Caterpillar’s DEI Metamorphosis Evolves After National Center Proposal

Shareholder Activists Also Urge American Airlines and Best Buy to Fly Away From HRC

Washington, D.C. — Over the next four days, shareholder activists with the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP) will present shareholder proposals at the annual meetings of Caterpillar, American Airlines, Best Buy, Target and Dick’s Sporting Goods.

At Wednesday’s Caterpillar shareholder meeting, FEP will present Proposal 6, which asks the company to consider abolishing its Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) policies, department and goals.

However, even before tomorrow’s meeting, this proposal seems to have made a significant impact on Caterpillar’s DEI policies, which have seen two large shifts this past year. In September, Caterpillar seemed to walk back some of its DEI commitments after pressure from activist Robby Starbuck. In January, however, FEP still found a great deal of DEI-related material still on the Caterpillar website. After FEP brought seven of the offending webpages to Caterpillar’s attention in this proposal, the company made further changes. Six of those seven pages seem to now be disabled, and the “Diversity and Inclusion” page is now simply titled “Our Culture.”

While presenting Proposal 6 tomorrow, FEP Associate Bennett Nuss will take a moment to commend Caterpillar for the steps it has already taken towards meeting FEP’s request:

Caterpillar has backed away from the commitments to corporate diversity programs that we cited when we first submitted our proposal, undertaking significant revisions to their corporate sustainability programs in September of last year. I’d like to thank the Board for this, as it shows that they are interested in protecting shareholder value from changing market and societal trends, and this preemptive move signals a commendable effort to attempt to return to neutral rules of general applicability when it comes to the company’s employment and charitable practices.

At Wednesday’s American Airlines shareholder meeting, FEP will present Proposal 5, which asks American to consider ending the company’s participation in the Corporate Equality Index (CEI) of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC).

Stefan Padfield

At the meeting, FEP Executive Director Stefan Padfield will tell shareholders:

There are serious reasons to be concerned that the company’s participation in HRC’s CEI — to say nothing of its being a Platinum Partner of HRC — aligns the company with radical transgender activists promoting (1) gender confusion in children, (2) surgical and chemical “transitioning” of confused teens, (3) elimination of girls’ and women’s sports and bathrooms and (4) attacks on religious freedom. The associated financial risks to shareholders are obvious, which may explain why many name-brand companies have recently severed ties with HRC. Relatedly, it may be worth noting that as of June 3, American Airlines has apparently *underperformed* the S&P 500 by roughly 35% year-to-date and roughly 75% the past three years. Can anyone say, “Go woke, go broke”?

At Friday’s Best Buy meeting, FEP will present Item 6, which similarly requests that Best Buy consider ending its participation in HRC’s CEI.

In its written supporting statement for Item 6, FEP notes:

Best Buy received a perfect score of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)’s Corporate Equality Index (CEI), which can only be attained by abiding by its hyper-partisan, divisive and increasingly radical criteria.

Receiving a perfect or high score on the CEI can only mean that Best Buy — which has paid partnership with HRC — is spending shareholder assets to espouse and fund such partisan and divisive positions.

At the Best Buy meeting, Nuss will tell shareholders:

This proposal is not an attempt to compel Best Buy to discriminate against or exclude employees with non-traditional sexual orientations from corporate life. Rather, withdrawal from the CEI is a prudential move to safeguard shareholder value from needless and eminently foreseeable risk. I concur with the Board’s statement in opposition in that the company has considerable internal recourses to ensure inclusivity and prevent discrimination. I would encourage the board to leverage those recourses and exclude outside metrics which are anathema to their own efforts.

FEP will also present anti-DEI proposals at Wednesday’s annual meetings of Target and Dick’s Sporting Goods.

FEP expects that all five of these proposals will be defeated by a wide margin, but notes that the final vote tallies will not reflect the will of the majority of individual shareholders.

Also, in addition to asking shareholders to support these proposals, FEP has published complete voting scorecards for each of these companies as part of its Proxy Navigator voting guide.

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.

FEP, the original and premier opponent of the woke takeover of American corporate life, aims to push corporations to respect their fiduciary obligations and to stay out of political and social engineering. More information about this proposal can be found in FEP’s mobile and web app, ProxyNavigator.

Contributions are tax-deductible and may be earmarked for the Free Enterprise Project. Sign up for email updates here. Follow us on X (Twitter) at @FreeEntProject and @NationalCenter for general announcements. To be alerted to upcoming media appearances by National Center staff, follow our media appearances X account at @NCPPRMedia.