Four of the five pension funds in the New York City Retirement Systems have reached agreements with 11 companies that will disclose workforce data annually, Brad Lander, city comptroller and fiduciary for the pension system’s plans, announced Thursday.
The companies are American Express, Anthem, Honeywell International, Illumina, Intuitive Surgical, Raytheon Technologies, Simon Property Group, Texas Instruments, PNC Financial Services Group, T-Mobile and Zoetis.
“Transparency and data are necessary for investors to hold companies accountable for their public statements and commitments to equity and racial justice,” Mr. Lander said in a news release.
At issue was the companies’ willingness to make public their annual EEO-1 report, which the news release described as a “comprehensive breakdown of a company’s workforce by race, ethnicity and gender” annually sent to the U.S Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. “These reports are an important tool for measuring a company’s progress on representation of employees of color and women at various levels of the corporation,” the news release said.
The respective agreements were reached after negotiations with the comptroller’s office on behalf of the New York City Retirement Systems, resulting in withdrawals of shareholder resolutions that would have been offered at the companies’ annual meetings.
Pension funds representing public employees, teachers, firefighters and board of education employees supported the disclosure effort. These four funds, which have independent boards, account for about 80% of the assets in the $265.9 billion New York City Retirement Systems. The Police Pension Fund did not participate.
The New York City Retirement Systems began seeking disclosures of companies’ EEO-1 reports in July 2020 as part of a “diversity disclosure initiative” launched by former city comptroller Scott Stringer. According to the news release, “at least 85 S&P 100 companies now disclose, or have committed to disclose, their EEO-1 report, up from about 14 in July 2020.”
Source: pionline.com