-standing worker concerns investors say have contributed to persistent and systemic inequities.

Said Nadira Narine, ICCR’s Sr. Program Director for Strategic Initiatives, “When workers aren’t given a seat at the table or respected as valuable corporate stakeholders, racial and economic disparities become more intractable and systemic which threatens everyone. By contrast, when worker dignity, safety, and voice are prioritized, everyone prospers – something to bear in mind as we prepare to celebrate May Day”.

Several proposals raise concerns about worker health & safety. One proposal at Dollar General calls for a third-party audit on the impact of company policies on the safety and well-being of workers. Said Mary Beth Gallagher of Domini Impact Investments who filed the proposal, “We are asking Dollar General to evaluate how its business model and factors like understaffing, a lack of in-store security, and low wages put its workers’ safety at risk, so it can make changes across its 19,000 stores. Dollar General is an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) “Severe Violator”, receiving $15 million in fines since 2017. We are concerned the problems are systemic and widespread.”

A group of six proposals calls for paid sick leave (PSL) as a standard benefit. The plight of the 28 million workers lacking PSL first received attention during the pandemic when front-line workers faced the impossible choice when sick of either staying home and risking their economic stability, or going to work and risking their health and the public’s health.

“We strongly believe that paid sick leave (PSL) is an essential part of universal workers’ rights and also good for business,” said Ahmed Aljuboori of Figure 8 Investment Strategies who filed a proposal at $TJX requesting a policy stipulating PSL as a standard benefit. “PSL will benefit both TJX and its employees as it will boost productivity, reduce turnover, and lead to increased workplace stability. Adding a permanent PSL policy covering all TJX Associates is both morally and economically the right thing to do.”

Fifteen proposals highlight wage inequities as a systemic issue and a portfolio risk. One such proposal filed at Marriot ($MAR) asks the company to report annually on unadjusted median and adjusted pay gaps across race and gender globally and/or by country, where appropriate, including associated policy, reputational, competitive, and operational risks, and risks related to recruiting and retaining diverse talent.

“Thanks to investor pressure, Marriot will disclose adjusted pay equity ratios by gender and race for U.S. employees this year,” said Jim McRitchie of CorpGov.net. “But unadjusted pay gaps show ‘who is swimming naked when the tide goes out’, borrowing from Buffett. When minorities and women hold as many high-paying jobs as white men, we all do better. We only know that when unadjusted pay gaps are also reported.”

Another proposal filed by Canadian investor SHARE at Restaurant Brands International ($RBI), parent company of Tim Hortons, Burger King, and Popeyes, seeks to understand how the company will address labor shortages resulting from the “big quit” due to working conditions including low wages and benefits.

“For Tim Hortons the promise to consumers is a double-double: ’20-minute fresh’ coffee, served to you promptly by a friendly face – whether in the drive-thru on the way to hockey practice or at the start of your workday,” said Anthony Schein, Director of Shareholder Advocacy. “Every Tim Hortons, Popeyes, or Burger King franchise owner depends on a skilled workforce to build a loyal base of customers. We are asking the company to report on how it is supporting franchise owners in light of a historically competitive labor market across North America.”

“For too long, our system has given more and more to those sitting in the C Suite and less and less to those who are living paycheck to paycheck,” said Matthew Illian of United Church Funds who filed a proposal at Dollar Tree requesting a report on whether Dollar Tree prioritizes Company financial performance over the systemic risks created by income inequality and racial and gender disparities. “We have a moral obligation to hold corporations accountable for how they have enabled economic inequality to grow and we must find new ways to support those who are simply seeking to earn a living wage.”

Another group of eight proposals centers on workers’ right to freedom of association and collective bargaining. One such proposal filed at Delta Airlines ($DAL) asks the company to adopt and disclose a Non-interference Policy (“Policy”) upholding the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining in its operations.

“We need to see that workers are unobstructed in their decisions about how to represent themselves with management,” said Ivan Frishberg of Amalgamated Bank which led the filing at Delta. “Interference with that process creates an unnecessary risk to the company and undermines the relationship with its employees, which by the company’s own description are its ‘most worthy investment.’”

Vote outcomes for worker-related 2023 proposals that have already gone to a vote are available at this link.

About the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)
The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) is a broad coalition of more than 300 institutional investors collectively representing over $4 trillion in invested capital. ICCR members, a cross-section of faith-based investors, asset managers, pension funds, foundations, and other long-term institutional investors, have over 50 years of experience engaging with companies on environmental, social, and governance (“ESG”) issues that are critical to long-term value creation. ICCR members engage hundreds of corporations annually in an effort to foster greater corporate accountability. Visit our website www.iccr.org and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Shareholders say the lack of a paid sick leave benefit endangers workers’ and public health and creates systemic risks for both the transportation sector and the broader economy.

