Article 25: Right to an adequate standard of living, security in sickness and old age, and special care for motherhood and childhood
Pivotal
Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Why shareholder democracy is pivotal
Since most Americans get health coverage and any sick pay through their job, employer decisions on wages, benefits and drug costs go a long way toward determining whether a family can actually afford food, housing and medical care, alongside government safety-net programs. Investors have acted on this directly. In 2023, faith-based and impact investors engaged 13 large employers on paid sick leave and filed nine formal shareholder proposals. The companies included Amazon, CVS, FedEx, Target, TJX and Norfolk Southern. Separately, investors have repeatedly asked large pharmaceutical companies including AbbVie, Amgen, Eli Lilly and Pfizer to tie executive pay to responsible drug pricing. But the strongest and most consequential corporate political story here is defensive. Restaurant and retail trade groups, working through the American Legislative Exchange Council, coordinated state laws that wiped out local paid sick leave ordinances in several cities and states. Those laws prevented workers from getting a right that local governments had already voted to give them.
How this was scoredPivotal
Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
Employer wages, health benefits, paid sick leave and drug-pricing decisions materially determine whether low-wage workers can afford food, housing and medical care. Government programs (Medicaid, SNAP, housing subsidies) and drug-price regulation set much of the rest, so corporate conduct is necessary but shares the outcome with the state.
The American Legislative Exchange Council, the National Restaurant Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and member companies including Yum! Brands and Darden Restaurants ran a coordinated, self-described 'kill shot' campaign of state preemption bills that overturned or blocked local paid sick leave laws in multiple states, a documented, primary obstacle to workers having any legally guaranteed sick pay.
2 and 2, higher of the two, gives Pivotal
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
- Efforts to Deliver "Kill Shot" to Paid Sick Leave Tied to ALEC, PR Watch (Center for Media and Democracy), 2013-04-12
- Paid Sick Leave, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2023
- Norfolk Southern gives some workers paid sick days after crash, CBS News, 2023-02-23
- Shareholders renew their campaign to curb escalating drug prices at U.S. drug makers, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2019-11
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Distributed a Wisconsin bill preempting local paid sick leave ordinances as a model for other states, coordinating with member companies and trade groups.
Efforts to Deliver "Kill Shot" to Paid Sick Leave Tied to ALEC, PR Watch, 2013-04-12
Gave ALEC a target list and map of state and local paid sick leave policies and lobbied against sick-day measures in Wisconsin, Seattle, Portland and Philadelphia.
Efforts to Deliver "Kill Shot" to Paid Sick Leave Tied to ALEC, PR Watch, 2013-04-12
Co-chaired the ALEC subcommittee that reviewed and advanced the Wisconsin paid-sick-leave preemption bill.
Efforts to Deliver "Kill Shot" to Paid Sick Leave Tied to ALEC, PR Watch, 2013-04-12
Worked with the Florida Chamber of Commerce to delay an Orange County, Florida paid-sick-leave ballot measure.
Efforts to Deliver "Kill Shot" to Paid Sick Leave Tied to ALEC, PR Watch, 2013-04-12
Filed the 2022 Norfolk Southern shareholder proposal on paid sick leave, ahead of the company's February 2023 decision to grant paid personal days to unionized track workers.
Led shareholder engagement and filed drug-pricing-related executive-compensation proposals at Amgen and Eli Lilly.
3 campaigns on record
Adopt formal paid sick leave policies for workers, with the emphasis on retail and restaurant companies whose frontline workers are most exposed to the public and, by extension, to illness.
Result: In 2023 ICCR members engaged thirteen companies, Amazon, Best Buy, CVS, Denny's, Dine Brands, FedEx, Hilton, Norfolk Southern, Target, TJX, Union Pacific, YUM! Brands and Macy's, and filed nine shareholder proposals, at CVS, Denny's, FedEx, Hilton, Norfolk Southern, TJX, Union Pacific, YUM! Brands and Macy's. The coalition's own account does not give a vote percentage for any of them.
The one result the coalition reports by company is at Norfolk Southern, where it counts up to seven days of paid sick leave given to union workers as a first for major North American freight railroads. We found no company-by-company vote figure or policy change for the other eight proposals in the pages we opened.
Paid Sick Leave, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
Assess and report on the feasibility of incorporating drug-pricing risk into senior executive compensation arrangements, building on the 2018 and 2019 resolutions that asked for reports on the link between price rises on key drugs and executive incentive structures.
With United Church Funds
Result: Filed on 14 November 2019 for the 2020 proxy season at AbbVie, Amgen, Biogen, Eli Lilly and Pfizer, with Mercy Investment Services lead filer at Amgen and Eli Lilly and United Church Funds leading the engagement with AbbVie. It reached a vote at two of the five. AbbVie, 8 May 2020: not approved, 249,382,082 for, 773,211,511 against, 19,752,693 abstaining and 251,100,201 broker non-votes, or 24.4 percent of the votes cast for and against. Eli Lilly, 4 May 2020: not approved, 184,652,906 for, 570,094,648 against, 27,534,077 abstaining and 83,997,305 broker non-votes, or 24.5 percent. No proposal on drug pricing and executive pay appears in the certified results of Amgen's meeting on 19 May 2020, Biogen's on 3 June 2020 or Pfizer's on 23 April 2020.
Neither vote came close to a majority, and we found no change to an executive compensation arrangement at any of the five companies documented in the pages we opened. Why the proposal did not reach a vote at Amgen, Biogen or Pfizer is unsettled: a withdrawal after agreement and an exclusion granted by the SEC staff would both look like this in the certified results, and we did not open the no-action correspondence that would tell them apart.
Pass state laws preempting cities and counties from requiring employers to provide paid sick leave, using Wisconsin's 2011 Senate Bill 23 as the model bill circulated to legislators.
With National Restaurant Association, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Federation of Independent Business, Florida Chamber of Commerce, Employment Policies Institute
Result: Wisconsin passed Senate Bill 23 in May 2011, overriding the Milwaukee paid sick days ordinance that voters had approved by referendum with over 70 percent of the vote in 2008. At ALEC's August 2011 annual meeting in New Orleans, legislators on the Labor and Business Regulation Subcommittee, co-chaired by Yum! Brands, were given complete copies of that bill as a model for state override, along with a target list and map of state and local paid sick leave policies prepared by the National Restaurant Association. A preemption bill was introduced in Tennessee and became law in Louisiana in 2012, and by 2013 similar bills had been introduced in Florida, Washington, Mississippi, Michigan, Arizona, Indiana and Oklahoma.
Milwaukee's ordinance was nullified by the state law. In Orange County, Florida, a sick-time measure backed by more than 50,000 signatures was kept off the November 2012 ballot by a delaying campaign that this reporting describes as coordinated by county commissioners working with Darden Restaurants, the Florida Chamber of Commerce and Disney, and in February 2013 a court found the county had violated the plain meaning of its charter by refusing to put paid sick days in front of voters.
Efforts to Deliver "Kill Shot" to Paid Sick Leave Tied to ALEC, PR Watch
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 Universal Declaration of Human Rights's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.