Our Shareholder Activism Vision: Everyday People Building a Brighter World
At Just Futures, we think companies should pay employees fairly, maintain safe worksites, and be good stewards of our earth. Yet, despite corporate promises to care for their workers, use responsible supply chains, and to manage their environmental footprint such as water use and emissions of pollutants, we feel they have failed communities across the planet in pursuit of company profits over shared prosperity. Over generations, many communities have suffered from corporate mismanagement, extraction, and abuse of community resources. As a community-owned investment platform, we believe it is our mandate to push companies to be better for the communities and investors we serve.
Shareholder activism, also known as shareholder engagement or shareholder advocacy, encompasses a broad range of activities we can carry out to push actors in the investment chain. Traced back to the 1930s, when smaller investors first began flexing their power through what essentially has emerged as a form of corporate democracy, they were able to get companies to change policies and procedures and more forcefully advocate for positive changes in labor disputes. More recently, shareholder activism looks like requiring asset managers and companies to use our money in ways that promote social, racial, and environmental justice. Still, many past examples of shareholder activism have accomplished limited results. For example, a wealthy investor might nudge a company to merely publish how much they pay their lowest earning workers.
A More Powerful Way: Integrating Shareholder Activism with Community Activism
Center for Economic Democracy theorizes that communities whom companies have harmed most should lead actions for change. At Just Futures, we agree. People whom corporations have most abused deserve to be at the forefront of deciding how to pursue justice. They are intimately familiar with the problems, and they are often ready with detailed solutions. As such, these communities can and should direct shareholder activists. Together, we should use shareholder activism as a tool that amplifies the actions the community groups are already taking to improve their neighborhoods.
For example, according to research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, someone living in Tennessee must earn $20.77 per hour to support themselves, as of February 2024. They define this amount as a “living wage.” But Walmart — which reports being “the largest private U.S. employer of Black and African Americans, with 20% of our U.S. workforce identifying as Black and African American and more than 50% identifying as People of Color” — pays some of its workers as little as $5.58, as of July 2024, according to Zip Recruiter. Shareholder activism is one tool that could help push giant corporations to pay all their workers at least a living wage.
Walmart workers have comprehensive ideas for how the company’s leaders can create a dignified workplace. And, through community-organizing nonprofit United for Respect, they are taking action to win that vision. They are leveraging shareholder activism as one tool within a broader strategy that also includes getting public support through media attention, gaining political backing through government policy advocacy, and recruiting other retail store workers (like those at Amazon) to create a broader movement for justice in the retail industry.
To be sure, the road to victory is bumpy. Of the four most recent shareholder resolutions for improving safety standards, a racial equity audit, a human rights assessment, and increased worker compensation, none of them won majority support at Walmart’s June 6, 2024 annual general meeting. But workers are continuing the fight. And we hope you will join us in supporting them and other communities to build a brighter world.
We are gearing up to support upcoming shareholder activism campaigns! To get updates on how you can join the fight, sign up for our newsletter and follow us on LinkedIn and YouTube.
If you don’t have retirement savings or your employer contracts with a different retirement plan administrator, we’d love to show you the advantages we at Just Futures can offer! You can reach us at info@justfutures.com.