NEW YORK, NY, MONDAY, DECEMBER 5th, 2022 – Shareholders announced they have filed proposals at both Norfolk Southern Corporation ($NSC) and Union Pacific Corporation ($UNP) requesting that they adopt an employer-paid sick leave (PSL) policy as a standard, perennial benefit.

The proposals are part of a broader initiative on the part of investors and other stakeholders to press U.S. companies on a range of worker justice concerns including PSL, worker health and safety, freedom of association, and a living wage. Investors say employers focused on these basic worker rights and benefits will experience improved employee retention and reduced operational disruptions due to strikes or work stoppages. Beyond mitigating risks at individual companies, investors view these worker protections as a critical bulwark against broader and more systemic economic risks.

Said Marvin Owens of Impact Shares which filed the proposal at Norfolk Southern Corp., “We believe paid sick leave (PSL) to be essential to protecting and maintaining one of a company’s – and the economy’s – most important assets: workers. PSL should not be seen by companies as an expense, but as a prudent investment – an insurance policy that will promote a strong workforce and, by extension, a healthy economy.”

America’s freight railroads, which slashed 30% of their workforce over the past six years and now face significant worker retention issues, have brought our country to the brink of a national rail strike by refusing to provide paid sick leave and address other working conditions during three years of contract negotiations. The White House and Congress have intervened in an effort to avoid a rail strike which, given current weaknesses in the U.S. economy, could cost the country as much as $2 billion per day.

“When you consider how essential these workers are to the U.S. economy and its supply chain – helping move nearly 40% of the country’s freight including critical commodities – asking carriers to provide basic protections seems a more than reasonable request,” said Kate Monahan of Trillium Asset Management, which filed the proposal at Union Pacific Corp.

Under the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act, railroad employees are only entitled to sickness benefits after seven days of illness. Railroad employees and their unions say these benefits are inadequate.

“Railway workers face an impossible choice when they are sick: to stay home and risk their jobs, or go to work and risk their health and the public’s health,” continued Monahan. “Meanwhile, railway companies have reportedly paid out $196B in stock buybacks and dividends to shareholders since 2010. Focusing on the short term at the expense of workers poses potential risks to the company and the economy. As shareholders, we are asking management to reprioritize and take the longer-term view that safeguarding the health and safety of their workers will better position them for the future.”

About the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)
Celebrating its 51st year, ICCR is the pioneer coalition of shareholder advocates who view the management of their investments as a catalyst for social change. Its 300-member organizations comprise faith communities, socially responsible asset managers, unions, pensions, NGOs, and other socially responsible investors with combined assets of over $4 trillion. ICCR members engage hundreds of corporations annually in an effort to foster greater corporate accountability. Visit our website www.iccr.org and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

CONTACT:
Susana McDermott
Director of Communications
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)
201-417-9060 (mobile)

smcdermott@iccr.org

NEW YORK, NY, TUESDAY, JANUARY 25^TH, 2022 – As the economy begins to emerge from the deepest impacts of the pandemic, investors are engaging their portfolio companies around the growing reputational, financial, and regulatory impacts associated with the lack of a comprehensive paid sick leave (PSL) benefit for all employees.

Today, a group of investors and their representatives coordinated by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) has published a letter sent to over 40 companies making the business case for a permanent PSL benefit for all workers. A subset of the investor group also filed related shareholder proposals at four of these companies.

The letter was signed by 150 institutional investors and their representatives that collectively represent US$3.6T in assets. While the companies represent a range of sectors, there is an emphasis on retail and restaurant companies where frontline workers are most exposed to the public and, by extension, potential illness.

Shareholder proposals were filed at CVS ($CVS), Kroger ($KR), Target ($TGT), and TJX ($TJX) asking the companies to adopt and publicly disclose a policy that all employees, part- and full-time, accrue some amount of PSL that can be used after working at the company for a reasonable probationary period. This policy should not expire after a set time or depend upon the existence of a global pandemic.

More than 26 million people working in the private sector have no access to paid sick days, and millions more cannot earn and use paid sick time to care for a sick child or family member, leaving working people in the United States facing an impossible choice when they are sick: stay home and risk their economic stability or go to work and risk their/the public’s health.

Seven in ten of the lowest-wage workers do not have paid sick days to care for their own health. Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) workers, low-wage, part-time, immigrant, and service-industry workers are especially unlikely to have access to paid sick days. Disparities in access to paid sick days disproportionately expose Latinx and Black workers to an increased risk of illness. Nearly half (48 percent) of Latinx workers and more than one-third (36 percent) of Black workers report having no paid time away from work of any kind.

While women overall are about as likely as men to have paid sick days, low levels of coverage disproportionately affect mothers because they are more likely than fathers to miss work to take care of sick children. Further, workers who interact the most with the public, frontline workers, are often the least likely to have paid sick days, leading to greater exposure and risk.

