Company: BRK-A
Filing Date: 2025-03-14
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001193125-25-054877
Chunk: 29

Company: BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC
Filing Date: 2025-03-14
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 29
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 Berkshire Common Stock with a value in excess of $25,000 for at least one year has authorized Ridgeline Research to present for action at the meeting the following proposal. Supporting Statement: Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is one of the largest companies in the United States and employs over 396,000 people. As a major employer, Berkshire Hathaway Inc. should respect the free speech and religious freedom of its employees. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is legally required to comply with many laws prohibiting discrimination against employees on a variety of factors, including religion and sometimes political affiliation. Respecting diverse views also allows Berkshire Hathaway Inc. to attract the most qualified talent, promote a healthy and innovative business culture, serve its diverse customer base, and contribute to a healthy economic market and marketplace of ideas. Despite this, the 2024 edition of the Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index 13found that 91% of scored companies, including Berkshire Hathaway Inc., promote divisive training concepts like critical race theory (CRT) that replace rich cultural and ideological diversity with a monolithic focus on group identity. Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has stated that it maintains a “resource library” that promotes things like “unconscious bias” and learning about “social injustice.” While companies often push concepts like CRT under the guise of promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” such efforts often have the opposite effect. Instead of creating workplaces that afford equal opportunity based on individual merit, DEI too often leads to hostility, polarization, and partiality by focusing only on differences based on skin, biological sex, or religious status. According to the Freedom at Work survey, 60% of employees were concerned that their company would punish them for expressing their religious or political views at work, and 54% said they feared the same for sharing these views even on their private social media accounts. 14 Companies are also facing increased legal and reputational a broad array of risk for DEI initiatives, workforce and compensation metrics, and programs that make distinctions based on race in light of recent Supreme Court decisions in Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard, Groff v. DeJoy,and City of St. Louis v. Muldrow. Numerous lawsuits have been filed or threatened by state attorneys general and aggrieved employees. 15Recent scholarship has cast serious doubt on the common assertion that DEI is good for business. 16The Wall Street Journal recently reported that “Diversity Goals Are Disappearing from Companies’ Annual Reports.” 17And numerous companies are voluntarily are removing DEI initiatives