More firms to disclose employee data on diversity, inclusion, Stringer says

Thirty-four S&P 100 companies that issued statements supporting racial equality will publicly disclose the composition of their workforce by race, ethnicity and gender, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said Monday.

The firms agreed in response to a campaign on behalf of the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, Teachers Retirement System of the City of New York and New York City Board of Education Retirement System that Stringer launched in July. The comptroller is the investment advisor, custodian and a trustee of the retirement systems.

The systems called on 67 companies to match their statements to concrete action, by publicly disclosing their annual Consolidated EEO-1 Report data. Currently, this data on diversity disclosure and lets investors see the performance of firms in terms of their ability to hire, retain and promote women and employees of color.

Chip Barnett

The comptroller has championed many initiatives to help women- and minority-owned business enterprises and made social justice issues a priority during his tenure.

“It is not enough to condemn racism in words. I applaud these leading companies for taking this critical first step where they will make a direct impact within their own workplaces and set the tone for EEO-1 Report disclosure across the market,” Stringer said.

There had been only 29 public companies that disclosed this data, of which only 14 were in the S&P 100. The campaign resulted in a 243% increase to 48 the number of S&P 100 firms reporting.

The 34 new companies that have begun or committed to disclose EEO-1 Report data are: AbbVie Inc.; Amazon.com Inc.; American International Group Inc.; American Tower Corp. (REIT); Amgen Inc.; Biogen Inc.; BlackRock Inc.; Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.; Capital One Financial Corp.; Chevron Corp.; Citigroup Inc.; ConocoPhillips; Duke Energy; Exelon Corp.; General Motors Co.; Gilead Sciences Inc.; Goldman Sachs; Mastercard Inc.; Medtronic PLC; Morgan Stanley; PayPal Holdings Inc.; PepsiCo Inc.; Pfizer Inc.; QUALCOMM Inc.; Starbucks Corp.; Target Corp.; The Southern Co.; The Allstate Corp.; The Coca-Cola Co.; UnitedHealth Group Inc.; U.S. Bancorp; Verizon Communications Inc.; Visa Inc.; and Wells Fargo & Co.

“Companies are strongest when their workforce reflects the diversity of America and I commend the CEOs of these leading companies for taking steps toward better transparency and representation," Stringer said. "We still have much more work to do, and together with the New York City Retirement Systems we will continue building on this success to hold companies accountable and create meaningful, systemic change in corporate America.”

New York City is one of the largest issuers of municipal debt in the United States. At the end of the second quarter of fiscal 2020, the city had about $38 billion of general obligation debt outstanding. That's not counting the various city authorities, such as the Transitional Finance Authority, which has $39 billion of debt and the Municipal Water Finance Authority, which has $31 billion outstanding.

Moody’s Investors Service rates the city's GOs Aa1 and S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings rate it AA.