Activist Investors Step up Pressure on Companies to Expand Parental Leave
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Last autumn, the Boston-based investment firm Zevin Asset Management led a investor push at Starbucks to pressure the coffee chain into expanding its parental leave benefits for hourly store employees to match the more generous policy available to salaried corporate employees. In a shareholder resolution, Zevin requested that Starbucks’ leadership tell its investors whether this discrepancy might constitute employment discrimination.
In January, Starbucks announced that it was expanding its parental leave benefits, as well as adding paid sick leave, for hourly employees. While the changes do not equalize the offerings for salaried and hourly employees, they will make parental leave available to many store employees who were not able to take it before. Zevin considered that a victory, and they and other activist investors have since been pushing for similar changes at other large US employers, Rebecca Gale reports at Slate:
The Starbucks shareholder resolution on paid family leave was the first of its kind, and it has proven so effective that socially responsible investing firms such as Zevin are gearing up to put more shareholder resolutions in place for companies that have unequal paid leave policies, citing the need for what they call “better human capital management,” i.e. better meeting the needs of workers, which they think will yield better long-term results for the companies. And Zevin has the close-knit group of socially responsible investment firms in Boston that regularly meet to learn about issues and connect on ideas to make it happen.
