The third time was not the charm for United for Respect Education Fund.
The non-profit filed a shareholder proposal asking Walmart to undergo a third-party, independent racial equity audit focused on analyzing the company’s impact on Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. Per the proposal, once completed, Walmart should share the results publicly on its website.
“Given its worker demographics and scale, we request Walmart assess its behavior through a racial equity lens to obtain a complete picture of how it contributes to, and could help dismantle, social and economic inequality,” the filers wrote in their proposal. “A racial equity audit would help Walmart identify, remedy and avoid adverse impacts on nonwhite stakeholders, communities of color and long-term diversified shareholders. Failure to effectively address inequities in its operations exposes stakeholders, including employees, to unacceptable abuses and exposes Walmart to risks that may ultimately affect shareholder long-term value.”
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According to Walmart’s 2024 Mid-Year Belonging Report, people of color make up 51 percent of its U.S. workforce.
United for Respect Education Fund filed similar proposals in 2023 and 2024. But this time around, part of the importance for the group and its co-filers was the fact that Walmart, like several other major companies, announced late last year that it would roll back some of its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts in favor of a theme of “belonging.”
Ultimately, the filers’ argument proved unsuccessful in swaying shareholders’ minds. In 2023, the proposal garnered 18.1 percent of shareholder votes; in 2024, that proportion declined to 15.4 percent. This year, the proposal received 6.9 percent of shareholder votes, according to a vote result announcement from Walmart’s Thursday shareholder meeting. That’s down 8.5 percentage points from last year.
Like in previous years, Walmart recommended shareholders vote against the proposal.
“The Board recommends shareholders vote against these proposals because we already disclose substantial information on our people strategies, providing information about our business rationale, key metrics, progress, Board oversight and approach to continuous improvement based on stakeholder feedback and results,” the company published in its 2025 proxy statement.
Ahead of the vote, Bianca Agustin, co-executive director of United for Respect, told Sourcing Journal that the organization had hoped to see at least the same percentage of shareholder votes headed their way as last year. She had also hoped that the proposal would garner one-fifth of all shareholder votes, since many proxy advisers recommend a company open formal dialogue with shareholders proposing a change if their proposition receives at least 20 percent of the total vote.
Ultimately, the filers saw neither of those outcomes come to fruition this year. Nonetheless, Agustin said she hoped the proposal would bring attention to Walmart’s DEI-related decisioning in recent months.
“We [wanted] to basically give a referendum on Walmart’s really, really opaque decision to roll back the DEI initiatives,” she told Sourcing Journal. “We [wanted] to send a strong message to the company that stakeholders do not agree with their decision, and that…they have a responsibility to lead in this moment of political turmoil and division. Given the demographic of their workforce and the communities they operate in, that responsibility is enhanced for Walmart.”
TaNeka Hightower, a Tennessee resident who is currently on medical leave from her role at Walmart, supported the non-profit and its co-filers in re-filing the proposal this year. She said she believes a racial equity audit would help answer questions about pay equity and would provide insight into broader employee concerns about their ability to move up within the company, the treatment they receive from upper management and more.
“If we were to do a racial equity audit, it would really give an insight as to the disparity between Black and Brown workers in comparison to others,” Hightower told Sourcing Journal. “The people up top that are the ones benefiting from all the profits, while the people that are actually doing the work to get the profits in the store aren’t able to live.”
