Workers & Wages

Republicans, Independents, and Democrats alike agree that it’s a company’s responsibility to pay its frontline workers enough to make ends meet.

It’s a story that captures almost every aspect of the business zeitgeist in America today – workers’ quest for fair pay, good jobs, and better conditions; unions; community support and survival; COVID; health and safety; climate change; ESG; shareholder activism; the corporate profit imperative; and, of course (inevitably), politics. 

We heard from Mastercard Chief Inclusion Officer, Randall Tucker, on how the company made diversity a priority for its 25,000 global employees.

American Electric Power DEI managers Kimberly Hughes and Alyvia Johnson share key lessons from the energy company’s journey to increase equity and career mobility.

With support from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, JUST Capital has highlighted the top 100 companies in the Russell 1000 prioritizing DEI, career development, local employee pipelines, fair pay, and quality worker benefits.

Bank of America Chief Diversity & Inclusion and Talent Acquisition Officer, Cynthia Bowman, shares how the company’s taking a data-driven DEI approach to tackle systemic barriers to hiring and mobility.

HBS’s George Serafeim discusses his new book, “Purpose and Profit,” and what debates around Tesla and Danone can teach us about sustainability and ESG.

The companies topping our 2022 Workforce Equity and Mobility Ranking outpace the Russell 1000 in setting specific DEI targets, implementing fair chance hiring, cultivating apprenticeships, and offering paid training and tuition reimbursement.

Our new polling research finds large majorities of Americans believe companies should be taking care of their workforces during high inflation.

We’ve collected key takeaways from the U.S. Department of Labor and Families and Workers Fund’s Good Jobs Summit, where public and private sector leaders discussed how job quality needs to be paramount in this tight labor market.

An unusual thing happened this week: a company was rewarded, not punished, by the market for raising wages.

An eye-popping 87% of Americans across all political, age, geographic, gender, and racial lines agree that the growing gap between CEO pay and median worker pay is a problem in this country today.

We surveyed Americans to learn what they think about CEO pay today, and what companies should do to narrow the CEO-to-Worker pay gap.

Inflation hit its highest level since 1981 in March (8.5%). Its causes and effects are starting to force some difficult conversations on core ESG and stakeholder priorities.   

Chipotle, Intel, and Prudential share how responding to the shifting labor market with real-time engagement, transparency, and opportunity has bolstered recruitment and retention.

When it comes to stakeholder capitalism, we don’t often think of activist investors as major protagonists. This appears to be changing. 

Inflation is one of the more insidious enemies of a just economy. Fed chairman Jerome Powell said as much on Wednesday, when announcing the first rate hike since 2018. 

More than a million women have yet to return to the workforce, and we discussed what needs to change to create more inclusive workforces.

New JUST Capital analysis finds less than a quarter of the country’s largest employers are conducting gender pay equity analyses, with progress stalling over the last three years.

Financial security, safety, fair treatment, opportunity, and purpose are key to retaining and engaging workers in the Great Resignation.

Our analysis finds a slim majority of Russell 1000 companies share race and ethnicity workforce data as investors and the SEC intensify their focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion transparency.

Film producer and JUST board member Abigail Disney’s new documentary, “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales,” spotlights the struggle of low-wage Disneyland workers to make ends meet and in doing so, establishes a narrative about workers all around the country.

With our media partner, CNBC, we’ve showcased a week’s worth of interviews with CEOs in the JUST 100 (and we’ve got several more to go).

These are the companies that led the way in accountability, transparency, and stakeholder performance. Alphabet is America’s Most JUST Company for the first time.

Each year’s rankings has its own unique context, and right now my sense is that trust and accountability are the watchwords.