Summary
Costco’s board rejected a shareholder proposal to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, arguing they foster respect, innovation, and cultural alignment with customers and employees.
Shareholders claimed DEI could lead to lawsuits citing “illegal discrimination” against white, Asian, male, or straight employees, referencing legal cases like Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
Costco countered that its DEI efforts comply with the law and enhance its culture, rejecting claims of legal risk.
The proposal will be voted on at Costco’s January 23 shareholder meeting.
The shareholders are clowns.
Costco knows their customers stan DEI because on average they’re more wealthy and educated.
Doubt it. Costco as a corporation has been very employee-friendly for a long time. I’ve heard Costco employees call the job a career killer because many who have aspirations for another career after they finish their degree (I’ve heard they have good education programs too) wind up working for Costco corporate because the pay and benefits are so good and Costco prefers to promote from within when possible.
How would that be a career killer? That’s a career.
But it’s not necessarily the career you set out to have.
Nowadays, if you set out to have a specific career and aren’t willing to adjust, you’re likely going to be missing out on opportunities.
I graduated university in 2011, and besides a few people who went on to develop for FAANG and have been there since, almost nobody is where they expected at graduation. Many are very successful, but in very different ways than they could have foreseen: The engineer who’s now the CFO of a charity; the English major who became an AI developer; the golf pro who became a sales rep and moved up from there in a billion dollar company.
There’s so many other similar stories just in the people I know. In the economy now, you have to roll with the punches and carve your own path, some which didn’t exist a decade ago.
Definitely not trying to say it’s a bad thing. We need more businesses like Costco.
Kills the career they intended to have before working at Costco
Golden Handcuffs
You wouldnt think that people who are anti-dei would invest in companies like costco.
Costco has, notoriously, been very “woke”, since before they were even told what woke was or to hate it by fox news.
Costco has, notoriously, been very “woke”
Like seizing the means of $1.50 hotdog production?
“I came to (Sinegal) once and I said, ‘Jim, we can’t sell this hot dog for a buck fifty," Jelineck said, according to 425 Business. “We are losing our rear ends.’ And he said, ‘If you raise (the price of the) effing hot dog, I will kill you. Figure it out.’ That’s all I really needed.”
I don’t have a dog in this race (I’ve never had a Costco membership), but this quote makes me feel like Costco’s leadership has at least one of their priorities straight.
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from the makers of bowser’s big bean burrito…
I think a MAGA-tard boycott would be just fine.
Oh please, please do boycott them, maga. Not having to shop alongside them sounds great to me.
Might even make finding a parking spot take one less lap around the lot.
Gas line will still stretch nearly to the street, but oh well.
A lot of the votes are controlled by mutual fund managers and investment firms - this could go bonkers.
this could go bonkers
In what sense? I doubt that the voting or its consequences will be particularly dramatic regardless of the outcome. Costco wouldn’t be the first company to keep a DEI program, and it wouldn’t be the first company to ditch one either. In both cases, most outrage will probably come from a small but vocal group of people on the internet rather than anyone who could have a significant economic effect on Costco’s bottom line.
(There’s a small chance that the outcome snowballs into a public-relations problem, but I’m not sure what the safer outcome is in that context. Probably keeping the program, at least because maintaining the status quo attracts less attention, but with Trump as president, who knows…)
Hey pieces of shit that proposed this, please don’t boycott Costco. ! Pleasssseee!!! It would be such a bummer to have shorter lines and to not see you dragging your shitty kids around the store by the arm with you’re cart full of cheese and camo jackets.
What’s wrong with a cart full of cheese? I haven’t bulk bought cheese in my adult life, but I have bought several bars and several bags of shredded cheese at the same time. I’d do it again, too!
Just the illiteration… Cheese away, my friend!
My brain is exploding at the idea of cheese and jacket being illiterative and I hate it but the sound is so close that I can’t really argue.
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Huzzah! I’m not stingy with the cheese, btw. Havarti plain, with dill, and with jalapenos for everyone!
Mmmm……and that giant Oaxaca Cheese Knot they sell. And 3 pound blocks of tillamook cheddar. God I do love cheese.
That Oaxaca cheese knot sounds amazing! Anyone know if Sam’s has something similar? We don’t have a CostCo near me.
I have seen the same brand of cheese at Walmart in a slightly smaller knot I think. It is such a great melting cheese.
Awesome! I’ll take a look there.
DEI sounds like an incredibly easy and cheap policy to follow if you weren’t already shitheels to begin with.
