Let’s face it, even the idea that corporations might use their financial clout in a progressive matter is, for most observers, enough to trigger a severe attack of cognitive dissonance.
If anything, we’re accustomed to seeing the reverse. At their worst, the world’s giant energy producers simply reject the idea that climate change is taking place. More subtly, critics charge, others like Shell suggest that the benefits of providing the world’s poor with cheap energy offset some of the risks posed to those same individuals by climate change.
But then, what else is to be expected from big businesses that earn giant profits by finding and extracting fossil fuels and then persuading people to use them?
Meanwhile, big banks are trying to roll back all the reforms set in place in the months and years that followed the financial crisis, chipping away at the ability to enforce the Dodd-Frank Act, among other initiatives.
So Apple, under Tim Cook’s leadership, looks even more unusual in its newfound social activism.
During a trip to Israel in late February, Cook – who came out as gay late last year – paid a visit to the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum. He wrote in its guestbook that he pledged “to be ever watchful for those who would threaten human rights and equality”.
Cook is living up to that pledge. As CEO of the country’s largest corporation, which has a market capitalization of $724bn, he has a massive bully pulpit. And he’s using it to take on Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana.
Late last month, Pence signed into law a religious freedom bill that critics said gave companies the freedom to discriminate against the LGBT community. In the face of immediate and intense criticism, Pence insisted he and the bill have simply been misunderstood – although he also said he was not willing to consider extending civil rights protection to LGBT individuals.
Cook said, bluntly, that it was all balderdash. In a crisply written and pointed essay published in the Washington Post, he described himself as a person of faith – and went on to say that he was never taught religion should be used to discriminate. Moreover, he wrote, having grown up in the south in the 1960s and 1970s, he knew how tough it was to fight institutionalized discrimination.
Apple’s message, he said, was that “regardless of what the law may allow in Indiana ... we will never allow discrimination”.
Cook hinted that he would not stop at words, however eloquent. After all, as that old playground taunt has it, words wouldn’t hurt Pence. Actions would. And steps taken by a handful of other corporate leaders gave us a hint of what might be in the offing.
Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com, announced that he was canceling any programs in Indiana. That was not an idle threat: the company is the state’s largest technology employer, and a corporate event brought in as much as $9m in revenue for Indianapolis last year, according to some reports.
Angie’s List halted work on its Indianapolis headquarters, a $40m project. Jeremy Stoppelman, the CEO of Yelp, wrote an open letter to the governors of states considering following Indiana’s lead, pointedly declaring that the company would “make every effort to expand its corporate presence only in states that do not have these laws allowing for discrimination on the books”.
A number of other Fortune 500 names – Eli Lilly, Gap, American Airlines – openly protested Indiana’s legislation.
Opposition to such bills attracted support from more unexpected quarters. Walmart’s CEO asked Arkansas governor Asa Hutchinson to veto a similar bill, arguing it did not reflect the values “we proudly uphold”. Hutchinson buckled, saying he would not sign the bill.
Even Nascar – a favorite recreational pastime for the kind of folks you might think would be likely to look askance at something as unusual as same-sex marriage – insisted it welcomed all competitors and fans to its events in Indiana.
And the concerted wave of social activism worked, putting Pence on the defensive. On Thursday, Republicans in the Indiana state legislature said they had amended the bill to make sure businesses could not discriminate against people. The move was said to have Pence’s support.
Part of this may simply have been due to sheer surprise: who would have imagined that so many giant corporations would have been ready to speak out so bluntly?
But this is where having large, costly and talented corporate communications teams really pays off. If you look at their statements, none of these businesses are speaking out in favor of same-sex marriage. If they did so, they’d probably alienate a chunk of their customer base. What they are saying is something that it’s almost impossible to quarrel with. They are waving the flag of equality, of tolerance, of fairness, of diversity, of opportunity. All of which are as American as the much-touted motherhood and apple pie.
Moreover, in contrast to Starbucks’ painfully bungled attempt to engage in social activism over the tricky topic of race, these companies have handled the issue properly. Whereas Howard Schultz, the coffee chain’s founder and CEO, handed off the task of trying to start a dialog over race issues in America with bleary-eyed commuters to Starbucks baristas, in the case of the “religious freedom” laws the message is coming straight from the CEO’s office.
It’s also a message that is clear and crisp – “Don’t discriminate!” – and not fuzzy – “Please, talk about race”. That’s bound to have a much bigger impact.
Still, if you interpret this explosion of outrage as signifying that corporations are suddenly going to join the ranks of progressive social activists across the board, you might want to rein in your hopes. For them, these laws are simply bad business, as Cook himself pointed out:
America’s business community recognized a long time ago that discrimination, in all its forms, is bad for business.
Today, with same-sex marriage legal in three dozen states – Indiana among them – compared to only a handful a few years ago, the idea that a business would stay silent while a portion of its employees or affluent customer base faced the prospect of discrimination under a newly passed law would simply be counterintuitive. Why would Apple not speak out, clearly and forcefully, when its CEO – the guy who runs the largest corporation in the country, let’s not forget – might walk into a restaurant in Indiana and be denied service?
Expecting any of these companies to suddenly start advocating on issues from paying a living wage to the elimination of the wealth gap is simply too much to hope for. Apple isn’t suddenly going to decide to repatriate its staggering $178bn cash mountain and altruistically donate billions of that to the US treasury in the form of taxes. (Though it might be nice if this new anti-discrimination campaign could be extended, and channeled into a more effective debate on race than the one that Starbucks tried to launch.)
For now, we may want to be pleased that for once, what is in the best interests of corporate America also happens to be in the interest of many of its citizens – including many in Indiana itself.
