Apple shareholders are seeking votes at the iPhone maker’s annual meeting next year on proposals regarding the company’s stance towards unionising employees, working from home policies and human rights in China.
The union proposal filed by Trillium Asset Management, which manages $5.3bn, asks Apple’s board to step up its oversight of how management has handled unionising campaigns, months after the first Apple unions were formed at two US retail stores.
While Apple has stated employees can organise without interference, employees had accused Apple of “intimidation tactics to deter organising”, said Trillium, which owns about $155mn of Apple stock.
The proposals, which were published on the website of the US Securities and Exchange Commission this week, come amid increasing activism from investors and workers organising at some of the US’s Big Tech companies. The regulator will decide in the coming weeks which measures will go to a vote at Apple’s annual investor meeting early next year.
Though shareholder proposals are non-binding, Apple has sometimes bowed to these investor demands in the past following shareholder petitions — for instance, establishing a human rights policy and committing to conduct a civil rights audit.
Advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services has also said it will consider recommending against individual board members at companies that fail to act on shareholder proposals that have won majority support.
Typically, Apple and other companies facing shareholder proposals ask the SEC, which regulates investor petitions, to stop them from going to a vote. Apple is not contesting the union petition but it is challenging other proposals on the grounds they are duplicative or concern ordinary business decisions better left to management.
One proposal submitted by activist group SumOfUs calls for the company to create “a phaseout transition plan . . . to cease supply chain activities involving labour from the Uyghur region”.
The UN in August published a report accusing China of “serious human rights violations” regarding Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. Apple told the SEC that there was “no evidence that any of its suppliers were located” in the Xinjiang region that is home to the Uyghurs.
Two other proposals call on Apple’s board of directors to assess Apple’s return-to-office policies on employee retention and competitiveness.
Since September, Apple employees have been required to be in the office three days a week. Some employees have pushed back, with 1,200 of them signing a letter arguing that Apple’s performance during the pandemic proved they could work effectively without needing to be at the office.
In supporting flexible work schedules, one shareholder cited a 1990 Steve Jobs quote when the Apple co-founder predicted a “third major revolution” in which “the only type of organisation” to succeed will be those with geographically diverse people working together.
Apple declined to comment.