The worst things about DEI is that it has become politicized. What was once another boring HR policy about being fair at work, is now weapon for idiots it get all upset about.
How was DEI not politicized from the very beginning? It was literally born out of the civil rights movement.
The thing is, DEI was always going to become political. Evey single conservative is some level of white supremacist.
You cannot hold conservative beliefs and also be a fan of diversity, equity, or inclusion.
The conservative mind sees people as all innately fitting into social hierarchies. And brown people are always at the bottom.
Trying anything that changes that hierarchy is seen as a direct attack on conservativism. Because in a very real way, it is. Which is the fucking point. DEI policies were a subtle attack on white supremacy via capitalism.
The argument was that companies that practiced DEI made more money.
It worked for a time, but the jackasses would rather throw money away than abandon their social hierarchies.
They’re kind of mask off about it all now.
Those who would enforce social heirarchies belong at the bottom of them.
White supremacy is DEI for white people.
You cannot hold conservative beliefs and also be a fan of diversity, equity, or inclusion.
This is the way it’s been in recent US political culture, where everything has somehow turned into identity politics and social markers. But I don’t believe that applies to conservatism in general. Politics has almost always been driven by economic goals, not identity, and DEI has been implemented because it’s been determined to be good for the bottom line. That it’s useful to rile up the base on id-pol in order to get into power doesn’t change that. The owners still only care about profits, and would hire or fire anyone if it was determined that it’d add to the bottom line.
You don’t seem to actually understand conservatism.
I’ll give you a little primer. Edmund Burke and Joseph de Maistre created the philosophy of Conservatism as a response to the French Revolution. They were searching for a way to maintain the power of the Nobility in a world that was chopping off the heads of the worst offenders.
Make no mistake, the power of the nobility meant white supremacy as well, because that’s how the nobility always functioned.
But anyway, Conservatism says that the rich are deserving of their riches because they’re just better than you and I. Often invoking God or some bullshit argument that doesn’t boil down to the truth of “my ancestors were fucking monsters who stole a bunch of shit and would literally kill anyone who didn’t obey.”
Anyway, Conservatism has always relied on their being an in class, and then everyone else, but separating that “everyone else” into classes and then sparking resentment among those lower classes.
That’s how it works. Apartheid is when Conservatism is winning, you have your rich elite, and then two out groups, the poor whites and then the bulk of your disfavored minority group (who might very well be the actual majority).
This gives the rich assholes the opportunity to exploit two different groups against each other, lowering the pay of both. And that’s good for the bottom line.
Actually having to pay real wages to the minorities, to treat them as equal to the poor whites who are also being exploited, well that raises everyone’s wages and is seen as the greatest evil that conservatism knows.
Probably could’ve expressed my thoughts better, but I believe your definition and my thoughts aren’t necessarily opposed. I was clumsily trying to say that DEI as is doesn’t really upset the hierarchies you mentioned, and is therefore not opposed to conservatism. Accepting the premise that in conservatism the rich are deserving of their riches because they are better, my point was that DEI actually works to solidify that class disparity because it’s mostly designed to give the appearance of inclusivity in order to attract clientele from all segments of society, thus increasing the flow of income. If DEI means diversity at the bottom of the corporate structure while maintaining a homogenous owner class at the top, which is my argument, then it’s just a tool to transfer money from the bottom to the top, while expanding the pool of money to take from the bottom through inclusivity. I think I fucked up the argument again, but hope it at least clarifies what I was trying to say a little bit.
DEI was a direct response to white supremacist social hierarchies prevalent in the US for over 250 years. Whether or not a business sees it as profitable or good for business is irrelevant.
Modern conservatism is about returning America to greatness. Go out and ask random conservatives when that was. Can you guess?
How does including qualified candidates. That would have been passed over based on culture or race. Reinforce class hierarchies? Race and culture are not classes. Though they are used by supremacist to define classes. Something DEI directly if imperfectly addresses better than anything we’ve ever tried.
But please do explain how you think a policy that directly attacks class hierarchies in horses them. And tell us what you would do that would be better. That isn’t more of the economic liberalism that’s already failed.
Go out and ask random conservatives when that was. Can you guess?
It’s always 30 years ago. 30 years ago it was still 30 years ago.
Nice. Some good news for a change.
Don’t get used to it.
I like you.
Me too. They’re funny.
Don’t get used to it.
The shareholders argued that the Supreme Court ruling in the case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard found that Harvard’s use of race when choosing who to admit to the school violated the 14th Amendment.
We are just gonna keep paying a godawful price for allowing this vile stacked court.