“As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, PSL is a crucial contributor to public health, allowing workers who have been exposed to any illness to quarantine,” said Kate Monahan of Trillium Asset Management. “State and local PSL mandates have been shown to reduce the rate at which employees report to work ill in low-wage industries where employers do not tend to provide PSL, lowering disease and overall absence rates. Where those mandates don’t exist, we are asking companies to proactively adopt permanent PSL policies.”

While many companies supported paid leave for quarantine and confirmed illness, free COVID testing, and access to additional healthcare services during the pandemic, it is unclear whether these policies have become permanent. Investors say they require more transparency on companies’ PSL policies to better understand how they are managing this human capital management issue via enhanced disclosures.

Emily DeMasi of EOS at Federated Hermes said, “We have found through engagement that companies that offered paid sick leave, workplace flexibility, and other expanded benefits like childcare support were able to retain staff during the pandemic in which an estimated 2.5 million women left the U.S. workforce. We view the availability of paid sick leave for all workers to be a basic tenet of good human capital management. Investors require more transparency from companies to understand which are leading and which are lagging in employee retention for this potentially material long-term value driver.”

The signatories say PSL is also becoming a must-have recruiting tool for competitiveness in a tightening labor market. Preliminary statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found the retail sector has the second-highest rate of “quit levels” with a loss of 649,000 employees in April 2021 alone.

“Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, guaranteeing paid sick leave benefits had become a best practice of companies nationwide and around the world,”said Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner. “Paid sick leave benefits everyone – workers as well as employers, customers, and investors. I’m proud to have championed Rhode Island’s Paid Sick Leave law that passed in 2018 and I implore these companies to adopt comprehensive and common-sense paid sick leave benefits that will help our economy recover faster as well as provide greater economic resiliency in the future.”

CONTACT:
Susana McDermott
Director of Communications
Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
201-417-9060 (mobile)
smcdermott@iccr.org

About the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)
Celebrating its 51st year, ICCR is the pioneer coalition of shareholder advocates who view the management of their investments as a catalyst for social change. Its 300-member organizations comprise faith communities, socially responsible asset managers, unions, pensions, NGOs, and other socially responsible investors with combined assets of over $4 trillion. ICCR members engage hundreds of corporations annually to foster greater corporate accountability. Visit our website www.iccr.org and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

1. Proposal: Address Wealth Inequality through an Ownership Culture. Lead Proponent: Corporate Governance

“Amazon.com should address inequality and democracy by helping establish an ownership culture within the firm and in the larger society,” said James McRitchie of CorpGov.net. “This proposal asks Amazon.com to include a simple matrix, ideally using EEO-1 classifications, to report the stock ownership and associated voting power awarded to each tier of employees.”

2. Proposal: Amazon 401(k) Climate Alignment. Lead Proponent: As You Sow

“Amazon does a great job on climate in their operations with 100,000 new electric vehicles and data centers powered by renewables. Why is it that Amazon employees who are invested in their company retirement plan are profiting from companies burning down the Amazon?” said Andrew Behar, As You Sow CEO. “We are asking that the company deliver a report to investors about the material impact of investing out of alignment with their own sustainability goals and how this creates cognitive dissonance for employees and investors.”

3. Proposal: Customer Due Diligence. Lead Proponent: Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood (an Affiliate of Investor Advocates for Social Justice)

“Providing government agencies with technologies that may enable mass surveillance puts Amazon at risk of contributing to severe violations of international human rights and humanitarian law,” said Sr. Pat Mahoney of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood, the lead filer of the Customer Due Diligence proposal. “To prevent further harm to impacted stakeholders and mitigate risks to the company, Amazon must strengthen its processes for vetting government customers and contracting opportunities.”

4. Proposal: Employee Turnover. Lead Proponent: AFL-CIO

“Workforce turnover rates are an important indicator of whether a company offers good jobs,” said Brandon Rees, Deputy Director, Corporations and Capital Markets of the AFL-CIO. “The AFL-CIO’s shareholder proposal will give investors material information on workforce turnover that they need to assess Amazon’s progress towards its goal of becoming the ‘Earth’s Best Employer’.”

5. Proposal: Facial Recognition. Lead Proponent: Harrington Investments

“Amazon and its surveillance technology incorporating facial recognition has evolved into a perfect public/private partnership,” said John Harrington of Harrington Investments. “Authoritarian government can now utilize the technology to control populations while private sector corporations can manage the data to exploit facial identification for commercial advantage. The harm will be to civil liberties and competitive business practices.”

6. Proposal: Freedom of Association: Lead Proponent: SHARE

“The recent tragedies that led to the deaths of Amazon warehouse workers indicate the need for higher human rights commitments and better workforce practices at the e-commerce giant. Amazon should take greater responsibility for its workforce and allow them to use their freedom of association and rights to collective bargaining in the most effective way,” said Sarah Couturier-Tanoh, Manager of Corporate Engagement & Advocacy at SHARE.

