By: Mark Glennon*
A new report examined over 1,000 leading vendors’ and service providers’ “policies, practices, and other relevant criteria to determine the likelihood a company will cancel a contract or client, or boycott, divest, or deny services based on views or beliefs.”
The study was done by The 1792 Exchange, a nonprofit that says its mission is to oppose “woke capitalism” and help steer American public companies back to neutral on ideological issues.
The ratings have an overarching goal, says the company: “provide a resource for small businesses, individuals, and not for profits to assist in selecting vendors that are less likely to cancel a contract or deny services based on views or beliefs. In this era of cancel culture in many institutions, we help protect continuity of operations when organizations choose reliable and respectful vendors.”
Individual reports on each company are included in the study, ranking them in three categories — high, medium or low risk.
Only about 12% of the thousand companies were rated “high risk,” meaning they “canceled business relationships based on viewpoint and/or has been weaponized to discriminate against people and businesses who do not share their political views.”
Nine Illinois companies were among those ranked worst as “high risk”:
- Abbott Laboratories
- Allstate
- BMO Harris
- Jones Lang LaSalle
- Kellogg’s
- McDonald’s
- Morningstar
- Sprout Social
- United Airlines
Just four Illinois companies were ranked in the best category, “low risk,” meaning they “have not terminated business relationships or denied services because of ideological disputes and generally respect or allow differing viewpoints, despite some potential limited advocacy or missing policy protections”:
- Baker Tilly
- GrubHub
- Kirkland & Ellis
- Thoma Bravo
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
Correction: This column was updated to delete Amalgamated Bank from the list of Illinois “high risk” companies. The Amalgamated Bank ranked that way is different from Amalgamated Bank of Chicago. Amalgamated Bank of Chicago was not ranked in the report.
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
I entered the professional workforce after graduating college with a Business/Finance degree and zero experience in my field. My salary was equivalent to $40,500 in today’s dollars. How many college grads today, with zero experience, would be willing to accept a job out of college for $40,500? That’s basically $20/hr. The Fight for 15 equivalent salary is $30,000.
This one hits close to home for me, as I spent a big chunk of time at one of those listed among the worst, and it is a well deserved designation. They were way out in front on the diversity and Inclusion front, but were horribly inept at execution. They hired and promoted people based on the boxes they could check, but never figured out how to deal with the fact that these individuals weren’t qualified for the positions they held. I came to realize that personally it was good for me, as it was easy to be a high… Read more »
Sounds like I might have worked for the same corporation. It was the glory time for gays and insert the N word. Incompetentce reigned supreme.
Amalgamated Bank is union-owned.
It turns our that the Amalgamated Bank in the ratings (headquartered in NY) is different than the Amalgamated Bank of Chicago you reference. I have corrected the story to delete it. Amalgamated Bank of Chicago was not ranked. This came to my attention because of a very interesting new story on the NY Amalgamated Bank. It’s indeed woke to the max and is a major partner with the left and Democratic Party: https://nypost.com/2023/02/07/how-amalgamated-bank-became-the-the-lefts-private-banker/
Time for shareholder derivative suits to make woke corporations pay for chasing PC unicorns instead of shareholder value.
Why are these companies allowed to do this
The theory is that the loudest, most progressive employees within companies driving the wokeness within companies. Neither the general public or leadership wants it but no one is willing to push back in any significant way. The conservative public can boycott but it’s difficult to take down multi-billion dollar transnational corporations with tentacles in every aspect of your life. Leadership is fearful of negative PR from within the company so they bow to every woke initiative. For example, Disney even said that they didn’t want to get involved in Florida anti-grooming laws but employees forced the leadership to take a… Read more »
Absolutely true of Abbott.
It seems so obvious that the best corporate policy is to make it clear that people from all political perspectives are welcome. From what I have seen, however, one big driver is young employees who demand woke political activism. That’s especially true in West Coast tech firms where young employees are rabid about that.
I was employed at a software company in 2016. Post election, a young woman showed up to work wearing a F*CK TRUMP shirt (asterisk, not the U). Whether or not HR approached her, I don’t know. I kept my mouth shut, but I was pissed that I couldn’t even escape political bullshitery at work.
Nixit, tell me more about how badly and when that set into the tech community, which I believe you are still in. I was heavily involved there from roughly 1995 to 2012. During that time, I had huge respect for the young techies — extremely smart and great work ethic. They leaned left but were not really political. Many held a sort of naive sense of libertarianism, thinking their tech world lived apart from politics. But it seems to me that changed radically roughly around 2016, especially in the Valley. Would you agree? How woke is the young tech crowd… Read more »
Silicon Valley the HBO show had a joke about how people don’t delete apps, so they all pulled out their phones and announced their undeleted apps. The avowed satanist Gilfoyle said he had the McCain Palin app on his phone and everyone turns their heads and looks at him with disbelief… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiuFYtoEcnc (12 second clip) The liberalism in tech started a long time ago, but were standard democrats. But in 2016, Trump broke the progressives. Everyone one of them. I know a guy that claims he knew his marriage ended the night Trump was elected because his wife had a… Read more »
Most developers keep their politics to themselves. I worked with a few guys who were socialists but were generally laid back and never loud about it. I think the more talented corporate DSA types go home to hang out with their unemployable friends and realize things could be worse.
How loud you are about politics in the workplace is inversely proportional to how marketable your skillset. This is why college grads want to work for non-profits, so they can live it 24/7 as they see the new job as an extension of activism. For most, activism doesn’t pay the bills.
I think there is something going on here in the nature of a psychological matter that hit young people — Gen Z. The latest on that is in this new, great piece from Jonathan Hardt, about a psych epidemic that hit teens around 2012. They started hitting the workforce only in recent years. College level teachers I know say the same thing about how much students changed in the same timeframe. Chicago’s colorful Howard Tubman has written often about problems with how today’s young function in the workplace. I suspect there is some connection between that psych epidemic and their… Read more »
Ahhh, I wondered why Kellogg’s was bucking the business trend to leave Illinois and is instead moving to the state. They subscribe to the woke nonsense that Illinois represents. I think in the future I’ll buy generic (or Post) raison bran.
BMO Harris Bank is Bank of Montreal. They are owned by a Canadian Bank. Bank of Montreal purchased Locally owned Harris Bank in the early 1990’s. Not sure how accurate the article is as far as saying these are Illinois Companies.
Their US subsidiaries are run from Chicago. Just a couple weeks ago, Chicagoan David Harris, CEO of BMO’s US operations, explained at the City Club that it’s the largest bank in the world with Chicago as its US headquarters. Where the owner is located is different from where the company is. Baker Tilley, too, is a big international firm but its US operation is headquartered in Chicago.