Shareholders at DuPont and Union Pacific Corp. overwhelmingly approved workforce diversity disclosure resolutions filed on behalf of three New York City pension funds, Comptroller Scott Stringer said Monday.
The proposals on behalf of the New York City Employees' Retirement System, Teachers Retirement System of the City of New York and New York City Board of Education Retirement System call for the companies to publicly release their EEO-1 reports that break down workforce by standardized categories of race, ethnicity, and gender. The resolutions were approved by 84% of DuPont shareholders April 28 and 86% of Union Pacific shareholders on May 13.
Mr. Stringer is the fiduciary of the five pensions funds in the $251 billion New York City Retirement Systems. He launched the diversity disclosure campaign in 2020 to have companies making public statements valuing workforce diversity to publicly disclose their EEO-1 data. Companies were unresponsive last year but so far in 2021, 62 S&P 100 companies approached by Mr. Stringer have committed to doing it, he said. DuPont and Union Pacific were the first U.S. companies where the New York pension funds' proposal went to a vote.
"Today marks a major victory for investors, for pension holders, and for the advancement of diversity and inclusion across Corporate America," Mr. Stringer said in a statement. "Shareholders overwhelmingly voted for disclosure that will provide them with critical information to hold these companies accountable. These results bring us another step closer to achieving transparency and ensuring companies' commitment to equity and diversity, but we have more to do."
According to Mr. Stringer, the two companies resisted the proposal, as did some other companies that will face a shareholder vote on the proposal later this year, including American Express and Procter & Gamble.
