Labor Day 2021: The 32 Companies Leading for Their Workers by Industry

Over the past two years, companies have been called upon to go to bat for their employees in new, unprecedented ways – with the COVID-19 pandemic and racial equity movement demanding that corporate leaders build safer, more inclusive, more equitable companies.

And as we approach Labor Day 2021, the needs of workers are coming even more sharply into focus for our nation’s leaders – thanks to a tight labor market that’s driving a demand for higher wages and better benefits, as well as new SEC considerations for companies to disclose human capital performance metrics, ranging from employee compensation to workforce demographics.

This is a critical hour for corporate leaders and the American worker. In response to the rise of stakeholder capitalism, and the emerging challenges of our time, companies are prioritizing their’ most important asset – their workers – as they work to build a more resilient, more equitable economy that actually works for all. And our most recent survey research – covering pressing topics from employer-mandated vaccinations to racial equity in the workplace – has confirmed that this is what the American public wants to see: a future for American workers that prioritizes financial security, equity, and opportunity.

Today, we’re highlighting the companies working to do just that – establishing practices to keep their workers safe during the pandemic, conducting pay equity analyses to ensure their employees are paid fairly and equally, offering benefits that enable workers to climb the job ladder, and more. These companies – which top our Rankings on worker issues within their industries, from Retail to Software to Transportation – represent what all of corporate America should be doing to lead in the current and post-pandemic economy.

Our companion Chart of the Week feature also demonstrates that it pays to treat your workers well – the 32 industry leaders featured here outperformed the Russell 1000 by 8.6% over the trailing one-year period.

NVIDIA
Industry: Semiconductors & Equipment
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 2
NVIDIA’s investment in its employees’ work-life balance and benefits includes back-up dependent care, subsidized child care, and over 12 weeks of paid parental leave for new parents.

JPMorgan Chase
Industry: Banks
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 6
JPMorgan Chase discloses its non-white to white pay ratio, and its latest pay equity analysis reveals that the company has almost entirely closed the pay gap between white and non-white employees, with minority employees earning, on average, $0.99 for every dollar earned by their white peers.

Salesforce
Industry: Software
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 7
Salesforce publishes detailed breakdowns of its workforce demographics by gender, race, and ethnicity, to show progress against its goal of reaching 50% representation of underrepresented groups in its U.S. workforce by 2023.

Anthem
Industry: Health Care Providers
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 14
Anthem provides its workforce with a range of family and caregiving benefits, including adoption and surrogacy assistance, backup dependent care and caregiving resources for both adults and children, a parental transition week for returning employees, and more.

Procter & Gamble
Industry: Personal Products
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 19
Procter & Gamble’s pandemic health and safety measures for workers include shift rotations and flexible work schedule provisions, in addition to regular health screenings and employer-provided personal protective equipment.

Synchrony Financial
Industry: Consumer & Diversified Finance
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 20
Synchrony Financial’s employee benefits package includes a gender-neutral paid parental leave policy allowing all caregivers 12 weeks of paid leave, extended back-up dependent care during the pandemic, virtual learning opportunities for children of working parents, fertility benefits, and flexible work schedule provisions.

General Mills
Industry: Food, Beverage & Tobacco
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 23
General Mills implemented a paid sick leave policy and offered hazard pay and back-up dependent care for its on-site employees as part of its pandemic workforce measures.

PayPal
Industry: Commercial Support Services
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 26
PayPal, a partner of JUST’s and participating company in The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative, expanded its worker financial security efforts during the pandemic with new equity awards, remote work stipends, and an early pay access benefit for U.S. employees.

Medtronic
Industry: Health Care Equipment & Services
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 29
Medtronic conducts annual gender, race, and ethnicity pay gap analyses, with its most recent disclosure showing that the company has reached 100% gender pay equity in the U.S., and 99% pay equity for its racially and ethnically diverse American workforce.

The Hartford Financial Services Group
Industry: Insurance
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 32
The Hartford Financial Services Group releases up-to-date EEO-1 data as part of its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, in addition to conducting pay equity analyses by race and gender for its workforce.

Ford
Industry: Automobiles & Parts
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 37
Ford’s pandemic protocols include staggered work schedules and employer-provided personal protective equipment for its on-site workers, and a paid sick leave policy.

Keysight Technologies
Industry: Industrial Goods
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 41
Keysight shares its gender pay ratio, with women earning $0.98 for every $1 dollar their male colleagues earn, as well as the gender, racial, and ethnic breakdown of its board and workforce by management and non-management roles.

Verizon
Industry: Telecommunications
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 42
Verizon, which recently joined The Worker Financial Wellness Initiative, has also taken action on pay equity – with the company’s latest reporting showing it has 100% pay equity by gender, race, and ethnicity for its American workforce.

Comcast
Industry: Media
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 49
Comcast has set goals of reaching 50% representation for women and 33% for people of color at each level of the company, and reports out annually on the demographics of its workforce and board to show progress toward these targets.