7. Proposal: Hourly Employees on the Board of Directors. Lead Proponent: Oxfam America

“Amazon continues to rake in billions of dollars in profits, while workers suffer some of the highest warehouse injury rates in the nation,” said Robbie Silverman, Senior Corporate Advocacy Manager for Oxfam America. “Placing an hourly associate on Amazon’s board of directors would be transformational, signaling an authentic interest in hearing the voice of workers at the highest level of corporate governance and demonstrating a commitment to investors that the company is taking workers’ concerns seriously.”

8. Proposal. Independent Chair. Lead Proponent: Zevin Asset Management

“We need a change,” said Marcela Pinilla. Director, Sustainable Investing at Zevin Asset Management. “The company needs a refresh from the top. Leadership to date has not shown that it is capable of being accountable. The “Earth’s Best Employer” is treating employees as expendable in return for growth and expansion. Amazon is facing numerous challenges that have only grown more serious in the past year. This calls for an independent board chair to help confront the company’s many challenges and provide oversight of executives’ risk-taking behavior. We are filing this proposal for the second year because we see a stagnant mind-set in how Amazon executives consider and define business risks. This behavior has come at the expense of key relationships including its workers and communities. An independent board chair should be separate from the CEO. They should have no material relationship or affiliation with the company, and they should not be a former executive officer of the company. One key obligation of the Board is to understand the limits of untenable business practices.”

9. Proposal: Lobbying Expenditures Disclosure. Lead Proponent: The International Brotherhood of Teamsters

“Wanting to be the world’s best employer while funding organizations that lobby against workers’ rights is but one example of the misalignment between Amazon’s politics and public relations,” said Ken Hall, General Secretary-Treasurer of the Teamsters Union. “Without full disclosure of the company’s lobbying expenditures, shareholders don’t know if Amazon puts its money where its mouth is.”

10. Proposal. Paid Sick Leave. Lead Proponent: United Church Funds

Matthew Illian, UCF’s Director of Responsible Investing said: “One of the world’s largest and most profitable companies can afford to offer paid sick leave to all of its employees, and this would create a more loyal and adaptable workforce.”

11. Proposal: Paris-Aligned Lobbying. Lead Proponents: Newground Social Investment, Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Aberdeen, SD

“For years Newground has engaged Amazon on sorely-needed transparency, and oversight of its lobbying efforts,” said Bruce Herbert, AIF, Chief Executive, Newground Social Investment. “Though the company has certainly stepped up in particular ways regarding climate change and reducing emissions, the largest impact it may have is supporting trade associations and other initiatives whose work blocks climate progress. Amazon could be a real force and its lobbying dollars are vast – it has significantly outspent all of its tech peers in 2021. But it buys naming rights for the Climate Pledge Arena (in Seattle) while being part of the very trade associations that work to kill any major policy advances on climate. This gross misalignment cannot continue, and we ask investors to put an end to it by voting FOR this shareholder proposal.”

“We are a community of religious women and partners in mission who commit ourselves to steward our resources responsibly in an effort to care for all of creation,” said Sr. Pegge Boehm. “We literally take stock in Amazon to do the right thing for its people and the planet, as we have committed ourselves. We believe in Amazon’s potential to align their values with those who lobby and advocate on their behalf. We believe Amazon has a responsibility to steward their abundant resources for good. “To whom much is given, much is required,” Luke 12:48. So, in this time of climate crisis, we expect that you hold yourselves up to a high standard. At a minimum, we expect you to align your lobbying activities with the Paris Agreement’s ultimate goal of limiting average global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

12. Proposal: Plastic Pollution. Lead Proponent: Sara Sackner and supported by As You Sow

“Amazon is believed to be one of the largest corporate users of flexible plastic packaging, used for its blue and white e-commerce mailers, which cannot be effectively recycled,” said Conrad MacKerron, Senior Vice President, As You Sow, who is representing proponent Sara Sackner. “The company generates an estimated 465 million pounds of plastic packaging waste annually, much of which ends up in landfills or leaking into the environment. Unlike peers like Walmart and Target, the company has not set plastic use reduction goals. The proposal challenges the company to set such goals to help stem the global tide of plastic pollution, which poses threats to wildlife and human health.”

13. Proposal: Racial and Gender Pay Gaps. Lead Proponent: Arjuna Capital

“Amazon’s board has fought investors on racial and gender pay equity for the last 3 years, despite strong, consistent support for Arjuna Capital’s proposal,” said Natasha Lamb, Managing Partner at Arjuna Capital, which filed a proposal citing Amazon’s lack of best practice pay equity reporting. “Given the pay divides that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, protests to uphold Black lives, and Amazon’s own statements of solidarity, it’s inexcusable and hypocritical that the company continues to fight this simple and reasonable investor request. Now is the time for Amazon to address the structural racism and sexism that relegates minorities and women into low-paying jobs, so we can create a more diverse, innovative, and accountable organization.”

