NLPC presented a shareholder proposal today at McDonald’s Corporation‘s 2025 annual meeting of shareholders that asked the company to consider eliminating diversity, equity, and inclusion goals from its executive pay incentives.
Speaking for NLPC was the director of its Corporate Integrity Project, Paul Chesser, who mocked and criticized the company for characterizing the proposal as inflexible and dictatorial. McDonald’s tried in recent months to convince the Securities and Exchange Commission to let it omit our proposal from the meeting, but failed. The board of directors’ opposition statement to NLPC’s proposal is explained on pages 87-88 of its proxy statement.
NLPC also filed a detailed proxy memorandum with the SEC in support of its proposal, after circulating it to other investors that own millions of voting shares in the company.
Chesser’s two-minute remarks as presented at the meeting can be heard here, and a transcript follows:
Good morning.
Our proposal, Proposal 6, makes a very simple request.
CEO Chris Kempczinski/IMAGE: CBS News via YouTube
We asked the Board’s compensation committee to revisit a few executives’ pay incentives that are based on diversity, equity and inclusion, and to consider eliminating them.
The Company opposes the proposal because they say it is “overly prescriptive” and that it “unduly interferes with” the compensation committee’s flexibility.
The Company also describes the proposal as something that is dictatorial and restrictive.
I don’t think a request can be more gentle than to politely ask for a policy to be revisited, and then to consider an alternative.
Yet McDonald’s board characterized our Proposal as prescriptive, interfering, inflexible, dictatorial, and restrictive.
In other words, simply asking the compensation committee to even think about removing DEI from executive bonus pay is just too traumatizing for the Board to even contemplate.
I hope you all had some Happy Meal Squishmallow toys nearby for a good emotional support squeeze when you had to read our proposal.
Now despite all that distress, back in January McDonald’s ran a faux PR campaign that fooled the Associated Press and other media, making them think the Company actually was dialing back DEI.
McDonald’s must have felt pressure to do something since DEI policies were rolled back at so many other U.S. companies, who somehow overcame the emotional anguish that McDonald’s has found insurmountable.
But leave it to the lazy media to get it all wrong.
The document that supposedly included a movement away from DEI was actually called “Our Commitment to inclusion at McDonald’s!”
The Company and the Board are trying to have it both ways, but except for a few dense journalists, they aren’t fooling anybody.
DEI is alive and well at McDonald’s, and so are executive bonuses that are based upon it.
Please vote for Proposal 6.
Read NLPC’s shareholder proposal for McDonald’s Corporation’s 2025 annual meeting here.
Listen to Paul Chesser’s presentation of the proposal at the meeting here.
Read NLPC’s proxy memorandum in support of the proposal, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, here.