American Electric Power Company (AEP)
Industry: Utilities
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 51
AEP’s DEI disclosures include a detailed breakdown of its gender pay ratios by type of position and region, in addition to workforce and board demographics by gender, race, and ethnicity, and a publicly disclosed EEO-1 report.

Lockheed Martin
Industry: Aerospace & Defense
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 53
Lockheed Martin offers career development opportunities for its workforce across a range of business functions, with specific programs targeted to employees underrepresented in executive leadership, and to emerging skills in its industry, like cybersecurity and AI.

Hasbro
Industry: Household Goods
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 54
By 2025, Hasbro aims to achieve 25% representation of people of color in its workforce and 50% in its hiring slates in the U.S., as well as more than 50% representation of women in global leadership – reporting progress against these goals annually.

BlackRock
Industry: Capital Markets
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 56
BlackRock’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies include targets to increase gender, racial, and ethnic representation at all levels of the company, and a planned racial equity audit of its business practices in 2022.

Chevron
Industry: Oil & Gas
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 61
Chevron invests in its employees’ family economic security by offering flexible scheduling, adoption expense coverage, dependent care reimbursement for work-related travel, and a bonding benefit for new parents and those fostering children.

Illumina
Industry: Pharmaceuticals & Biotech
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 67
Illumnia invests in its workforce development with instructor- and web-based courses available for employees, tuition reimbursement for job-related coursework, and a mentoring program, among other offerings.

Starbucks
Industry: Restaurants & Leisure
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 68
Starbucks’ commitment to fostering a diverse and equitable workplace covers disclosure of its annual racial pay equity analysis, which in 2019 showed that Starbucks had eliminated pay gaps between different races and ethnicities.

Owens Corning
Industry: Building Materials & Packaging
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 69
Owens Corning has set goals of reaching 35% representation for women and 22% for people of color in mid-level and leadership positions by 2030, disclosing progress against these targets annually and breaking down representation of women at all levels of the company.

Deere & Company
Industry: Commercial Vehicles & Machinery
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 70
Deere & Company helps develop its current and future workforce through initiatives like the John Deere TECH Program, which provides technician training in partnership with 24 colleges, a service technician apprenticeship program, and tuition reimbursement for employees.

Dow
Industry: Chemicals
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 74
Dow discloses both workforce and board demographics that cover gender, race, and ethnicity, management and non-management roles, and demographics on new hires and employees who have left the company in the last year.

ServiceNow
Industry: Computer Services
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 77
ServiceNow prioritized its contract workers in its pandemic response, continuing to pay their wages along with the wages of the company’s permanent employees through operations and service suspensions.

Etsy
Industry: Retail
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 92
Etsy leads the retail industry on parental leave, offering 26 weeks of fully paid leave for primary caregivers, secondary caregivers, and adoptive parents – the most among retail companies JUST Capital ranks.

Juniper Networks
Industry: Technology Hardware
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 100
Juniper releases detailed information around its workforce demographics, including its EEO-1 report, which breaks down the company’s split of employees by gender, race, and ethnicity across different types of roles.

Newmont Mining
Industry: Basic Resources
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 136
Newmont Mining expanded its workforce safety and well-being policies during the pandemic to allow for flexible scheduling for on-site and remote employees and to improve access to its employee assistance program, among other actions.

Equinix
Industry: Real Estate
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 141
Equinix’s DEI disclosures include a breakdown of its workforce by gender, race, and ethnicity across management and non-management roles – with its latest reporting showing improvements in representation of women and minorities in both job categories.

Southwest Airlines
Industry: Transportation
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 146
Southwest Airlines, hit hard by the pandemic’s effects on travel, focused its COVID-19 workforce measures on providing an extended voluntary leave policy with continued pay and benefits and personal protective equipment for employees.

ONEOK
Industry: Energy Equipment
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 153
ONEOK opted into expanded 401(k) hardship distributions for its workforce under the CARES Act, allowing its employees who were struggling financially due to pandemic impacts to make early retirement account withdrawals without incurring penalties.

McKesson
Industry: Food & Drug Retailers
2021 America’s Most JUST Companies Rank: 226
McKesson provided assistance for its essential personnel working on-site during the pandemic with a one-time bonus and expanded funding for its emergency assistance for any employees financially hit by the impacts of COVID-19.

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While these companies are at the forefront of many of today’s best practices for workers, there is much more to be done, particularly when it comes to racial equity and worker financial wellness. As we continue to track the actions and commitments made by companies to advance racial equity and other key issues in the workplace – driven, in part, by new government standards and a labor market that favors its workers – we are also working to move the needle forward and provide much-needed guidance and standards, like our CEO Blueprint for Racial Equity and Worker Financial Wellness Initiative, to corporate leaders looking to drive change in their companies and beyond.

Note: Facebook is ranked first for Workers in the Internet industry in our 2021 Rankings of America’s Most JUST Companies. However, as we previously put Facebook’s 2021 Ranking “under review” and withheld its JUST Seal that denotes a company’s inclusion as one of America’s Most JUST Companies (please see this post for more background), we’ve withheld its Top Company for Workers in Internet Seal as well.