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Washington, D.C. – Today, the National Center for Public Policy Research’s Free Enterprise Project (FEP) and AT&T negotiated a withdrawal of a National Center shareholder proposal seeking information about the telecommunications company’s supplier expectations surrounding Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).
Stefan Padfield
“We commend AT&T for moving in the right direction when it comes to respecting vendor civil liberties, and we thank Alliance Defending Freedom for working with us on this proposal and negotiation,” said FEP Executive Director Stefan Padfield.
“As shareholders, we believe DEI creates numerous value-destroying risks for companies by involving them in direct and indirect discrimination on the basis of race, sex, religion and ethnicity,” continued Padfield. “Accordingly, we (1) encourage companies to reevaluate and reduce/eliminate their internal commitments to DEI, and (2) want to expose how value-destroying DEI commitments are being forced on companies by state and federal regulations.”
FEP withdrew its AT&T shareholder proposal, entitled “Report on Respecting Vendor Civil Liberties,” for the following two reasons.
1. AT&T had already moved from “expecting” suppliers to comply with its relevant DEI commitments to “encouraging” them to do so.
2. AT&T agreed to disclose, as part of its Principles of Conduct for Suppliers, the state and federal regulations driving AT&T to push DEI commitments on its suppliers.
FEP thanks AT&T for these steps in the right direction, which help refocus the company toward the business of providing great products and services as part of our free-market capitalist system – the kind of system that provides the greatest opportunities for the most people, particularly those most in need of more opportunities to succeed.
FEP also thanks Alliance Defending Freedom for its Viewpoint Diversity Score business index, which provided much of the proposal’s framework and underlying factual basis.
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. Contributions are tax-deductible and may be earmarked for the Free Enterprise Project. Sign up for email updates at https://nationalcenter.org/subscribe/.
Follow us on Twitter at @FreeEntProject and @NationalCenter for general announcements. To be alerted to upcoming media appearances by National Center staff, follow our media appearances Twitter account at @NCPPRMedia.
Author: The National Center
