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Before COVID-19, the U.S. was a lot like a movie set. Observers saw a beautiful façade on the outside, complete with a roaring stock market and historically low unemployment. Hidden from view was economic inequality starkly dividing the U.S. workforce: blue-collar laborers on one side and white-collar “knowledge workers” on the other.

While this division was already noticeable to some, the pandemic made it painfully obvious to all.

A wider divide in economic inequality

Over the past eight months, white-collar workers have made a successful transition to remote work, performing their jobs online from the comfort of their homes. Many don’t realize that this transition has been made entirely possible by blue-collar workers, who have no choice but to continue leaving the safety of their homes each day to earn a living.

In many cases, these Americans are working far more and earning far less than their work-from-home counterparts. Most are living paycheck to paycheck. 

This is even more confounding when you consider that the basis of capitalism is increased production leading to increased salaries. While U.S. productivity has risen exponentially, salaries have risen much more slowly. Between 1979 and 2018, productivity grew six times faster than hourly pay. As a result, we have a group of people who are working harder than ever but not getting paid enough for their efforts.

The myth of equality of opportunity is now even less true

The U.S. has long been considered the land of opportunity, but the COVID-19 pandemic has shown that equality of opportunity is a myth. For upper-class Americans, 2020 has become a time of reinvention and recuperation. For the poor and middle classes, it’s been a time of unprecedented hardship and even wider economic inequality.

These workers have been forced to risk their health and the health of their families each day they leave home - for the job site, the hospital, the classroom, or the station. Many of the people in this class of workers were already living paycheck to paycheck, and the pandemic has only added to this strain. Their only choices for survival were to become dependent on someone else or go out and work; there’s no in-between option.

Our country is home to more than a quarter of the world’s billionaires, but our immense wealth is concentrated in the hands of relatively few people. This economic inequality is indeed a problem, as the floor of opportunity should be far and wide, fair and right. Often, the opportunity for blue-collar workers to participate more fully in the economy simply isn’t there.

For example, how much time do business leaders spend thinking about how to reenergize, retrain, and remobilize U.S. workforces when moving 100,000 jobs from the U.S. to another country? Unless they make that a priority, nothing will change for those workers.

Taking on the economic inequality gap

How can the business community enable more people to participate in the economy that everyone has worked so hard to create? By seeing business as part of the solution, as builders of the community, and as responsible for that community. In my book, It’s About Time: How Businesses Can Save the World (One Worker at a Time), I explore the role companies can play in enriching the lives of all people amid constantly changing societal and economic circumstances.

I believe the balance is off for blue-collar workers. Historically, our workplaces were designed to motivate white-collar workers, focusing on and investing in what they can do tomorrow. Meanwhile, we tend to focus only on what blue-collar workers can do today. Businesses need to see those people as a source rather than a resource — and invest in them.

For example, leaders could motivate blue-collar workers by encouraging them to grow into different roles in the company within two years. Those leaders must also invest in the development of those workers to help them achieve that goal. When everyone is allowed to grow and be part of an organization’s ecosystem, we can get closer to equal participation in the economy.

A good example of a company that practices this successfully is Uber. During the pandemic, it has converted its workforce - whose livelihood depends on a service that had decreasing demand - into delivery drivers. Other businesses can have a similar impact on their teams by working to foster change and improve the economic standing of their workers.

The problems we face today won’t disappear overnight. Economic inequality has been a persistent aspect of American life since our nation’s inception. But if more businesses can recognize the power they have to help solve this problem, progress is possible. It’s time for modern companies to develop a conscience that they can use to guide business - and humanity - into a better tomorrow.

Image credit: Rob Lambert/Unsplash

Black Americans showed up in huge numbers to vote in the 2020 election cycle. Analysts say their massive turnout in major American cities including Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee and Atlanta played a key role in pushing Democratic candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris to presumptive victory in the presidential race.

As outlets including the Black Information Network observed, those grateful for a Biden and Harris win can largely credit Black community organizers. The Movement for Black Lives summed it up neatly in an email to supporters on Saturday, "This is a testament to the power of Black people and Black organizing." Due to mounting factors, Black Americans are increasingly poised to reshape the landscape of business, too.

A long-awaited wave of Black corporate executives may be around the corner, but numbers are just the start

In just one example, as racial justice protests spread around the world in response to the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, a growing number of companies put targets in place to increase the number of Black people and people of color in leadership roles.

