The Hypocrisy of “Companies That Care”
March 18th was Companies That Care Day. And it doesn’t sit well with me how much praise companies expect to receive because they changed their logo or profile picture for a month or tweeted something in superficial support. So let’s talk about it.
Companies think they can simply throw some hashtags into a post, and that’s the extent of their expected efforts. But, at the same time, they directly contradict those platitudes with actions that negate these bullshit attempts at caring about social issues.
Most companies claiming to care often fail to live up to their proclamations. Every June, we see it happen when companies celebrate Pride Month by putting up rainbow flags and posting about how they support LGBTQIA+ people. They’ll make their logo a rainbow for a month,
They make their logo a rainbow for a month, then turn around and disrespect people in their workplaces, allow harassment to ensue, and continue to discriminate against protected groups in the hiring process. The same goes for companies going all out for Black History Month in February while discriminating against Black people working in their company or applying to work there.
Or how companies are posting about Women’s History Month as if they don’t discriminate against women and mothers and don’t pay women equal pay for equal work compared to male colleagues.
And these are just the internal aspects that corporations are deceptive about. The external actions can be even more insidious on broader scales.
Companies “Caring” About LGBTQIA+ Rights
The Florida Senate passed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill earlier this month. This bill forbids instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in public schools for kindergarten through third grade.
It’s since come out that several companies have recently donated to the representatives pushing this bill. Some of which that claim to care about their LGBTQIA+ workers and the community at large.
This list includes United Health Care, Publix, AT&T, Anheuser Busch, Comcast-NBC Universal, and Walgreens.
One of the biggest companies under fire right now is Disney. Disney tries to present itself as a diverse, inclusive company, which many called bullshit upon learning about its recent political contributions.
And all the more absurdly comical is that CNBC published an article about the backlash Disney faced this past week. I found they published four articles about the bill concerning Disney and the DSG bill. Yet, I couldn’t find any reports on their website including the fact that they also donated to the bill’s sponsors. (Please correct me if I’m wrong here, I’m writing this at 2 am in a late-night, caffeinated fervor. If I am wrong, how many articles have they published with information about themselves included?)
For context, according to Popular Information, “Comcast/NBC Universal… donated $1,000 to Baxley (the chief sponsor of the bill) on October 15, 2021, and a total of $28,000 to the top supporters of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill since 2020.”
In addition, “The company donated to every sponsor and co-sponsor of the legislation and all six Florida Senators who voted the bill out of committee. But the company publicly promotes itself as fighting for LGBTQ rights.”
So for them to publish multiple articles about Disney’s financial support of the bill is disingenuous and harmful. Moreover, searching for the terms “gay” and “say gay” on their website, it appears there are only five, with four of them covering the Disney angle.
One of those articles highlights that “Disney faced pressure for not opposing the bill publicly, particularly after people revealed that the company provided financial support for some of the bill’s backers in the state legislature.”
In an apparent attempt to cover the company’s ass, Bob Chapek – Disney CEO, said, “We were hopeful that our long-standing relationships with those lawmakers would enable use [sic] to achieve a better outcome, but despite weeks of effort, we were ultimately unsuccessful.”
*eye roll* Spare me.
Companies That “Care” About Women’s Rights
This month, we honor Women’s History, and businesses are sharing posts about supporting women in the workplace or sharing bits of women’s history.
Yet, this is just another facade of caring about groups facing inequality. According to Business.org, “On average, men will earn $10,381 more in 2022 than women will across the nation. Excluding Washington, DC, all states have at least a 10% lower median pay for women compared to men.”
In Nevada, female workers earned an average of about 13.5% less than male workers. We might consider ourselves “lucky” in our state, as we comparatively rank 4th in terms of the gender pay gap. The worst state was Wyoming (rank 51), where women earn an average of 34.6% less than men.
Still, we’re being underpaid at the end of the day compared to our male counterparts. And any inequality in pay for the same work is unacceptable.
Though, companies haven’t been entirely off the hook. UK-based Twitter Bot – @PayGapApp called out companies posting about International Women’s Day and Women’s History Month. The bot published these companies’ average pay gap percentages in their callouts. Some companies weren’t too happy about that and tried to delete their tweets or block the bot.
Even more disgusting is watching a company like Blizzard Entertainment dole out post after post about the women in their workforce while dealing with a massive company-wide sexual harassment lawsuit and other legal issues regarding workplace discrimination. In the prominent case, they’re accused of fostering a toxic work culture that led to an employee’s suicide.
According to The Verge, “Activision Blizzard has been embroiled in controversy since last year’s lawsuit. Months after employees staged a walkout to protest workplace discrimination, The Wall Street Journal dropped a bombshell report alleging Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has been aware of rampant sexual misconduct at the company — Kotick still remains the CEO after employees and shareholders called for his resignation.”
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Companies that “Care” About Ukraine Being Invaded
Lastly, as of late, the topic that companies have chosen to take sides on is Putin’s war in Ukraine. As a result, many companies pulled their businesses out of Russia, while others decided to remain in the country.
