As the great Rush Limbaugh said, follow the money. Costco doesn’t want to get in on the post-Trump inauguration trend of throwing DEI out the window, and it might be partly because executives received generous bonuses for achieving woke DEI and climate goals.
After hiring so many employees based entirely on skin color and other merely external attributes, and after bribing executives to be devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion ideology, Costco naturally has a workforce and leadership that is desperately clinging to a stupid and increasingly unpopular ideology. The wokies’ glory days in the Biden-Harris administration are over, but they can’t face that. A Fox Business report indicates why: DEI harmed many businesses, but it benefitted certain Costco executives.
For example, Costco CEO Ron Vachris was rewarded with a $93,333 bonus in 2024 because he reached “social and environmental objectives.” These included, per Fox, “metrics concerning diversity, equity and inclusion, resource consumption, and other environmental-related areas,” as described in a 2024 proxy statement. Other executives received the less staggering but still significant sums of $24,000 in bonuses for supposedly reaching diversity, equity, and inclusion metrics.
In 2023, then-CEO Craig Jelinek was awarded a $100,000 bonus for meeting environmental and DEI metrics, according to that year’s proxy statement. Other execs were awarded up to a $24,000 bonus for hitting DEI benchmarks. DEI-linked bonuses have been awarded every year since 2020, Costco proxy statements revealed…
The grocery chain also lists the demographics of its "Supervisor in Training" program, which is designed to help with the professional development of employees. According to their website, 57.3% of the 7,000 employees who participated in the training program identified as "People of Color."
It shouldn’t matter what skin color you have, but leftists are absolutely obsessed with race. In January, the Costco board rejected a proposal to place profit over propaganda by ditching DEI.
Recommended: ‘Government Is the People’s Business’: A Tribute to Ronald Reagan
DEI has turned into an industry. Costco has a chief diversity officer, for instance. “The role of the company’s Chief Diversity Officer (CDO) is to support the advancement of inclusion at Costco, the growth of a diverse employee base, our relationships in the communities where we do business and an increase in our base of diverse suppliers,” Fox quoted the company.
Managers and employees at Costco are trained in “inclusive conversations”, among other initiatives. Former executive Roger Campbell tried to justify the woke policies, whining, “The term DEI didn’t even exist to us, it was the way we ran our business… it’s who we are.”
Proud to join forces with 18 AGs in calling on Costco to DITCH their illegal DEI policies.
— Attorney General Andrew Bailey (@AGAndrewBailey) January 28, 2025
Discrimination is illegal under both state and federal law.
Costco must comply. pic.twitter.com/yDvGbR860z
Nineteen state attorneys general pressured Costco to reject DEI at the end of January. The retail giant remains stubborn for now, though. Woke habits die hard.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member