While many argue (for good reason) that pledges to increase leadership representation over the next five to 10 years pale in comparison to the change that's needed, realizing these goals has the potential to bring hundreds if not thousands of new voices into the top brass of America's largest companies. And as is often said: You can't manage what you don't measure. “Companies that write affirmative-action plans, which set goals, see more progress toward diversity than companies that don’t,” Frank Dobbin, a professor of social sciences at Harvard University, told the Tribune News Service in September. 

Change in this area is sorely needed: Though Black Americans comprise more than 13 percent of the U.S. population, they account for just over 3 percent of executive or senior leadership roles at major companies, according to a 2019 study from the Center for Talent Innovation. 

“Despite many good intentions, companies are falling short of creating equitable workplaces for Black employees," Patricia Fili-Krushel, CEO of the Center for Talent Innovation, said in a statement announcing the findings last year, as quoted by Black Enterprise. "We hope that business leaders will respond to these findings by making a serious assessment of their own workplaces and creating a comprehensive plan of action.” 

It is, frankly, shameful that it took a string of highly publicized murders and a wave of global racial justice demonstrations for many companies to put such action plans into place. But now that they have, some are hopeful change could be coming to the executive suite — which remains, as Jessica Guynn and Brent Schrotenboer of USA Today put it, "one of America’s most exclusive and impenetrable clubs." 

Still, others insist that increasing the number of Black people and people of color in leadership positions is far from the end game. "Corporate diversity shouldn’t be a goal," Travis Montaque, founder and CEO of the messaging technology company Holler, wrote in Fortune. "It should be the outcome of a fundamental shift in the DNA of a company."

In recounting his own experience in a Wall Street diversity program before founding Holler, Montaque said he often felt like the "diversity kid" and was expected to adapt to fit the organization's culture, rather than the culture changing to be more welcoming to everyone. "Executives need to take an honest look at their own corporation’s identity," he continued. "In the process, business leaders should ask themselves how they can make systemic changes at the ground level that will hold everyone in the company accountable for working toward true diversity and equality."

Black small business owners are on the cusp of redefining Main Street — if they can survive the pandemic

Like Montaque, a growing number of Black Americans aren't waiting for the C-suite to welcome them and are founding their own enterprises instead. Black women in particular represent the fastest growing entrepreneurial population in the U.S.: The number of companies owned by Black women has grown by 164 percent since 2007, and they now launch more businesses than any other group. 

Still, Black entrepreneurs are notoriously underfunded. According to 2020 data provided by the Federal Reserve, Black Americans were twice as likely to be rejected for small business loans compared to their white counterparts. In the venture capital world, DigitalUndivided’s Project Diane found that firms owned by Black women received an infinitesimal 0.0006 percent of the total VC funding raised by startups from 2009 to 2017. 

Challenges with funding extended through the coronavirus pandemic, putting businesses owned by Black Americans and other people of color at disproportionate risk of closure. Only 12 percent of Black and Latino business owners received the funds they requested through the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the fund established by the federal government to help small businesses weather the economic storm. Of the businesses that chose to identify race in their loan applications, Black-owned businesses received 1.9 percent of PPP loans while white-owned businesses received 83 percent, according to data from the Small Business Association. 

With this in mind, it's not surprising that Black-owned businesses were twice as likely to permanently close in the wake of coronavirus shutdowns, but some say the pandemic also presents an opportunity to create parity among all entrepreneurs, once and for all. Reaching revenue parity between white- and Black-owned U.S. businesses as part of thoughtful and targeted COVID-19 recovery amounts to a $290 billion opportunity to grow overall wealth, according to a new report from McKinsey & Co. But as 3p's Roya Sabri observes, realizing that potential requires intentional action from both the public and private sectors. That's hardly a given in today's environment, but some cities are already getting started. 

The bottom line: Election results show that Black Americans aren't waiting for an invite

We could go on and on listing the ways in which businesses, financial mechanisms and other systems have failed Black Americans throughout history and up until today. But the results of the 2020 election make one thing clear: Black organizers, innovators and leaders aren't waiting for white America to wake up and solve those problems — they're solving them on their own. And given what we know about diversity and financial results, their efforts are poised to — once again — benefit us all. 

The peaceful transfer of power has been called the the bedrock of American democracy, so it would seem that CEOs who affirm their support for the exercise are simply describing the normal state of affairs. However, nothing has been normal during the term of U.S. President Donald J. Trump. The president appears determined to cling to power by de-legitimizing the general election, making it all the more important for business leaders to speak out and defend the principles for which thousands of Americans have fought and died.

