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.
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.
Sounds like there’s one company that cares more about employees than Nazi investors.
Bruh…
I thought costco was a worker owned co-op? When did it get motherfucking shareholders?
You might be thinking of WinCo.
Uh, the year 2000?
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.
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.
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.
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.
People don’t want to wait for the systemic problems to be solved, so “positive discrimination” measures are promoted. I dislike it too.
I hope they intend to eat the board at the earliest possible opportunity
They could always grind them up to make into those $1.50 hot dogs.
Did you misunderstand who’s the asshole here, or are you siding with the shareholders who called for the termination of DEI?
Costco’s board rejected a shareholder proposal to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies
I was just making a hot dog joke, man. We can grind up the shareholders first.
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
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!
Huzzah! I’m not stingy with the cheese, btw. Havarti plain, with dill, and with jalapenos for everyone!
At least Costco isn’t building planes.
let’s not hire people from color to avoid lawsuits about racism
Awesome proposal
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.
White supremacy is DEI for white people.
Those who would enforce social heirarchies belong at the bottom of them.
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.
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.
Like great that Costco shut this down, because of decency and what is right but also… good fucking god the bar is so low.
I also forgot to say that a new Costco recently went in in my city, bulldozed yet another black neighborhood. So excuse me while I see some PR covering up some structurally racist hubris. Like i said, the bar is exceedingly low.
If they were going to bulldoze an inner city neighborhood, it’s likely that neighborhood was going to be predominantly black whether they like it or not. The white flight phenomenon predates Costco by a wide margin, and that fuckery already happened decades ago. While there were already inroads to corralling the country’s black population in cities around the turn of the century, the ball really got rolling on that in the post-war period following WW2 with redlining, block busting, widespread segregation prior to the civil rights movement, and the white middle class retreating to the then-new suburbs.
It was in a first ring suburb, a suburb that was very multicultural. The black neighborhood is exactly like my jewish working class neighborhood. The developer used questionable blighting tactics to use TIFs. Racist tale old as time. Every time they think their project is the exception to being racist. Every time they know they are lying to themselves.
Hiring is one of the places DEI belongs, I only have a problem when it dictates creative endeavors.
Good on Costco. Get fucked shareholders
Depends on how it’s presented. If it’s tied to strict quotas in terms of hiring then that can cause a lot of issues as well.
True it would be awkward to be in the situation where you have a white male candidate who exceeds the qualifications, and a black female candidate who barely meets them… Doubly so if DEI people are pressuring you to deliver, but unfortunately your company is in a position where it absolutely needs someone who can give them a homerun.
Now I’m not saying white male candidates are always more qualified than black female candidates. I know someone will take this comment that way. What I’m saying is, talent doesn’t care what color you are before it decides to bestow itself upon you, unfortunately DEI Hiring practices do.
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)