Arguably, cutting ties with Russia is a PR move. They don’t actually give a shit about what’s happening. They only care about their bottom line and image, not human rights or war crimes.
Coca-Cola
A prime example of this would be Coca-Cola, who, if you didn’t know, was accused of hiring death squads to kill labor organizers in Columbia. But, of course, Coca-Cola denies this, claiming that business partners owned and operated bottling plants where these crimes occurred.
In response, “union lawyers argued that the world’s best-known soft drinks company closely controlled the operations of its contractors and was well aware of the brutal intimidation of workers in the bottling factories.”
So it feels like bullshit to hear them call for peace or claim on their website that they’re “Dedicated to using our voice and position to support equality, justice and universal values across various diverse groups.” They don’t give a shit about human rights. They only care about their profits; they feign caring about their customer base or world events.
News Outlets Reporting About Companies “Taking Action”
Just as comical as finding CNBC posting multiple articles about Disney’s fallout yet nothing about their own donations, I found this Yahoo article while looking for information about companies “taking action” in Ukraine. Right there at the top of the article is this:
Before you even get into the article, they’re showing you which companies are doing well. I assume they’re basically saying, “Here look who to consider buying stock in because their faux social responsibility is bumping their artificial value.”
Social Media Outlets
Moreover, we’ve seen reports of how Facebook and Instagram are “temporarily allowing calls for violence against Russians.” They claim to care about their platforms’ power and their role in facilitating violent content and misinformation on their platforms, yet have completely gone all in making an exception here.
That’s why I made a point at the beginning of this section to say “Putin’s war,” not Russia’s. Many Russians are adamantly opposed to Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. Many of them have been arrested for protesting the war and speaking out. So to allow people to attack Russian people indiscriminately online opposes the reality of the situation – most didn’t want this.
Yes, there are Russians who believe this invasion was out of necessity, forced upon Putin by NATO and Ukraine. And that’s a different discussion about the level of propaganda by the state media in Russia. But that shouldn’t be grounds to attack Russians indiscriminately, whether online or abroad.
Russian people don’t inherently deserve violence because of Putin’s actions. On the contrary, seeing them as “other” makes it easier for other governments to commit atrocities in return. And it makes it easier for people to target Russian people and Russian businesses here in the states and act violently towards them simply because they’re Russian.
Our Own Government
Let me be clear, nothing I’ve said excuses the hypocrisy of our own government (which acts as a corporation at this point anyway), its own level of propaganda, and its involvement in escalations of conflicts around the globe throughout history.
We love to poke the proverbial bear and destabilize regions under the guise of “democracy.” We just want to wait for that opportunity that will make us out to be heroes or something.
Fresh from our pullout from Afghanistan, we’re itching to jump back into the middle of everything. Despite the threat of nuclear war, weapons and defense contractors are gleefully rubbing their hands together, waiting for the billions of dollars they’ll inevitably receive one way or another. We’ve already sent weapons and billions in aid to Ukraine. I wonder how much has gone to contractors.
There have even been articles about how a nuclear war would impact the stock market. For example, a Business Insider article stated that BCA Research reports that “Investors should stay bullish on stocks despite the increased risk of a nuclear apocalypse.” Basically saying that despite the risk of nuclear war, keep buying positively!
I want off this dystopian nightmare roller coaster. But I digress.
See Past the Hypocrisy
I’ll end this article with this: when a company claims to care for something, look deeper.
Do they back their words and tweets and hashtags with legitimate actions? Does their recent and historic history line up with the claims of caring they make today? Who and what do they donate to? What other companies do they own and what do those companies donate to? Are they saying AND doing anything meaningful? Or are they doing the bare minimum and simply pandering for your money?
The disappointing truth is that most companies, and arguably just about every corporation, DO NOT GIVE A SHIT.
Companies don’t care about you. They don’t care about human rights, social issues, or inequality/inequities in society. Let’s be honest; if we didn’t have the labor laws or human rights laws we have now, they would absolutely be taking advantage of that. And they sure as hell wouldn’t be posting platitudes about “caring” about LGBTQIA+ people, women, BIPOC people, or anything else.
Companies do not care about anything that doesn’t help them, their profits, stocks, image, or agendas. They only pretend to care because they want people to keep buying their products or services.
There might be small or local businesses out there that legitimately care about these issues. But in the grand scheme of things, most companies in our world would gladly let marginalized people experience oppression and violence. For them, it would mean fewer activism campaigns (or none at all) to spend money on and fewer PR apology tours when their hypocrisy comes to light.
Likewise, it would mean fewer lawsuits to fight or settle over workplace violations, misconduct, or any crimes they commit relating to protected groups. And, it would mean they could spend their profits on political candidates or legislation as they please, without backlash.
So stop buying into the facade of “cOmPaNiEs ThAt CaRe”; stop buying these companies’ products/services (if possible), and stop defending or stanning them (if you are).
They don’t care about you, your well-being, your rights, or your opinion.
