The resolution claims Alphabet“has not responded adequately to key demands” made by workers in amassive walkout in November.

Over the past year, employees at Alphabet Inc.'s Google haveprotested over worker rights, a military contract, and thehandling of sexual misconduct. Now, along withshareholders, they've written a resolution to Alphabet's board,calling for reform in areas including racial and gender diversity,and asking the board to consider tying these metrics to executivebonuses.

“The tech diversity crisis threatens worker safety,talent retention, product development, and customer service,” theshareholder resolution states. It also criticizes the treatment ofcontract staff and asks the company to address the displacement ofpoorer residents where it buys real estate.

Related: Google walkout: A new kind of workeractivism

“We believe executives are out to lunch on several key socialrisks facing the company,” said Pat Tomaino, director of sociallyresponsible investing for Zevin Asset Management LLC, whocollaborated with the employees. His firm is the lead filer of theshareholder proposal. Talking to employees and community activistsand following headlines about Google, he said, “it's a picture ofunmanaged risk.”

The resolution claims Alphabet “has not responded adequately tokey demands” made by workers in a massive walkout in November, suchas adding a worker representative to its board and ending forcedarbitration for its entire workforce, rather than only for directemployees and only for cases of alleged sexual harassment orassault. It also asks the board's compensation committee to lookinto including “sustainability metrics”—such as executivediversity— into its bonus system or stock vesting protocols.Similar policies are in place at Microsoft Corp., Intel Corp.,International Business Machines Corp. and other companies.

“We're working hard to make Google more representative and buildan inclusive workplace where employees feel respected, supported,and valued,” a company spokeswoman said in an emailed statement.“We report our progress extensively every year, including hiringand attrition rates across lines of race and gender.”

A handful of employees worked on the proposal with the workplaceactivism group Coworker.org and the union-backed coalition SiliconValley Rising. Along with Zevin, Boston Common Asset Management,Trillium Asset Management, and the Friends Fiduciary Corporationare some of the co-filers. Last month they sent the resolution toAlphabet, the initial step in the Securities and ExchangeCommission's process for shareholder proposals. The filers intendto have a Google employee present the resolution at Alphabet'sshareholder meeting later this year.

“If shareholders say that this is something that is a priority,it's signaling to the company that they have to take action, andthat they can no longer just wait and see and just take smallsteps,” said Silicon Valley Rising's campaign director Maria NoelFernandez.

The proposal is similar to one raised at last year's shareholdermeeting. Google employees attended the meeting to demonstratesupport for it, and one presented it on behalf of Zevin. It failed.The company said in a filing last year that the proposal would not“enhance Alphabet's existing commitment to corporatesustainability,” noting that Alphabet chief executive officer LarryPage collected a salary of only $1. Alphabet Chairman John Hennessysaid at that shareholder meeting that the company would considerdiverse candidates for its board, and Google's human resources headEileen Naughton said the company aimed to increase its share ofblack, Latino and female workers by 2020.

The new resolution's sponsors say they are hopeful that the pastyear's headlines will help them secure stronger shareholder supportthis time around, but they acknowledge that a resolution cannotpass without the backing of founders Page and Sergey Brin, whocontrol voting rights through a special class of shares.

Those headlines include two episodes in just the past week inwhich employees spoke out against Google's management. On January24, workers at a company-wide meeting asked pointed questions abouta recently-discovered 2016 memo in which human resources officialshad brainstormed ways to reduce employee compensation withoutworkers noticing. (Google declined to comment on the memo.) Andemployees behind the November walkout decried the news that, weeksafter publicly embracing their activism, the company had quietlyurged in an unrelated case that the National Labor Relations Boardend a legal protection for workers organizing using their employeeemail system. A Google spokesperson said its request to the LaborBoard was only one of many potential defenses it offered inresponse to meritless allegations being made against it, and didnot constitute lobbying by the company.

“At this point, with so many other Googlers whose work I respecthaving left over diversity and ethics concerns, the only way I'mable to justify staying is that I still believe I can make apositive difference,” said senior software engineer Irene Knapp,who introduced last year's resolution at the shareholder meetingand helped write this year's. Google has always appealed toworkers' idealism to attract them to the company, Knapp said viatext message. “If Google hopes to maintain that appeal, it needs tolisten to those of us who are sounding the alarm about the mistakesthat are happening.”

— With assistance by Alistair Barr

Read more:

• Microsoft, fighting class action, acknowledgesgender imbalances in tech industry
• 10 best workplaces for diversity
• dddWorkplace diversity report reveals substantialinequalities in race, sex

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