The Business Roundtable, an association of some 200 CEOs from many of America’s largest companies, announced Thursday a plan to combat racial injustice and inequity.
Leading the initiative are Walmart’s Doug McMillon, General Motors’ Mary Barra, JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, Microsoft’s Satya Nadella, Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan, and others.
The plan includes efforts in six main areas: health, education, finance, employment, housing, and the justice system.
The initiative includes a plan to reform their companies’ hiring policies, openly share more workforce data, and conduct internal pay equity reports. The Business Roundtable also is calling for a raise to the minimum wage, as well as paid family and medical leave.
Their action plan comes at a time when President Donald Trump is cracking down on government trainings rooted in critical race theory, which center around the notion that America has a deeply racist past. He likened the trainings that discuss “white privilege” to cancer.
Walmart’s McMillon called racial inequality “deeply rooted” in America.
“These longstanding systemic challenges have far too often prevented access to the benefits of economic growth and mobility for far too many, and a broad and diverse group of Americans is demanding change,” he said in a statement on the Business Roundtable’s website.
Dimon, too, spoke to decades of inequality in the US.
“The racial wealth divide is a result of centuries of policies and systems that have significantly curtailed opportunity and wealth creation for Black and Latinx people. We have a historic opportunity to rebuild our nation to be more equitable for all,” the JPMorgan CEO said in a statement.
In June, following the killing of George Floyd, the group of CEOs called on Congress twice to enact immediate police reform.
Many of the new plans to to combat inequality are multi-year programs, the executives noted.
“Underlying economic and social disparities that existed have accelerated and intensified during the global pandemic,” Bank of America’s Moynihan said the statement. “We all need to do more.”
*story by Business Insider