Summary

Costco shareholders voted overwhelmingly (98%) against a proposal by a conservative think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research, to assess risks linked to the company's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs.

Costco’s board supported DEI initiatives, dismissing the proposal as partisan and unnecessary.

This rejection contrasts with trends in other companies scaling back DEI efforts.

The vote comes amid new federal rules from Trump targeting DEI initiatives in federal agencies, potentially impacting private vendors working with the government.

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[–] 222 points 2 years ago (1 child)

A corporation not being absolute trash. Let's hope they deal fairly with their unionized employees.

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  • [–] 172 points 2 years ago* (5 children)

    Not just the corporation, but their shareholders. Republicans have been worshipping at the altar of Shareholder Value since the 80's.

    Here you go, these shareholders just told you what they value! Will Republicans listen?

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  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 child)

    Not just the corporation, but their shareholders.

    The "shareholders" are mostly just Vanguard/Black Rock/etc. mutual fund managers who always vote for whatever the board recommends. So yes, just the corporation.

    Shareholder revolts against board proposals are exceedingly rare, and basically only happen when some individual rich fuck owns way too many shares.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Right, but those mutual fund managers don't just vote "yes" because they aren't paying attention. If anything, they are paying lots of attention, and get special treatment, since they own so much of the company, and were likely consulted ahead of this move.

    And they are most definitely not bleeding-heart liberals. If they voted for this proposal it's because they think it will lead to better outcomes for the company.

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  • [–] 135 points 2 years ago (2 children)
  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago (17 children)

    Yeah I was on the fence about getting a Costco membership since I am single and dont shop much.

    But just for the few times I need stuff that is available at Costco I will get a membership.

    Even if I end up paying a little more overall.

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  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I got my membership as a 20-something living alone and have never regretted it. Purchasing contact solution alone made up the cost of the membership! Then if I got gas there a couple times a year I was definitely saving.

    The one thing I dislike about Costco is that I have to psyche myself up to go. I hate shopping in general because it uses up a lot of spoons for me, and Costco tends to take even more. It’s usually crowded, there’s so much stuff that I typically want to wander, and then everything I buy is huge so loading up the car can be a pain. By the end my back hurts, I’m tired, and I’m sick of people.

    And yet I still haven’t even considered giving up my membership in over 10 years.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    They do sell stuff in larger packages than most stores, but very little of it is actually in such an absurd quantity that a household of 1 or 2 couldn't reasonably use it. Another thing I appreciate is that since they typically only carry 2 or 3 options for any given product, I feel reasonably confident that their buyers have vetted those products well, and the non-staple things we do buy generally seem to be pretty solid quality.

    It's also one of my first shopping stops for electronics and appliances, since they usually offer include and extra year or 3 of warranty coverage.

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  • [–] 120 points 2 years ago (19 children)

    What fucking risks you fucks? Hiring people with the wrong skin colors?

    The news cycles since Trump won the election is fucking terrible. Every corporation is mask off and drop anything that might benefit the populace so that they go back to being cowboys and treat employees like shit.

    I want to personally say fuck you to everyone that voted for Trump. I hope that you and all the members of your close circle that voted for Trump die a painful death, after being economically fucked out of any little wealth you have.

    The world is better off without you cunts.

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    [–] 99 points 2 years ago* (4 children)

    FYI: for normal corporations (i.e. not ones with individual majority stockholders like Musk) shareholder votes are almost always dominated by votes from the big mutual funds, and the managers of those funds always vote for whatever the board recommends as a matter of policy. The actual mom & pop investors who own the shares through those mutual funds in their 401(k)s etc. are entirely disenfranchised.

    In other words, the actual owners of Costco had mostly fuck-all to do with this. We're just lucky that Costco's board of directors isn't terrible, for once.

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    [–] 89 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Today my CEO at a large corpo org stood in front of a packed room of minority employees and assured us that the company would continue DEI policies regardless of the government and essentially said "fuck Trump" in the most politically correct way possible. It feels good that my workplace is such a safe space. I think we're about to find out what companies actually give a shit versus those using optics to prey on the LGBTQ community, disabled people, and racial minorities.

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  • [–] 31 points 2 years ago

    I also work for a large corpo org here, but instead of “DEI” we have “Belonging.” Under that label we have a council that informs and recommends things to our senior leadership, groups which offer support and community (LGBTQ+, Latinx, women, etc.), and provides learning resources. Overall I’m proud of the work we do. (I’m also proud of the two of people I’ve hired internally who were chairs in Belonging groups at some point!)

    A couple months ago at a large event, someone asked if we’d be getting rid of DEI. Our Chief People Officer was able to say something to the effect of, “We’ve never had a DEI program but we are committed to continuing our Belonging practices.”

    So basically we’re not backtracking on anything, and we have pretty good DEI, but because we never used the term “DEI” she was able to deflect the challenge to it. I never thought about it before that happened, but it made me wonder if it was an intentional choice to avoid the buzzword and so some of the criticism that comes of it.

    Anyway, cheers to you also having a safe place of work!

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    [–] 70 points 2 years ago (21 children)

    I don’t understand the hate on DEI initiates. DEI is just make sure you hire a diverse work group. So if these dei employees are bad, that’s 100% on the company for hiring them. Nobody made them hire that specific person and 99/100 times employees are bad because no one trains them.