14. Proposal: Racial Equity Audit. Lead Proponent: New York State Common Retirement Fund

“Amazon continues to face controversies that raise questions whether the impact of its policies, practices and products uphold the company’s rhetoric opposing systemic racism and injustice,” said New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. “Following last year’s unprecedented vote by shareholders, it’s beyond time for Amazon to independently review whether it has the policies and plans in place to address the risks that come with a failure to safeguard against discrimination, racism, and inequalities.”

15. Proposal: Risks Associated with Use of Concealment Clauses. Lead Proponent: Whistle Stop Capital, as part of the Transparency in Employment Agreements Coalition led by Earthseed, Whistle Stop Capital, Open MIC and Frontier Technology

Said Meredith Benton, Principal/Founder of Whistle Stop Capital, “If a company uses employment clauses to conceal from the public its true workplace conditions investors cannot have confidence in either the diversity and inclusion promises made or the reporting shared.”

“This shareholder resolution is based on a simple premise: Companies benefit from knowing when sexual harassment, discrimination and unlawful behavior are happening in the workplace, which is why employees should be encouraged to speak out about such conduct. It’s simply good business,” said Michael Connor, Executive Director, Open MIC. “Amazon would be well-advised to weigh the resolution carefully and look to a future where employees are encouraged to help build a more equitable and productive work environment.”

16. Proposal: Tax Transparency. Lead Proponent: Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate / OIP Investment Trust -U.S Province

“Responsible taxation is a vital sustainability issue for investors,” said Rev. Séamus P. Finn OMI, OIP Trust. “Aggressive corporate tax avoidance cost hundreds of billions in lost revenues each year from government budgets. It exacerbates existing inequalities, undermines broad-based economic growth, and creates unnecessary asset level and systemic risks for investors. Public country-by-country reporting will allow investors to better understand Amazon’s business model and tax planning strategy and ensure that it’s growth fairly contributes to the communities in which it earns its profits and doesn’t unfairly undercut those companies taking a responsible approach to tax planning.”

17. Proposal: Worker Health & Safety Audit. Lead Proponent: Domini Impact Investments

“The COVID-19 Pandemic and the recent tragedy in Edwardsville, Illinois, have raised serious questions around workplace health and safety at Amazon’s facilities,” said Mary Beth Gallagher, Director of Engagement, Domini Impact Investments LLC. “The company’s high injury rates and turnover have also drawn scrutiny from legislators, regulators, and the public, while contributing to recent labor shortages and calls for change from workers. In light of this, Domini Impact Investments LLC is signaling to Amazon that investors want the company to listen to essential workers and support their right to a safe and healthy workplace.”

“At Amazon, machines get better treatment than people. Amazon associates are breaking their backs and working nonstop for the sake of same day delivery — our every move is watched and timed and if we slow down or mess up in any way, we are punished. Amazon’s inhumane, exploitative business model is a threat to working people and our economy as America’s workers are left injured, exhausted, and mentally battered each day. We must put an end to the high-tech sweatshops Amazon is running and the exploitative business model they are perpetuating across the country.” – Courtenay Brown (Amazon Associate at Avenel, NJ Fulfillment Center and Leader with United For Respect in Newark, New Jersey)

As investor frustration mounts, the number of shareholder proposals soars to 17 citing a host of ESG concerns considered a threat to the public interest and material to investments.

NEW YORK, NY, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 16^TH, 2021 – Amazon.com, Inc. ($AMZN), the e-commerce and tech company with a market cap of US$1.72T is once again coming under fire from its shareholders for its failure to adequately oversee risks related to its business model, governance structure, the way it treats its workers, and the products it sells.

The roster of 17 proposals submitted for the 2022 company proxy illustrates how the size and influence of Amazon and the lack of oversight of its enterprises continue to expose it to intense scrutiny by the U.S. Congress, civil society organizations, and key stakeholders including its workers and its shareholders concerned about the environmental, social and governance (ESG) impacts of its operations.

Some of the proposals have been previously filed, including a proposal seeking an independent chair and another on lobbying disclosures, which generally receive strong shareholder support, as well as proposals highlighting human and civil rights concerns around the sale of facial recognition software Amazon sells to government agencies known to further racial biases.

But several new proposals for 2022 respond to reports about longstanding issues related to Amazon’s workers which became more prominent as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A proposal filed by the AFL-CIO calls out Amazon’s reportedly high annual turnover rates for its hourly associates, which one report estimated to be as high as 100% per year, more than double the retail and warehouse industry averages.

