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Costco successfully defends its diversity policies as other US companies scale theirs back

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Costco successfully defends its diversity policies as other US companies scale theirs back
News

News

Costco successfully defends its diversity policies as other US companies scale theirs back

2025-01-24 07:00 Last Updated At:07:11

NEW YORK (AP) — Costco shareholders rejected a proposal urging the wholesale club operator to evaluate any risks posed by its diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

According to preliminary results shared by Costco executives at its annual meeting Thursday, more than 98% of shares voted against the proposal.

The National Center for Public Policy Research, a conservative think tank based in Washington, had submitted the proposal, arguing that Costco's DEI initiatives hold “litigation, reputational and financial risks to the company, and therefore financial risks to shareholders.”

The think tank has made a similar proposal to Apple, and like some American companies that already scaled back or retreated from their diversity policies, cited a U.S. Supreme Court decision in July 2023 that outlawed affirmative action in college admissions.

But Costco's board of directors voted unanimously to ask shareholders to reject the motion. The board said it believes “our commitment to an enterprise rooted in respect and inclusion is appropriate and necessary. The report requested by this proposal would not provide meaningful additional information.”

The directors' message to shareholders details how having diverse employees and suppliers has, in their view, fostered “creativity and innovation in the merchandise and services that we offer” and led to greater customer satisfaction among Costco members.

In advance of the meeting, Neil Saunders, managing director of consulting firm GlobalData's retail division, said Costco can be confident the proposal will be rejected.

"I think people generally have confidence in Costco’s management, and there's an attitude of ‘Why rock the boat? It's sailing very nicely,'" Saunders said.

Costco's public stance in support of diversity, equity and inclusion programs contrasts with the positions taken in recent months by other big consumer brands, including Walmart,McDonald's and John Deere.

Last week, more than 30 Walmart shareholders, including Amalgamated Bank and Oxfam America, asked the CEO of the nation's largest retailer to explain the business impact of curbing the company's DEI policies, a move they called “disheartening.”

Prominent technology companies, including Amazon and Meta — the parent company of Facebook and Instagram — also have rolled back DEI initiatives, which are expected to face opposition from the administration of President Donald Trump.

Emboldened by the Supreme Court's decision on affirmative action at colleges and universities, conservative groups have filed lawsuits making similar arguments about corporations, targeting initiatives such as employee resource groups and hiring practices that prioritize historically marginalized groups.

On Monday, Trump signed an executive order aimed at terminating DEI programs within federal agencies. Conservatives have long condemned them, arguing they violate the U.S. Constitution by considering factors such as race, gender and sexual orientation.

The plan includes leveraging the Justice Department and other agencies to probe private companies pursuing training and hiring practices that conservative critics consider discriminatory against people who do not belong to minority groups, such as white men.

As for Costco, the National Center for Public Policy Research alleged that at least 200,000 of the company's 300,000 employees worldwide "are potentially victims of this type of illegal discrimination because they are white, Asian, male or straight.” If only a fraction of those employees were to sue Costco, the legal costs could be significant, the center said.

Costco has a chief diversity officer, but the company's executive ranks do not reflect the diversity of its customers. Nearly 81% of the executives Costco had in place last year were white, and 72% of them were men, according to data published on its website. Saunders said members of Costco's management team typically stay a long time given the company's solid and stable financial performance.

In other ways, Costco has been a bit of a maverick in the corporate world. It doesn’t have an official corporate public relations team, and it hasn’t focused on building up online business as much as rivals Walmart and Target.

The National Center for Public Policy Research intends to present a proposal at Apple's Feb. 25 shareholder meeting that goes beyond what the think tank wants from Costco. The center's resolution asks the tech company to abolish its inclusion and equity department, policies and goals, describing them as "consistent with, if not more radical than, most corporate DEI programs.

Apple's board wants shareholders to vote down the proposal, saying the company strives “to create a culture of belonging where everyone can do their best work.”

JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon this week joined the corporate leaders taking a stand in support of the expanded diversity goals some companies added after the 2020 police killing of George Floyd. Dimon defended his bank's DEI policies during an interview with CNBC.

“We are going to continue to reach out to the Black community, Hispanic community, the LGBT community, the veterans community,” he said, speaking Wednesday from the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland. “And wherever I go, red states, blue states, green states, mayors, governors and they said they like what we do.”

Trump's actions this week increase the potential legal risks for companies that resist the conservative backlash against DEI, according to David Glasgow, executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at NYU School of Law. But most big companies will have consulted their lawyers or performed an internal self-audit after the Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling, Glasgow said.

"So if you are an Apple or another company who’s done that, and you’re confident in the legality of your existing DEI program, ... I think what you should do right now is stand firm,” he said.

FILE - A cart wrangler gathers shopping carts outside a Costco warehouse in Sheridan, Colo., July 16, 2024. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

FILE - A cart wrangler gathers shopping carts outside a Costco warehouse in Sheridan, Colo., July 16, 2024. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Google's online calendar has removed default references for a handful of holidays and cultural events — with users noticing that mentions of Pride and Black History Month, as well as other observances, no longer appear in their desktop and mobile applications.

The omissions gained attention online over the last week, particularly around upcoming events that are no longer automatically listed. But Google says it made the change midway through last year.

The California-based tech giant said it manually added "a broader set of cultural moments in a wide number of countries” for several years, supplementing public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com that have been used to populate Google Calendar for over a decade. Still, the company added, it received feedback about some other missing events and countries.

“Maintaining hundreds of moments manually and consistently globally wasn’t scalable or sustainable,” Google said in a statement sent to The Associated Press. "So in mid-2024 we returned to showing only public holidays and national observances from timeanddate.com globally, while allowing users to manually add other important moments.”

Google did not provide a full list of the cultural events it added prior to last year's change — and therefore no longer appear by default today.

But social media users and product experts posting to online community boards have pointed to several holidays and cultural observances that they're not seeing anymore. In addition to the first days of Pride Month and Black History Month, that includes the start of Indigenous Peoples Month and Hispanic Heritage Month, as well as Holocaust Remembrance Day. The Verge first reported on some of these omissions last week.

Norway-based Time and Date AS, which operates timeanddate.com, did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday. The website shows numerous country-by-country lists of holidays and observances from around the world — some of which include cultural awareness events like Pride and Black History Month — but those specific to public holidays are more limited.

Separate from this Calendar shift, Google has also gained attention over its more recent decision to change the names of the Gulf of Mexico and Denali on Google Maps — following orders from President Donald Trump to rename the body of water bordering the U.S., Mexico and Cuba the Gulf of America, as well as revert the title of America’s highest mountain peak back to Mt. McKinley.

“We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have been updated in official government sources,” Google said last month. The company added that its maps will reflect any updates to the Geographic Names Information System, a database of more than 1 million geographic features in the U.S.

Google confirmed Monday that the Gulf of America name had gone into effect. Google Maps users in the U.S. now only see the Gulf of America name, whereas those in other countries see both names. Denali, however, still appears on both Google Maps and the GNIS.

And the new names on Google Maps aren't the only change the company has made following recent actions from the Trump administration. Last week, Google outlined plans to scrap some of its diversity hiring targets — joining a growing list of U.S. companies that have abandoned or scaled back their diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Google's move notably came in the wake of an executive order aimed, in part, at pressuring government contractors to end DEI initiatives. As a federal contractor, Google said it was evaluating required changes.

FILE - A woman walks by a giant screen with a logo at an event at the Paris Google Lab on the sidelines of the AI Action Summit in Paris, Feb. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, file)

FILE - A woman walks by a giant screen with a logo at an event at the Paris Google Lab on the sidelines of the AI Action Summit in Paris, Feb. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, file)

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