Amazon and GM among 34 companies to disclose private diversity data

More than 30 of the largest U.S. companies have agreed to new disclosures of previously private race, gender and ethnicity workforce data as part of a push by the New York City comptroller and three city retirement funds.

Amazon.com Inc., General Motors Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. are among 34 companies that have agreed to share the regulatory filing when they report new numbers next year, Comptroller Scott Stringer said in a statement Monday. Morgan Stanley, PepsiCo Inc. and Coca-Cola Co. have also promised data, the comptroller said. More than a dozen S&P 100 companies already release the detailed form but they are the exception, not the rule.

The initiative is part of a broader push to compel workforce transparency at companies that have made explicit statements of support for equality after broad protest of the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police and disproportionate deaths of minorities from COVID-19. Two other groups were formed this month to ensure all public companies have at least one Black director.

The New York initiative began in July and is being pressed by the city’s Employees’ Retirement System, Teachers Retirement System and Board of Education Retirement System. The comptroller and funds targeted 67 companies that made statements of support for reform after the unrest but weren’t disclosing the detailed reports they are required to make each year to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Women have made some gains under direct pressure from investors such as BlackRock Inc. and Vanguard Group Inc., but that has meant less focus on people of color. Black board membership has slipped and many minority workers have not been promoted into positions where they have a better shot at becoming a CEO one day. There is no current U.S. mandate to publicly disclose the race or gender of employees.

About 30 companies of varying sizes, including Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc., already release copies of their private federal form on their websites. JUST Capital, a nonprofit that pushes companies for the same disclosure, says only 4% of companies release the EEOC data.

Intel Corp. went a step further late last year and also revealed pay data by race, ethnicity and gender required by the EEOC. The data can be used to track progress that companies are making in reform because the collection methods are uniform.

The companies named by Stringer also include BlackRock, Starbucks Corp. and Verizon Communications Inc. The companies have agreed to disclose their forms as part of their submission of data for 2019 and 2020 to the EEOC in 2021. The 2019 filings were delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.