New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer, on behalf of the New York City Retirement Systems, called on certain large companies to demonstrate their commitment to walking their talk on racial diversity. According to the release, Comptroller Stringer sent this form of letter to these 67 S&P 100 companies that had recently issued statements in support of racial justice seeking their commitment in writing by August 30, 2020 to publicly disclose their Consolidated EEO-1 Reports upon their next submission to the EEOC in 2021. The Consolidated EEO-1 Report includes workforce race, ethnicity, and gender information across ten job categories. Companies that don't commit to publicly disclose their reports run the risk of targeted shareholder proposals or opposition to election of directors at their next annual shareholder meeting.
In addition to informing investors, the release and the letter posit that this approach (i.e., Consolidated EEO-1 Report disclosure) is cost-effective for companies since they are already required to collect the data for the EEOC; allows companies to include supplemental disclosure to the extent a company believes additional information will provide relevant context for the data (e.g., on the company's org structure, which may not align with the EEO-1 categories); and facilitates board oversight, including peer comparisons.
See these articles from Reuters and Pensions & Investments; our prior reports "Investors Look Inward & Outward to Address Racial Diversity, Inequality" and "BlackRock Keenly Focused on Portfolio Company 'People' Practices"; and additional resources on these Society pages: Human Capital/Workforce Management, Racial Equality & Diversity, and Corporate Culture pages. This post first appeared in the weekly Society Alert!