Separate Chair & CEO

Resolution Text

Shareholders are concerned that Thermo Fisher Scientific (“the Company”) has signed sales agreements with police forces in occupied Tibet to supply Human Identification (HID) products. Two reports have been published outlining how authorities across Tibet have collected DNA from as many as 1.2 million Tibetans – including children as young as 5 years old without consent from their parents. [1]

Tibet is a repressive policing environment, where ‘criminal activity’ includes criticizing the government, owning a picture of the Dalai Lama or teaching the Tibetan language to children. Engaging in these activities routinely results in detention and torture of Tibetans by the police.

The police in Tibet are accountable only to the Chinese Communist Party, with no free media, civil society or international observers to place checks on their conduct. As such, it appears impossible that Thermo Fisher can guarantee how the police will use its equipment once it reaches Tibet. 

Since October 2022 representatives of impacted communities have written to the Company five times to raise concerns of the use of the Company’s HID products by law enforcement in Tibet. Shareholders also raised the issue at the 2023 AGM. The company has responded, but not engaged with the key issues that police in occupied Tibet cannot be trusted to only use this DNA equipment for standard criminal investigations, and that they are engaged in an ethnically targeted program of DNA collection. Despite repeated requests, the Company has to date refused to meet with stakeholders.

There is evidence of state-run DNA harvesting across China [2], and the Company recognized the possibility of its products being used in human rights violations, which prompted it, “consistent with its values, ethics code, and policies,” to cease “any new sales of HID products to Xinjiang Public Security Bureaus (PSBs) in March of 2019.”

RESOLVED, Shareholders request the Board of Directors to produce annually a Human Rights Impact Assessment regarding the sale (directly and via third parties) of the Company’s HID Products to law enforcement agencies. Reports to provide clear explanations of evidence examined and decisions made regarding permitting sales to law enforcement in regions where the use of such products could reasonably be expected to violate human rights. Such a report may exclude proprietary or legally privileged information. 

SUPPORTING STATEMENT: Proponents suggest that in such an Impact Assessment the company includes, or explains why it cannot disclose: 

A clear assessment of the nature of the policing environment
Disproportionality in policing experienced by different demographics of the population
Proportion of children subjected to DNA testing 
Examination of any reports of police-led mass DNA collection, in particular those targeted based on race, ethnicity or other characteristics for regions where the company sells, or proposes to sell, HID products to law enforcement agencies.

[1] Emile Dirks, ‘Mass DNA Collection in the Tibet Autonomous Region from 2016–2022, Citizen Lab, 13 September 2022;

[2] China’s sitting on a goldmine of genetic data – and it doesn’t want to share CNN, 12 August 2023

Resolution Text

Whereas: Pay inequities persist across race and gender and pose substantial risks to companies and society. Black workers’ hourly median earnings represent 64 percent of white wages. The median income for women working full time is 83 percent that of men. Intersecting race, Black women earn 63 percent, Native women 60 percent, and Latina women 55 percent. At the current rate, women will not reach pay equity until 2059, Black women in 2130, and Latina women in 2224.1

Citigroup estimates closing minority and gender wage gaps 20 years ago could have generated 12 trillion dollars in additional national income. PwC estimates closing the gender pay gap could boost Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries’ economies by 2 trillion dollars annually.2

Actively managing pay equity is associated with improved representation. Diversity in leadership is linked to superior stock performance and return on equity.3 Minorities represent 39 percent of Thermo Fisher’s workforce and 23 percent of executive management. Women represent 41.5 percent of the workforce and 35 percent of executive management.4

Best practice pay equity reporting consists of two parts:

unadjusted median pay gaps, assessing equal opportunity to high paying roles,

statistically adjusted gaps, assessing whether minorities and non-minorities, men and women, are paid the same for similar roles.

Thermo Fisher does not report quantitative unadjusted or adjusted pay gaps. Over 20 percent of the 100 largest U.S. employers currently report adjusted gaps, and an increasing number of companies disclose unadjusted gaps to address the structural bias women and minorities face regarding job opportunity and pay.5

Racial and gender unadjusted median pay gaps are accepted as the valid way of measuring pay inequity by the United States Census Bureau, Department of Labor, OECD, and International Labor Organization. The United Kingdom and Ireland mandate disclosure of median pay gaps, and the United Kingdom is considering racial pay reporting.6

Resolved: Shareholders request Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. report on both quantitative median and adjusted pay gaps across race and gender, including associated policy, reputational, competitive, and operational risks, and risks related to recruiting and retaining diverse talent. The report should be prepared at reasonable cost, omitting proprietary information, litigation strategy and legal compliance information.

Racial/gender pay gaps are defined as the difference between non-minority and minority/male and female median earnings expressed as a percentage of non-minority/male earnings (Wikipedia/OECD, respectively).

Supporting Statement: An annual report adequate for investors to assess performance could, with board discretion, integrate base, bonus and equity compensation to calculate:

percentage median and adjusted gender pay gap, globally and/or by country, where appropriate

percentage median and adjusted racial/minority/ethnicity pay gap, US and/or by country, where appropriate

1https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5bc65db67d0c9102cca54b74/t/622f4567fae4ea772ae60492/1647265128087/Racial+Gender+Pay+Scorecard+2022+- +Arjuna+Capital.pdf
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
42021_CSR Report Thermo Fisher Scientific.pdf
5 https://diversiq.com/which-sp-500-companies-disclose-gender-pay-equity-data/ 6https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5bc65db67d0c9102cca54b74/t/622f4567fae4ea772ae60492/1647265128087/Racial+Gender+Pay+Scorecard+2022+- +Arjuna+Capital.pdf