“Workforce turnover rates are an important indicator of whether a company offers good jobs,” said Brandon Rees, Deputy Director, Corporations and Capital Markets, AFL-CIO. “The AFL-CIO’s shareholder proposal will give investors material information on workforce turnover that they need to assess Amazon’s progress towards its goal of becoming the “Earth’s Best Employer”.

Another worker-focused proposal filed by United Church Funds asks the company to adopt a paid sick leave (PSL) policy as a standard benefit for all its employees. Amazon’s current PSL policy is to follow local, city, and state ordinances, leaving most employees without PSL in jurisdictions still lacking a PSL mandate.

“As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, PSL is a crucial contributor to public health, allowing workers who have been exposed to any illness to quarantine and regain their health,” said Matthew Illian, UCF’s Director of Responsible Investing. “As one of the world’s largest and most profitable companies, Amazon can afford to offer paid sick leave to all of its employees, and this would create a more loyal and adaptable workforce.”

Three proposals highlight controversies related to Amazon’s diversity, its treatment of women and minority workers, and discriminatory hiring and promotion practices.

“Amazon continues to face controversies that raise questions whether the impact of its policies, practices and products uphold the company’s rhetoric opposing systemic racism and injustice,” said New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli. “Following last year’s unprecedented vote by shareholders (44.2%), it’s beyond time for Amazon to independently review whether it has the policies and plans in place to address the risks that come with a failure to safeguard against discrimination, racism, and inequalities.”

“Amazon’s board has fought investors on racial and gender pay equity for the last 3 years, despite strong, consistent support for Arjuna Capital’s proposal,” said Natasha Lamb, Managing Partner at Arjuna Capital, which filed a proposal citing Amazon’s lack of best practice pay equity reporting. “Given the pay divides that have been exacerbated by the pandemic, protests to uphold Black lives, and Amazon’s own statements of solidarity, it’s inexcusable and hypocritical that the company continues to fight this simple and reasonable investor request. Now is the time for Amazon to address the structural racism and sexism that relegates minorities and women into low-paying jobs, so we can create a more diverse, innovative, and accountable organization.”

A new proposal seeks a report assessing the potential risks to the company associated with its use of concealment clauses which have been used to prevent “whistleblowers” from going public with workplace abuses.

Said Meredith Benton, Principal/Founder of Whistle Stop Capital, “If a company uses employment clauses to conceal from the public its true workplace conditions, investors cannot have confidence in either the diversity and inclusion promises made or the reporting shared.”

And another new proposal highlights the need for greater financial disclosures on a country-by-country basis, including tax data. Rev. Séamus P. Finn OMI, of the OIP Trust which led the filing on tax transparency said, “Responsible taxation is a vital sustainability issue for investors. Aggressive corporate tax avoidance costs hundreds of billions in lost revenues each year from government budgets. It exacerbates existing inequalities, undermines broad-based economic growth, and creates unnecessary asset level and systemic risks for investors. Public country-by-country reporting will allow investors to better understand Amazon’s business model and tax planning strategy and ensure that its growth fairly contributes to the communities in which it earns its profits and doesn’t unfairly undercut those companies taking a responsible approach to tax planning.”

The full list of 2022 proposals is below:

Address Wealth Inequality through an Ownership Culture: Lead Proponent: Corporate Governance.
Amazon 401K Climate Alignment: Lead Proponent: As You Sow
Customer Due Diligence: Lead Proponent: Sisters of St. Joseph of Brentwood (an Affiliate of Investor Advocates for Social Justice)
Employee Turnover: Lead Proponent: AFL-CIO
Facial Recognition: Lead Proponent: Harrington Investments
Freedom of Association: Lead Proponent: SHARE
Hourly Employees on the Board of Directors: Lead Proponent: Oxfam America
Independent Chair: Lead Proponent: Zevin Asset Management
Lobbying Expenditures Disclosure: Lead Proponent: The International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Paid Sick Leave: Lead Proponent: United Church Funds
Paris-Aligned Lobbying: Lead Proponent: Newground Social Investment, Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Aberdeen, SD
Plastic Pollution: Lead Proponent: Sara Sackner and supported by As You Sow
Racial and Gender Pay Gaps: Lead Proponent: Arjuna Capital
Racial Equity Audit: Lead Proponent: New York State Common Retirement Fund
Risks Associated with Use of Concealment Clauses: Lead Proponent: Whistle Stop Capital, as part of the Transparency in Employment Agreements Coalition led by Earthseed, Whistle Stop Capital, Open MIC and Frontier Technology
Tax Transparency: Lead Proponent: Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate / OIP Investment Trust -U.S Province
Worker Health & Safety Audit. Lead Proponent: Domini Impact Investments

Shareholders are hopeful Amazon will be responsive to their proposals’ requests and agree to engage around these critical ESG issues.

