Walmart And Comcast Investors Urged To Oppose Corporate Discrimination
Washington, D.C. – Investor activists with the Free Enterprise Project (FEP) urged Walmart Inc (NYSE:WMT) and Comcast Corporation (NASDAQ:CMCSA) investors to vote for two FEP shareholder proposals addressing company policies the activists view as discriminatory. FEP will present the proposals at the respective companies’ annual shareholder meetings tomorrow.
Walmart And Comcast Investors Urged To Oppose Corporate Discrimination
The Walmart proposal specifically takes issue with “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion” (DEI) policies that give preference to individuals based on surface-level characteristics such as race and sex, while the Comcast proposal criticizes the company’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) policy for not prohibiting discrimination against center/right employees.
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"Comcast owns MSNBC, about the least ideologically diverse entity on earth, other than any faculty lounge," said FEP Director Scott Shepard. "That's fine for a hyperventilative clown show like that, but it's terrible for the larger company, which is - not incidentally - one of the most hated in history. Which is also what Walmart will be if it can't commit to stop discriminating against those it smears as 'non-diverse.'"
At tomorrow's meeting of Walmart shareholders, Shepard will present Proposal 8, which requests "an audit analyzing the Company's impacts on civil rights and non-discrimination, and the impacts of those issues on the Company's business."
In his supporting statement, Shepard will criticize the contradictory nature of Walmart's positions surrounding diversity and so-called "equity":
It may be good business and a kind act to help poor and deserving associates or others who could benefit from extra opportunities they have lacked. It is illegal, racist and immoral to limit that assistance on racial grounds, or to devote shareholder funds in racist ways to create artificial equalities of outcome.…
Walmart pays lip service to the legal fact that all employees have the same civil rights as others, but then cheers itself about its embrace of equity-based discrimination in myriad ways.
Walmart shareholders can vote for Proposal 8 here, and attend the meeting - which will be held virtually tomorrow at 11:30 am ET - using this link. Shepard's remarks, as prepared for delivery, can be read here. Proposal 8, and the board’s response to it, can be found here.
At Comcast's meeting tomorrow, FEP Associate Ethan Peck will present Proposal 6, which tackles the company's EEO policy for "not explicitly prohibit[ing] discrimination based on viewpoint or ideology." In his supporting statement, Peck will call Comcast hypocritical for loudly championing so-called "diversity" based exclusively in immutable characteristics such as skin color while actively rejecting viewpoint diversity.
"All this corporate jargon about supposed 'inclusivity' is nonsense," said Peck. "Woke corporations exclude and silence more than half the country simply for holding traditional views. By intentionally rejecting prospective employees for having views that half of Americans hold, Comcast ensures anything but equal opportunity for its workforce. Comcast wouldn't be able to illegally force racial diversity if it didn't already forcefully reject genuine viewpoint diversity. If it would only get out of its own way, viewpoint diversity would occur naturally since we are all unique individuals."
Comcast shareholders can vote for Proposal 6 here, and attend the meeting - which will be held virtually tomorrow at 9:00 am ET - using this link. Proposal 6, and the board’s response to it, can be found here.
FEP also plans to attend the meetings of Alphabet (parent company of Google), PayPal and Netflix this week, which together with the meetings of Walmart and Comcast will mark the 50th-54th shareholder meetings that FEP has attended or attempted to attend so far in 2022.
Investors wishing to oppose race-based and viewpoint discrimination and other “woke” policies infiltrating Corporate America should download FEP's 2022 editions of the "Investor Value Voter Guide" and the "Balancing the Boardroom" guide. Other action items for investors and non-investors alike can be found on FEP's website.
About Free Enterprise Project
Launched in 2007, the National Center's Free Enterprise Project focuses on shareholder activism, the preservation of free markets that respect shareholder and other property rights, and the confluence of big government and big business.
Updated on May 31, 2022, 5:05 pm
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