Shareholder Proposal Highlights Coca-Cola CEO’s Hypocrisy

This morning National Legal and Policy Center presented a resolution at The Coca-Cola Company’s annual shareholder meeting that would require the board to implement a policy to require the chair of the board of directors to be an independent member.

Currently James Quincey (pictured above) holds the roles of both Chairman and CEO.

Speaking as sponsor of the resolution was Paul Chesser, director of NLPC’s Corporate Integrity Project. His remarks as delivered follow; Extended remarks can be accessed here:

I am Paul Chesser, director of the Corporate Integrity Project for National Legal and Policy Center.

 

Because the company is allowing only three minutes for the presentation of proposals, my extended remarks can be found on our website, NLPC.org.

 

On March 31, 2021, Coca-Cola Chairman and CEO James Quincey caved to progressive political activists and said about Georgia’s election integrity law, “I want to be crystal clear. The Coca-Cola Company does not support this legislation, as it makes it harder for people to vote, not easier.”

 

However, as voter ID legislation has moved through the Parliament the last few months in Mr. Quincey’s home country, the United Kingdom, we have not heard a peep from him.

 

Why not? Why does Mr. Quincey apply more stringent voting standards against the United States, where he receives his sizable paychecks?

 

That’s not the only example of Mr. Quincey’s lack of awareness.

 

Last year it was discovered also, under Mr. Quincey’s leadership, that Coca-Cola had imposed diversity training for its employees.

 

The sessions included a course called “Confronting Racism,” which alleges that U.S. whites are socialized to believe they are “inherently superior” and suggests they “try to be less white” by being “less oppressive” and “break with white solidarity.”

 

And during the height of the rioting across the nation during the summer of 2020, Mr. Quincey poured gasoline on the fire by embracing the violent, Marxist “Black Lives Matter” uprising that destroyed many of our cities’ downtowns, including Atlanta’s.

 

Mr. Quincey’s virtue-signaling has also addressed the topic of gender as well, with Coca-Cola boasting of its initiatives to help women, and highlighting its Equal Opportunity Policy that prohibits harassment, intimidation, retaliation, and threats against women.

 

Those policies ring hollow, however, as Mr. Quincey totally ignored our request for him to call a special meeting of the Board to remove director Bobby Kotick, whose management of Activision Blizzard led to many credible charges of sexual harassment and assault at his company.

 

Characterized as a “frat boy culture” by the California Dept. of Fair Employment and Housing, Mr. Kotick’s company lost several top executives, and hundreds of employees signed a petition calling for his ouster.

 

While Mr. Quincey has bashed Americans and their alleged default racism, he has led our company in solidarity and submission to Communist China, even sponsoring the Genocide Olympics, and maintaining a factory in a province where millions of Muslim-minority Uyghurs are forced into slave labor and concentration camps.

 

This is who moralist James Quincey believes Coca-Cola should partner with – genocidal communists, while hypocritically bashing Americans and their freedoms back home.

 

His leadership has earned the company the mocking nickname, “Woke-a-Cola.”

 

If any corporate resolution to separate the roles of Chairman and CEO is justified, it’s this one.

The full text of NLPC’s shareholder resolution for The Coca-Cola Company can be viewed here.

The text of Chesser’s extended remarks in support of the resolution can be viewed here.

NLPC this week will also present shareholder resolutions on various issues at the annual shareholder meetings held by Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman-Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, Boeing and Berkshire-Hathaway.