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    If you read hard right tweets, you'll see they use DEI in place of slurs for any minority. Just like critical race theory, they've twisted the meaning to whip up a frenzy and have something for the masses to hate.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago

    "Kamela would be the DEI hire for President" is easier for the center to swallow than "Cmon, do we really want a [N-Word] [Synonym for Female Dog] running a white man's show?"

    Though the latter is what they mean

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  • [–] 20 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    I'm going to use TERFs as an analogy to explain what I think it is (and I do mean TERFs, not your garden variety transphones). There used to be a subreddit called /r/GenderCritical, before it got (rightfully) banned for hate speech. I had a look around there a few times, trying to understand their incomprehensible ideology.

    At first, I only became more baffled. I saw so many stories that had the rough shape of "I am a women who was abused, victimised or otherwise oppressed by a cis man and/or men and that's why I now hate trans women". I just didn't understand how those two things connected. I get that radical feminists tend to take a biologically essentialist view that undermines trans identities. However, I couldn't understand why they put such effort into distilled down their bitterness and resentment into the vitriol to throw at trans women, as opposed to the men who hurt them (and the patriarchal systems that hurt them).

    Over the years, I've come to understand that many TERFs have experienced trauma such that they feel powerless and small when looking at the actual cause of their systemic oppression (i.e. the patriarchy), so through a trick of transference, they direct their rage and grief onto transness instead. Fighting an already marginalised foe means that they get both the feeling of fighting something ideological that's larger than them, but also they don't have to confront how small they actually are when fighting against oppression (because each of us is small and helpless against systemic oppression; we can't do shit without solidarity with other people). To be clear, I don't consider this absolutely isn't a legitimate excuse for someone to be an awful person; however, it does help me to understand why someone who calls themself a feminist would take such a stance (as much as I'd like to consider them "no true feminist", I feel like I need to acknowledge the complex baggage of the term "feminist" if I'm to identify as one).

    I think people who crusade against DEI initiatives are doing a similar sort of transference, where their real enemy is in fact Capitalism, but that feels like so impossible of a foe that they feel hopeless; it reminds me of that widely shared Mark Fisher quote about how it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. And so they tell themselves that there must be some big, bad, insidious force at work, making organisations opt into DEI initiatives, and it must be the same force that's responsible for the deep unease they feel when they look at the world, or contemplate the future their grandchildren have to look forward to.

    In a sense, they're right in that there are nefarious forces at play and the game is indeed rigged. The problem is that they've picked the wrong target and would be better served going after the oil barons and billionairess. In terms of my background, I probably have far more in common with the average Trump voter than I do the average Democrat, so I relate to the hopelessness that their misplaced rage protects them from feeling. The tragedy is that their ignorance hurts everyone, including themselves; None of us are free until all of us are free.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago

    You have to understand something about fascism's base: its the mediocre. It really speaks to the sort of people who feel like they're owed more (including personal achievements) but think that as a them specifically trait. It's the sort of person who see a black woman being an engineer and think that they deserve that position not her, despite her having gone to engineering school and them having been a D student in high school who didn't go to college or someone who failed out of an engineering program. They look at any success from historically marginalized groups as unearned because clearly they deserve that success more. And so DEI which seeks to encourage more diversity in successful positions out of an acknowledgement that diverse groups are more successful infuriates these people

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    [–] 41 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Finally, some good fucking news

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  • [–] 36 points 2 years ago

    Shareholders, if you keep that up, maybe I'll grudgingly, once in a while, "think of the shareholders".

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    The whole dei firing thing doesn’t make any sense. It’s not like unqualified people were hired.

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  • [–] 39 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Actually, that's exactly what they think.

    The anti-DEI crowd thinks exclusively in zero-sum outcomes. There is exactly one Best Candidate for a position, who happens to look like them. If a different candidate is hired, then the whole process is obviously unfair, because they didn't hire the one white right candidate.

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    [–] 20 points 2 years ago

    Only 2% of Coscosians are racist....Coscosians are Costco Shareholders.

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago

    ...called DEI programs "illegal, immoral and detrimental to shareholder value,"

    Wrong, wrong, and only if they implemented DEI as a blind performance metric... Which is also wrong. You get half a point out of three, or 16.6%.
    And with a grade that low, I'm completely justified in giving that person...
    A Super F!

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago

    Remember, the Senate is DEI for white suburbia.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago

    And the hot dog is still the same price.

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  • [–] 13 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    I wonder if Costco stock is a good buy right now. Currently $937 up from $300 in 2020. A P/E of 55, with 0.5% annual dividends paid quarterly.

    With the new risk of being targeted by MAGAs for a boycott, I could see that being a problem. I don't think Costco's survival as a corporation depends on its stock. They do stock buybacks, which is going to be artificially inflating the price a bit.

    If it drops significantly, I could see it being worth the pickup. Maybe I'll sell some long put options.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    US stocks are incredibly expensive right now based on their earnings. If Trump messes up just slightly on the economy, the market will take a huge hit. To prop up the market and thereby his own ego, he's going to try to force Powell to lower interest rates even if it's not supported by the numbers.

    He may or may not be successful. Good luck.

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    [–] 12 points 2 years ago

    Once again, Costco surprises me with basic human decency that is largely missing in the corporate world. I know it's not a high bar, not as if they're on the forefront of progressivism, or anything. But it's well beyond the average in the profit-driven and labor grinding society, and that sort of corporate action, among their other positives as an employer, should be recognized and supported. Good on you, Costco.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    Even Costco's shareholders are based. Love it.

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