Last summer, the Business Roundtable, an association major US CEOs, produced a statement of purpose under which the interest of workers and environment would gain importance alongside shareholders. The pandemic has revealed the hollowness of those words nytimes.com/2020/04/13/bus…
2/ Pundits construed the statement of purpose as a milestone, the end of the slavish devotion to quarterly bottom line. But many major corps used their cash to buy back stock and pay dividends (check it out @TheStalwart ), leaving them with less to aid workers when disaster came
3/ Amazon, worth more than $1 trillion, saw workers walk out, complaining that they lacked protective gear like masks and sanitizer. Macy's paid out a scheduled dividend even as it furloughed most of its workers.
4/ Marriott, the world's largest hotel chain, furloughed most of its workers and deprived them of their health care and then paid a dividend, and then sought a raise for its CEO Arne Sorenson, who was "unavailable" to discuss this.
5/ CEOs are busy, and this is an emergency, but here's the thing: Sorenson isn't only running Marriott, he's cochair of Biz Roundtable task force on Covid-19. He's not a random CEO; he's the public face of the Biz Roundtable on the pandemic.
6/ Last month, Sorenson released a video expressing dismay at furloughing workers, wishing them "good health and a sense of optimism" even though many were losing health care in a pandemic. he said he would forgo his salary, but said nothing about his stock-based compensation.
