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.
DEI is inherently racist no matter what political affiliation, to hire someone based on ethnicity over qualifications.
It’s a flawed policy. Perhaps focus more on free education so all ethnicities can be as qualified as the next “white, Asian, male, or straight employees”.
We’re all Americans. Can’t just say “fuck conservatives” and not compromise to come up with a rational solution. But I digress.
What makes you think certain line items listed on a resume will guarantee that a person is going to be a better pick than someone else who doesn’t have those things listed? Would you argue that someone who’s been a cashier for 8 years is more qualified than someone who’s been a cashier for 4 years, or do you think it wouldn’t really make a difference?
You can argue that this is a racist initiative, but you could also argue that basing hiring decisions purely off of advantages and opportunities that some people receive inherently based off their ethnicity, in a country full of systemic racism, is also racist. There’s also a big component of classism involved here as a result of hundreds of years of systemic racism that kept certain groups locked out of certain classes while other families have had opportunities to build on generational wealth and all the advantages that come along with it.
Your argument ignores the value of diversity within a business. A diverse workforce offers much more variety in how to progress the company. Peoples of similar traits and backgrounds tend to have similar ideas and methods. More diversity can increase problem solving, customer relations, and ingenuity by forcing all parties to see things from different perspectives.
The US has a long history of employers refusing to hire minorities/paying the “othered” less. We are not so far removed from these practices to reliably function without laws and regulations ensuring businesses not fall back to old habits. Slavery in the US ended around 150 years ago. The Jim Crow laws, officially, almost 60 years ago. Sundown towns were still around, though not as common, 45 years ago.
Wait until you see how many white rich people Trump is gonna hire.
Yeah that’s the same concept as DEI. It’s racist.
Where is the diversity? Where is the equity? Where is the inclusion?
It’s not the same thing.
How is considering skin colour when hiring not a racist practice?
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You think they just all happen to get hired purely on merit? You think women aren’t treated differently than men too and men are just naturally attuned to executive roles?
Yes
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Hiring a lesser qualified individual to satisfy DEI policy is flawed and creates a weaker product.
Improving education and wages would fix the need to hire based on “DEI” individuals. Making education cheaper to attain while providing higher paying jobs, so everyone has a chance to further their education and opportunities.
There are a lot of jobs that only men are inclined to do that women simply don’t want to do. Forcing companies to hire people who can’t do the job properly just for them to quit or be fired isn’t good practice.
DEI policy is just a band aid to cover up the real problem. You’re just looking the other way because you think it makes you feel moral and just to advocate for said polices. Your “advanced degree” has made you complacent with today’s societal standards.
Don’t you want all people to have the same opportunity that you had? Why should a company hire a POC with a GED ahead of anyone else to satisfy a policy?
Why should a labor intensive company be forced to hire someone that will eventually quit anyways? Or be forced to deal with a substandard service to qualify a quota?
It’s a stupid flawed practice. Look at Cheatle with the secret service. Perfect example. She was definitely the wrong person for the job. Look at Kamala Harris. Look at Ketanji Brown. Biden hired exclusively to DEI standards. Where is Biden now? And look what happened.
It’s ok to disagree. It’s also ok for a woman to choose motherhood over a career. It’s ok for a man to be the provider while the mother takes care of the household and children. It’s also ok for a dual career household. Beliefs shouldn’t be forced into others. Especially religious beliefs.
Take care, thanks for the reply.
Hi, actually studied business administration. DEI is good for business as it gives diverse perspectives. Allowing a company to better serve a diverse base of customers and to better facilitate global trade in a diverse world.
Which is exactly what Costco stated in their response to their pearl clutching/snowflake shareholders.
Also, you’re strawmanning hard in your post. No one is forcing Costco to do DEI. They’re choosing to for all the reasons I outlined. Choosing not to is either based on racism/patriarchy or kowtowing to the Nazis who took over the government in hopes to curry favor. It’s not based in economic principles or best business practices.
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I understand your sentiment. Can I ask you to consider a scenario?
Imagine a company needs to hire a new employee. They have 9 white men, and need a 10th person. Whoever is hiring may not think they are prejudiced, but they need to consider how the new hire will fit in with the existing team.
They may be worried about how hiring a qualified woman will upset the dynamic. A qualified Hispanic with an accent may be overlooked if the hiring manager is concerned about their English skills. Any number of reasons that may not even be conscious, but influence the decision to hire another white man.Do you think it is possible for DEI practices to ensure diverse and qualified candidates? Why does hiring a non-white have to mean they are less qualified? If we instead start with the assumption that qualified candidates exist from many backgrounds, hiring them in proportion to their representation in the population doesn’t seem like a crazy idea.
People don’t want to wait for the systemic problems to be solved, so “positive discrimination” measures are promoted. I dislike it too.
It’s a conservative activist organization, not some random investors.
Costco’s most recent “Notice of Annual Meeting of Shareholders,” which contains information about business matters that will be voted on at the January 23, 2025 meeting, included an anti-DEI shareholder proposal that was submitted by the National Center for Public Policy Research.
Value Edge Advisors describes the National Center for Public Policy Research as a “reprehensible radical right” organization that has a history of filing anti-DEI lawsuits against various companies, including Starbucks, Nasdaq, and more. Its funders include right-wing groups like the Coors foundation.
If they’re a nonprofit, they should lose their status. And their funders’ corporate charters should be revoked.
Good for them. There are some serious issues with current DEI policies, but too many places are folding to political pressure and throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
At least Costco isn’t building planes.
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.
Kills the career they intended to have before working at Costco
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.
Golden Handcuffs
Replace “shareholders” with “racist trolls” to get a better picture of what happened.
I still don’t understand why everyone’s so obsessed with Dale Earnhardt, Inc. He’s been dead for over 20 years.
Reminds me of Fans Against Gordon.
With Jelinek no longer at the reins, this might be the beginning of the end for Costco’s progressiveness. It’ll depend on which shitbirds are pushing for the anti-DEI resolution. Jelinek would have told them to go fuck themselves, much as he did throughout his tenure when there were pushes for typical line-goes-up enshittification policies.
How long until after the founder dies until the $1.50 hotdogs go away.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they did it before he was buried.
Jelinek wasn’t a founder, they’re long gone. He was CEO from 2010 or so until last spring when a large part of the growth occurred.
The founder threatened Jelineks life if he ever charged more for the $1.50 hotdogs.
Edit:and by extension any future CEO
Hahaha, good for him.
I thought costco was a worker owned co-op? When did it get motherfucking shareholders?
Uh, the year 2000?
What? That hasn’t been the case…
You might be thinking of WinCo.
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.
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.
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.
Those who would enforce social heirarchies belong at the bottom of them.
How was DEI not politicized from the very beginning? It was literally born out of the civil rights movement.
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.
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 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.
Trump isn’t even in office and it’s already this bad.
Sounds like there’s one company that cares more about employees than Nazi investors.
Bruh…
