When United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz made what he called a “personal” decision to end the carrier’s relationship with the National Rifle Association, the firearms industry looked at it as just another example of “virtue signaling”. You know, the idea that espousing some position that you label as a high-minded decision but is actually a backhanded way of signaling that “if you don’t like (your group here), travel with us.”
Seems many of the employees and a few of the shareholders, in fact, disagree with Munoz’s decision.
At the annual shareholders meeting yesterday, a shareholder called out Munoz after he said “we stand by” the decision made last year to sever the NRA relationship.
"To claim to speak for all of his employees on the important and sometimes divisive issue of gunowner rights was poor judgment on Munoz's part, and he rejected the opportunity we gave him today to make things right with his employees and with current and potential customers," said National Center for Public Policy Research Vice President David W. Almasi.
Almasi attended the United shareholder meeting as a representative of the National Center's Free Enterprise Project (FEP). "His anti-gun stance has surely hurt morale, and the animus he created with supporters of the Second Amendment will affect the company's profits and shareholders' investment. That's why financial experts were critical of Munoz on this from the beginning."
It’s the second consecutive year the FEP and Munoz have clashed about the decision. At last year’s annual meeting, FEP Director Justin Danhof confronted him about the decision following the Parkland High School shootings. Munoz told him the decision was “personal with regard to my family at United.”
It turns out not everyone at United is, er, united about Munoz’s decision.
According to the FEP, when inc.com reached out to the United “family” they found that employees disagreed with the decision - by more than a four-to-one margin.
And several business commentators agreed, with one observing, “he (Munoz) doesn’t own the company. It’s not Munoz Air.” Another suggested that the decision was “big enough, that he has to go in front of the board and pitch it to them and sell it.”
Appears he didn’t. And not all shareholders are happy about that.
Munoz, meanwhile, said he was “not aware” of the inc.com survey, and said his characterizing the decision as “personal” was not taken in “the full context” in which he meant it. He went on to explain that a United pilot’s daughter was one of the Parkland victims - and that was the “family” context to which he was referring.
That brought this response: Almasi then asked if United was severing relationships with Purdue Pharma over opioids or HBO over criticism of the finale of Game of Thrones.
Almasi concluded with this: “When applying his approach in the context he wanted it considered, there are plenty of politically motivated decisions Munoz could make for United. That’s troubling. United’s board needs to be engaged to make sure more ‘family’ decisions don’t hamper the airline’s bottom line.”
Before yesterday, I had absolutely no experience with the Free Enterprise Project (FEP) or the National Center’s Free Enterprise Project. But it’s an intriguing group. Begun in 2007, they’ve pestered companies in more than 100 shareholder meetings about “free market ideals” - like health care, energy, taxes, regulations, religious freedom, food policies, media bias, and gun rights.
They appear to be the conservative-minded voice in the investment community, although they point out that the “dozens of liberal organizations” like them “annually file more than 95 percent of all policy-oriented shareholder resolutions. Consequently, the liberal side of the ledger exerts an “undue” amount of influence over corporate America.
I hadn’t heard of them before, but I’ll be keeping up with them in the future. Seems not everyone in the financial world is concerned with virtue signaling.
We’ll keep you posted.
—Jim Shepherd
