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Apple and John Deere Shareholder Resolutions Demand They Explain Their Bad Repair Policies - iFixit:
Apple and John Deere, primary antagonists of the Right to Repair movement, may soon have to explain their domineering repair programs to one of their most demanding audiences: their shareholders.
U.S. PIRG, working with its affiliated socially responsible mutual fund company, Green Century Funds, has filed shareholder resolutions with both Apple and John Deere, asking them to account for “anti-competitive repair policies." Both resolutions admonish the companies for fighting independent repair and ignoring the broad political shift toward Right to Repair laws.
Touch ID stops working if you replace the fingerprint sensor on your iPhone. This used to brick iPhones; now it’s just the sad reality of iPhone repair.
Green Century’s Apple resolution says that the company “risks losing its reputation as a climate leader if it does not cease its anti-repair practices.” Noting that internet-connected devices will account for 14% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, Green Century’s resolution demands the company reverse course to “mitigate regulatory and reputational risks and bolster the company's ambitious climate commitments.”
[...] The John Deere resolution calls out the company’s broken promise to make crucial repair software available to farmers. "Company representatives are quick to point out that less than 2% of all repairs require a software update," Green Capital Funds notes. "However, Deere does not disclose what percentage of the repair sales the 2% represents."
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday September 16 2021, @06:00AM (4 children)
Are the shareholders dumb? The reason companies do this is to make money and make the stock go up. If the current demand goes through, next the shareholders are going to be demanding to know why the stock price is dropping.
Hypothetically, the shareholders could be prioritizing "social good" over returns, but I also have a bridge to sell.
Another theory is that someone is playing stock market games and waiting for the dip. It won't go as well as Gamestop, but even a few percent is a lot when you're rich.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 16 2021, @06:22AM
Activist shareholders [wikipedia.org] are a thing. The goal was to get this story in the media, perhaps even shame the companies into changing their policies, even if it goes against their bottom line.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday September 16 2021, @02:06PM
The shareholders care about customers; without customers, there's no company. They're thinking about people like me, who refuse to buy anything from any company like that. I refuse to buy into evil.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 16 2021, @05:15PM
Those policies make money in the short term but will outright kill companies in the long term. Investors looking for long positions tend to hate that. The real stupidity is that the ones pushing hardest for short term gains at the expense of the long term are mutual funds and retirement funds, the very investors who benefit most from long term investment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 17 2021, @10:33AM
Maybe they want the company to make money by selling a better product?