Comments for the record for each of the proponents are available at this link.

See the list of proposals which will be voted on at Amazon’s 2022 annual general meeting.

About the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)
Celebrating its 50th year, ICCR is the pioneer coalition of shareholder advocates who view the management of their investments as a catalyst for social change. Its 300-member organizations comprise faith communities, socially responsible asset managers, unions, pensions, NGOs, and other socially responsible investors with combined assets of over $4 trillion. ICCR members engage hundreds of corporations annually in an effort to foster greater corporate accountability. Visit our website www.iccr.org and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn , and Facebook.

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A national policy seen by investors as critical to support employees’ wellbeing, improve workforce equity and foster more resilient businesses in the post-pandemic economy.

NEW YORK, NY, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28^TH, 2021 – A group of more than 100 investors including State Treasurers’ offices, pension funds, domestic and global asset management firms, and faith-based funds collectively representing over US$1.6T in managed assets announced that they had sent a letter to Congressional leaders urging them to pass federal paid family and medical leave policy as part of the “Build Back Better” legislation pending in Congress.

The letter, organized by Trillium Asset Management and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, was sent to Speaker Pelosi and Leaders Schumer, McCarthy, and McConnell on Tuesday. Investors underscored “the systemic risks that a lack of paid leave poses” and their belief that “portfolio companies and the U.S. economy as a whole would benefit from the support, standardization, and stability paid leave would offer working families.”

The letter follows a March 2020 investor statement calling on companies to prioritize worker health and safety during the pandemic, including the provision of paid leave, that was endorsed by 336 investors with US$9.5T in assets.

“The pandemic brought home the serious risks frontline workers face and highlighted the domino effects a lack of worker protections can have on business productivity and the economy,” said Kate Monahan, Director of Shareholder Advocacy for Trillium Asset Management. “A federal paid leave policy would provide an essential safeguard that would increase worker retention, morale, and productivity which is why it is supported by the investors, the Business Roundtable, and hundreds of businesses, large and small.”

Today, one in three Americans or 113 million workers don’t even have a single day of paid leave to care for themselves or their loved ones. These workers are overwhelmingly women, people of color, and low-wage working families.

A comprehensive paid family and medical leave policy includes three types of paid leave:

Parental leave: time to welcome a newly-arrived child; applies to adoption, fostering, and birth, and applies to all parents;
Family caregiving leave: time to care for a seriously ill family member, with an expansive definition of family, and;
Personal medical leave: time to address one’s own serious illness.

Said Wisconsin State Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, “Because the U.S. is one of the few countries in the world without a national paid leave policy, the result is a painful patchwork of programs that leaves 80% of private-sector employees uncovered and exposed. This unacceptable burden on our workers and families is wrong and hurts our recovery. The paid leave proposal in President Biden’s Build Back Better plan addresses deeply-rooted inequities in paid leave access, especially for the millions of lower-wage working people who are often disproportionately people of color who currently have no paid leave at all.”

As women and people of color disproportionately lack access to paid leave, investors say a national paid leave policy is one of the strongest tools to counter workplace gender and racial inequities. Studies show that reducing gender inequalities in the workforce—in which paid leave plays a crucial role—has the potential to grow our GDP by at least 5%.

“The current pandemic has shown the disastrous consequences that the lack of paid leave for millions of U.S. workers has had on employees and business owners. That’s why the SEIU Master Trust is insisting that Congress pass a universal paid leave bill now,” said Alphonso Mayfield, SEIU Master Trust board member and President of the Florida Public Services Union. “SEIU members and those who employ them need a stable system of universal paid leave in order to succeed in the global economy and help us grow in the post-COVID years to come.”

President Biden’s paid leave proposal includes the key elements for high-quality policy: comprehensive coverage for a variety of caregiving reasons, wage replacement that allows all workers to afford to take time off, gender-equitable policies, expanding the definition of who is considered family, and ensuring that workers are allotted enough time to truly recover.

“This letter illustrates the transformation of and surge in support for paid leave that we’ve seen within the investor and larger business community over the course of the pandemic,” said Annie Sartor, Paid Leave for the U.S.’s (PL+US) Senior Director of Business Partnerships. “The COVID-19 crisis exposed how working families, businesses of all sizes, and the U.S. economy are held back by a broken care infrastructure that requires millions of working caregivers, especially women, to leave their jobs to care for their families when disaster strikes. With this letter, the investor community is making it clear that it wants Congress to pass paid family and medical leave both because it’s good for working people and because it’s critical to building a stronger, more resilient national economy.”

“In order to truly “Build Back Better” we need to understand where the current weaknesses are in our economy,” said Iyassu Essayas, Director of ESG Stewardship for Parnassus Investments. “What do we need to shore up in order to build the kind of resiliency that will allow us to weather the inevitable storms that come our way? We need policies that safeguard workers and drive equity, both of which are foundational to a resilient, productive, and prosperous economy.”

