JUST CapitalBeta
Provides benefits and work-life balance
Workers
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
Paid sick days, family leave and a schedule a worker learns about more than a day in advance are employer policies, granted or withheld by the company offering the job, which is why this outcome sits inside corporate conduct and rates at the top of the scale. Investors have pressed hard on it: a letter signed by 150 institutional investors representing $3.6 trillion in assets went to more than 40 companies asking them to make pandemic era paid sick leave permanent, with shareholder proposals filed at CVS, Kroger, Target and TJX. Companies answered differently, and some resisted by procedure rather than at the ballot box, Walmart having asked the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2021 for permission to leave a paid sick leave feasibility proposal off its proxy as ordinary business. The organized political opposition on record mostly belongs to nobody a shareholder vote reaches. Maine's state and Portland regional chambers of commerce and the hospitality trade group HospitalityMaine opposed that state's 2023 paid family and medical leave bill as too costly; HospitalityMaine's membership is open to independent owners, inns, branded hotels, franchisees and other lodging establishments, its restaurant dues run in tiers from under $200,000 to over $4,000,000 in food and beverage sales, and no publicly traded chain is named among its members in anything reviewed here. The sharpest instrument found is Florida's HB 433, signed in April 2024, which bars local governments from enacting predictive scheduling ordinances as well as living wage ones, and a compliance guide published by the scheduling software company Homebase lists eleven states commonly cited for preempting local fair workweek laws against Oregon and ten cities that enforce one. Reporting ties the drafting of HB 433 to Florida Chamber of Commerce lobbyists without establishing that the chamber is funded by publicly traded members, so that spending narrows the public route rather than standing in the way of the outcome itself. A benefit is still in the gift of the employer, who can grant it without asking permission of anyone, which is why corporate conduct decides this one.
How this was scoredPivotal
Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Investors Escalate Pressure on Companies to Adopt Paid Sick Leave Policies, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
- Walmart Inc.: Rule 14a-8 no-action request regarding paid sick leave feasibility proposal, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
- Business groups come out against paid family leave proposal, Portland Press Herald
- Membership, HospitalityMaine
- Florida Legislature approves bill blocking local workplace heat protection standards, Orlando Weekly
- HB 433 (2024) bill history, The Florida Senate
- Predictive Scheduling Laws by State and City: 2026 Guide, Homebase
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Lead filer of a 2021 Walmart proposal asking for a feasibility study of two weeks of paid sick leave and family care leave as a standard associate benefit, which Walmart sought to exclude as ordinary business.
Coordinated 150 institutional investors with 3.6 trillion dollars in assets asking more than 40 companies to adopt permanent paid sick leave for all employees, and later organized paid sick leave proposals at Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific.
8 campaigns on record
Adopt and disclose a policy that all employees can use paid sick leave without being subject to discipline under the company's attendance policies.
Result: Withdrawn after agreement
Union Pacific agreed to state in its next sustainability report that employees cannot face discipline for taking sick days.
Union Pacific Corporation, Paid Sick Leave (2024), Trillium Asset Management, 2024
Adopt an employer-paid sick leave policy as a standard, perennial benefit.
Result: not stated in source
Adopt an employer-paid sick leave policy for all employees as a standard, perennial benefit.
Result: 53,102,043 votes for, 400,261,287 against, 7,238,541 abstentions at the May 18, 2023 annual meeting; rejected
Asked TJX to adopt and publicly disclose a policy letting all employees, part-time and full-time, accrue paid sick leave usable after a reasonable probationary period, with no expiration date or pandemic-only condition.
Result: Not approved at the June 6, 2023 annual meeting, where it was Proposal 7. The certified count was 212,540,477 votes for and 741,089,547 against, with 11,315,069 abstentions and 61,591,217 broker non-votes, which is 22.29 percent of the votes cast for and against and matches the figure the PRI resolution database records. Rothschild & Co Asset Management pre-declared a vote in favour.
No change to TJX's sick leave policy following this vote was found in the sources opened. The same proposal had been put the year before, as Proposal 8 at the 2022 annual meeting, where it drew 327,838,039 for and 642,543,754 against, so support fell between the two years.
Paid sick leave at TJX COMPANIES, INC., PRI Collaboration Platform
Asked each retailer to make the paid sick leave benefit it had offered during the pandemic a permanent policy for all employees.
With Vancity Investment Management Ltd., Portico Benefit Services
Result: Only the CVS proposal is documented to Trillium, and it reached a vote rather than being kept off the ballot. Trillium, with Vancity Investment Management and co-filer Portico Benefit Services, urged CVS shareholders to vote for Item 7, paid sick leave for all employees, at the May 2022 annual meeting; it was not approved, with 255,627,021 votes for and 719,860,486 against, which is 26.2 percent of the votes cast for and against. No paid sick leave proposal reached the 2022 ballot at Target or at Kroger. One did reach TJX's ballot as Proposal 8 and was not approved, 327,838,039 for and 642,543,754 against, but the exempt solicitation for it names Figure 8 Investment Strategies as the proponent, not Trillium.
No company in this group was found to have adopted a permanent paid sick leave policy attributable to this campaign in the sources opened.
Activist investors push retailers to strengthen sick leave policies, Axios
Asked Amazon's board to establish paid sick leave for all employees, arguing the company could afford it.
Result: Filed for the 2022 proxy season and announced in December 2021, with United Church Funds as lead proponent, asking Amazon to establish paid sick leave for all employees. It did not reach the ballot: Amazon's certified Item 5.07 report for the May 25, 2022 annual meeting lists the fifteen shareholder proposals voted on and no paid sick leave proposal is among them. Whether it was withdrawn or omitted is not settled by the documents opened.
No company-wide paid sick leave policy at Amazon attributable to this proposal was found in the sources opened.
Study the feasibility of providing two weeks of paid sick leave, and two weeks of paid leave to care for a sick or quarantined family member or a child whose school or child care is closed, as a standard associate benefit not limited to COVID-19.
With School Sisters of Notre Dame Cooperative Investment Fund, Daughters of Charity, Inc., Everence Financial, BMO Asset Management, Inc.
Result: not stated in source
Walmart asked the SEC for permission to exclude the proposal under Rule 14a-8(i)(7) as ordinary business.
Asked each company's board to report on the feasibility of making paid sick leave a standard employee benefit beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
With CtW Investment Group, ICCR members
Result: Announced on 17 December 2020: proposals filed for the 2021 proxy season at seven companies, CVS, Dollar General, Kohl's, Kroger, McDonald's, Walmart and Yum! Brands, asking each board to report on the feasibility of paid sick leave as a standard employee benefit beyond the pandemic. None of the seven reached a vote. The certified Item 5.07 report for every one of those seven annual meetings was read, and no paid sick leave proposal appears among the matters voted on at any of them, so each proposal was withdrawn or omitted before the ballot. The documents opened do not say which of the two happened at which company, or on what terms.
No company in this group was found to have adopted permanent paid sick leave attributable to this campaign in the sources opened. CVS's own 2021 proxy lists paid sick leave for part-time employees among the COVID-19 measures it took through mid-February 2021, and does not tie it to a shareholder proposal.
As Covid Spikes, Investors Press for Paid Sick Leave for Frontline Retail and Food Workers, ICCR
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is JUST Capital's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.