For as long as you’re alive anyway.
Or until someone Luigi’s them during a progressive’s term. Not that that will ever happen. The progressive term, not the other thing.
We’re moving to a future where the elite will live in a fortified city where only the rich and elite can enter, while the plebs live outside the walls and luigi is just a plumber.
So back to castles and seiges
But this time, the bricks are filled with coins!
We already have gated communities for the wealthy…
Too small scale.
California entirely walled off. Anyone outside the walls in poverty. Anyone inside the walls, the equivalent of a decamillionaire or more. Nothing in between.
Edit: Throw in NYC on the other coast so the wealthy have a choice of coast.
If that happens, AVALANCHE won’t be far behind. Barrett, Tifa, and their friends will infiltrate and terrorize their cities till they stop killing the planet.
Some strifes call for more of a Cloud than a Luigi
In our reality, Luigi seems to be an awful lot like Cloud Strife. He’s certainly swinging around a massive
swordpopular clout.Edit: FUCK… I just made an argument for Kingdom Hearts to exist.
Going on vacation to a world with toon physics, don’t ask why I’m bringing lube and a bicycle pump.
My kids will be suffering from these policies long after I’m gone.
It takes a long time to rebuild systems and protections.
And very little time or effort to destroy them…
Trump isn’t even in office and it’s already this bad.
God, I love Costco
I think DEI was good in practice but has been awful in execution.
Which company? Every company is implementing it differently.
I’m skeptical that every company that hired some suit to sit being a DEI title did it for anything more then appearances or that every company even needs a dedicated position to handle it when a memo to HR could suffice, but what examples can you cite that have been a disaster? Have you been in a company where it didn’t work or are you just parroting social media?
Also, “practice” and “execution” mean the same thing in your context.
I don’t know about the last part. When I practice, I’m just splitting firewood. The executions are a whole different vibe.
First the hotdogs, now this. Go Costco management, go.
Don’t forget the $5 rotisserie chicken! And paying their employees a livable wage too!
And paying their employees a livable wage too!
Honestly, that needs to be at the top of the list.
It shows that it is possible for a company to be very profitable without having to shit on its workers.
And the CEO, last I heard, doesn’t take an obscene salary… Still good pay, but not millions, more like a couple hundred thousand (that was a few years ago I heard that though so maybe that’s changed, IDK)
let’s not hire people from color to avoid lawsuits about racism
Awesome proposal
Ok, but biggest owners are Blackrock & Vanguard megavultures (like all the everythings).
The proposal came from a racists NCPPR group, so without significant support & the board just jumped at the free PR opportunity.
Thanks for the quick deep dive nfo
How is Vanguard a mega-vulture? Their ownership stake derives from their index funds, which make up American retirement funds like 401ks and IRAs. They mostly vote according to board recommendations, but have increasingly tried to offer customers other voting options.
You might be able to answer this for me as I don’t really understand.
What is the value of shareholders for massive corporations? Is it that they fund retirements of future generations?
Surely there has got to be a better way. The way I see companies structured with shareholders seems to inevitably make the product or service worse due to demand for increase growth and return for shareholders and it really frustrates me.
What is the value of shareholders for massive corporations?
Corporations don’t start off massive. They start off small and lacking “capital” or money with which to fund the creation and support of their products before they become profitable and self-sustaining. So, how do they motivate people to lend them money? They sell shares, aka ownership, of the company. If the company succeeds, the shares become more valuable and the shareholder that bought them can sell them for more than they initially paid. Mostly, massive corporations don’t need to raise money in this way of selling shares, so most shares are traded publicly through third parties.
Is it that they fund retirements of future generations?
Kind of. Retirement is expensive, and saving alone isn’t really enough to pay for it. On the whole, stocks tend to go up, so people mostly invest their savings into the stock market for years before they retire so that their money will grow enough to retire. Individually, people are usually trying to find their own retirements, not future generations. However, there do exist big retirement funds for entire companies called pensions that are interested in growing a pool of money for its current employees and future ones. Vanguard, and similar companies, offer tools to make investing for retirement easier, like accounts that you don’t have to pay taxes on until you retire, or single shares that are actually thousands of different company’s shares grouped into one.
To your last point, there could be better ways, but we don’t currently use them. There are problems with the system for sure.
Thanks for taking the time to reply.
This all makes sense, but I do wonder if we should have a limit on the company size and shares. As you say massive corporations don’t need to raise money this way and it just extracts value from other areas. So I would be nice to see a system where shares are all bought back and cease trading once a company grows so large.