About the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)
Celebrating its 50th year, ICCR is the pioneer coalition of shareholder advocates who view the management of their investments as a catalyst for social change. Its 300-member organizations comprise faith communities, socially responsible asset managers, unions, pensions, NGOs and other socially responsible investors with combined assets of over $4 trillion. ICCR members engage hundreds of corporations annually in an effort to foster greater corporate accountability. Visit our website www.iccr.org and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

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Shareholder proposals at seven companies request a report on the feasibility of including paid sick leave as a standard employee benefit beyond COVID-19.

NEW YORK NY, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17^TH, 2020 – As COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths continue to spike during the holidays, today investors announced they had filed proposals for 2021 proxies with major U.S. employers seeking to learn how the companies might adopt paid sick leave (PSL) policies as a standard health and safety protection for their workers.

Companies receiving proposals are CVS ($CVS), Dollar General ($DG), Kohl’s ($KSS), Kroger ($KR), McDonald’s ($MCD), Walmart ($WMT) and Yum! Brands ($YUM).

The investors say significant exposure to the public puts employees of these companies at heightened risk of contracting illness, notably the COVID-19 virus. They argue that by adopting permanent paid leave policies, the companies will help mitigate the risk of outbreaks and closures by allowing employees to safely quarantine and recover at home.

According to the Department of Labor, four out of ten hourly workers don’t have access to paid sick leave. Without this guarantee, many employees are faced with the choice of either going to work sick and infecting others, or losing a day’s wages, further exacerbating the financial pain employees and their families are already experiencing as a result of the pandemic. Workers without PSL also face the risk of retaliation from supervisors, or being fired for calling out sick.

As the pandemic began unfolding in March, investors issued a statement with the support of 335 institutional investors representing $US9.5t outlining a 5-point plan for businesses to protect workers amid the crisis: paid sick leave was the first of the five principles.

“Companies are quick to say their workforces are their most valuable assets but it’s tough to believe when they lack such basic protections as paid sick leave,” said Corey Klemmer of Domini Impact Investments. “Strong and strategic workforce management certainly yields long-term benefits like employee loyalty and productivity, but beyond, that PSL is an essential risk management tool during a global pandemic.”

In response to the pandemic, the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) required that certain employers provide paid time off for workers ill with COVID-19 or quarantined due to exposure to the virus, but that law is set to expire at the end of 2020.

“As a mom to 2 kids, paid sick leave would be a lifeline,” said Valerie Thompson of Mayfield, KY, who has worked as a Walmart Associate for 27 years. “Even after nearly three decades of loyal service, I struggle to survive on less than $12/hour and walk a tight rope balancing the risk of losing a paycheck with the risk of exposing my family to this deadly virus. A sane and humane paid sick leave policy would mean that at least I can care for my family when they need me without fearing that I’ll lose my job and worrying about how to put food on the table. Walmart shareholders now have the opportunity to protect workers and their families by addressing the serious gaps in existing paid leave policies — something company executives have failed at repeatedly.”

According to studies by the Center for American Progress: In 2019, more than 32 million people in the country did not have access to a single paid sick day, and 4 out of 5 workers did not have access to paid family leave. Low-wage workers and workers of color are less likely than higher-wage and white workers to have access to paid leave. This gap is particularly dangerous and harmful for people of color and women, who are disproportionately represented in front-line industries where they face higher risks of exposure to the coronavirus.

“Companies should recognize that providing paid sick leave as a standard benefit is not an act of benevolence but of corporate self-interest,” said Rosanna Landis Weaver of As You Sow. “It demonstrates a commitment to safeguard the health and welfare of both workers and customers, two invaluable stakeholder groups.”

“Paid sick leave is an economical way to attract and maintain a motivated workforce that is essential to future growth and long-term sustainability. As long as the fast food and retail sectors fail to provide their front-line workers, who largely come from Black and other marginalized communities, with better pay and essential benefits such as paid sick leave, investors will have no choice but to question the viability and future growth of companies in these sectors,” said Dieter Waizenegger, of CtW Investment Group. “The Movement for Black Lives and the devastating impact of the global pandemic have laid bare that companies in these front-line sectors will need to improve their treatment of workers in order to remain competitive and avoid significant reputational risk.”

About the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR)
Celebrating its 49th year, ICCR is the pioneer coalition of shareholder advocates who view the management of their investments as a catalyst for social change. Its 300-member organizations comprise faith communities, socially responsible asset managers, unions, pensions, NGOs and other socially responsible investors with combined assets of over US$2 trillion. ICCR members engage hundreds of corporations annually in an effort to foster greater corporate accountability. Visit our website www.iccr.org and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Worker Justice Rises to the Top of Investors’ Agenda at 2023 Annual Meetings