24 Apr 2024 Pfizer and Levi Strauss Face Challenges from Conservative Shareholders Over Support of Divisive Causes
Washington, D.C. – At this week’s Pfizer and Levi Strauss annual shareholder meetings, shareholder activists with the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP) will demand accountability for the companies’ partisan and divisive charitable donations.
Both proposals request that the companies create committees on corporate financial sustainability to review the impact of their political advocacy and charitable giving on their bottom lines.
Ethan Peck
“Corporations have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders not to take sides on divisive issues, as their shareholders who have varying political views will always fall on both sides of any given issue,” says Free Enterprise Project Associate Ethan Peck, who will be presenting both proposals virtually. “Corporations also have a fiduciary duty to their shareholders not to implement policies that are proven to hold significant risks in terms of company success and therefore shareholder value. So when corporations insert themselves in the middle of societal debates and divisive issues – issues that are meant to be debated amongst citizens in the halls of Congress, not at corporations – then they violate their fiduciary duty.”
Peck will specifically call out both companies for their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies, which encourage the discriminatory hiring and promotion of employees based on their race, sex and orientation; and for their support for radical LGBTQ+ organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for gender-affirming care for minors and the inclusion of biological males in women’s athletics.
“We are not asking the companies to espouse right-wing or conservative views,” says Peck. “We’re just pointing out that the companies have a legal obligation not to espouse or fund left-wing ones either. Doing so is financially risky because of potential consumer boycotts like the ones we’ve seen at Target, Disney, Bud Light and Planet Fitness, which amounted to massive losses in shareholder value. Our proposals request that the companies evaluate the risk of political activism to their financial sustainability, so Levi Strauss and Pfizer can mitigate those risks and take the first steps toward getting back to neutral.”
The Levi Strauss annual shareholder meeting will be held virtually today at 10:30 am PT/1:30 pm ET and can be accessed via this link: https://central.virtualshareholdermeeting.com/LEVI2024. FEP’s proposal at this meeting is Proposal 4.
Pfizer’s annual shareholder meeting will be held virtually on Thursday, April 25 at 9:00 am ET and can be accessed via this link: https://meetnow.global/PFE2024. FEP’s proposal at this meeting is Item 8.
More information about these proposals, as well as FEP’s other voting recommendations, can be found in FEP’s mobile and web app, ProxyNavigator.
About
The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than four percent from foundations and less than two percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 60,000 active recent contributors. Contributions are tax-deductible and may be earmarked for the Free Enterprise Project. Sign up for email updates at https://nationalcenter.org/subscribe/.
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