What happens when a president fails to concede?

According to most constitutional experts, an incumbent president who refuses to concede has very few options. 

However, one of those options could prove crippling, at least in the short term. As stipulated by a 1963 law, the General Services Administration is tasked with processing the documents that provide the president-elect’s transition team with resources and access to high-level personnel, including access to the Department of Defense. In particular, the law requires the GSA to “ascertain” the winner of the election before setting the wheels in motion.

This obscure law explains why Trump and his allies have relentlessly peppered the national conversation with accusations of voter fraud and other irregularities during the general election, despite having no evidence in hand.

So far, all of Trump’s legal actions have failed their tests in court. Nevertheless, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.S.) and other top Republicans have persisted in arguing  that Trump has the right to contest the election in court. 

In support of this argument, Graham has reportedly donated $500,000 to finance Trump’s legal actions in several states, and the overwhelming majority of Republican legislators in Congress have refused to acknowledge Joe Biden as the president-elect.

In addition, on Monday evening, reports surfaced that U.S. Attorney General William Barr has issued an unprecedented, blanket authorization for U.S. attorneys to pursue “substantial allegations” of fraud. Barr stipulates that the authorization only extends to “clear and apparently-credible” allegations, but the vague language and the mere fact that he has taken this highly unusual step only lend further credibility to an incredible line of argument.

While all this appears to be an exercise in futility, it is far from a harmless tantrum or public relations stunt. The cumulative result is that Trump and his allies have provided GSA chief Emily Murphy with support for declining to ascertain that Biden is the president-elect, at least until after the Electoral College meets on Dec. 14.

With the COVID-19 pandemic reaching a new level of crisis and the economy still struggling for a foothold, any further delay in the peaceful transfer of power will hobble the incoming Biden administration at a time of national crisis and bring more misery to millions of American households, while providing Trump and his allies with an ongoing platform for falsely and fraudulently claiming victory in the general election.

Why bankers should stand up for veterans

According to multiple reports, pressure on Emily Murphy to start the transition process has already begun to build, and that is where the voices of business leaders could have a profound impact on the course of the nation in the coming days and weeks.

If the pressure does increase, several Wall Street firms may take credit for being among the first to speak out.

That should come as no surprise. As a group, America’s bankers profess to act in the interests of the nation, and support for active duty military and veterans is typically a key element in the community relations strategy of many financial institutions.

As more data from voting patterns in the general election become available, bankers may also feel that a previously solid Republican voting block — U.S. military voters and their families — has soured on the president’s policies and behaviors, providing a cushion of support for others to speak out on behalf of the peaceful transfer of power.

If the final general election numbers bear that pattern out, it may be partly due to the president’s persistent, but false, claim that voting by mail is inherently fraudulent. After all, active duty military and their families are routinely stationed far from their permanent homes, are frequently reassigned, and often vote by mail. 

The president’s false accusations about mail-in ballots raised the alarm among military advocates in the run-up to the general election. In September, a nonpartisan election reform organization called RepresentUS launched the Count Every Hero campaign aimed at ensuring participation among military voters.

Reports have also begun to surface that veterans are angered by the attacks on mail-in ballots. On Nov. 6, the Associated Press cited several military veterans who vigorously pushed back against the president’s claim of fraudulent votes by mail, including one who voted in his home state of Florida throughout a 30-year military career spanning positions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany and different assignments in the U.S.

In one case that has grabbed the media spotlight, Trump sympathizers have reportedly submitted a list of 3,000 Nevada voters accused of casting their ballots illegally while living out of state, including active duty military and their families.

At least one person on the list, a military spouse, has pushed back publicly and pointed out that the list includes residences on Hill Air Force Base, located just across the Nevada border in Utah, as well as civilian addresses. Nevada is also home to Nellis Air Force Base, among other military facilities. 

Who has spoken out — so far

Bank of America is one financial institution that has focused on veterans' services, and earlier this week the firm’s CEO Brian Moynihan made it clear that there is no justification for Emily Murphy to withhold ascertainment from President-Elect Joe Biden. 

Moynihan spoke at the opening of the company’s high-profile Future of Financials 2020 virtual conference on Monday, and he congratulated Biden and Harris on their successful campaign.
Among other comments, Moynihan also emphasized that there is important work to be done for the sake of the nation, stating: “We look forward to working on the big problems that face the world.”

Goldman Sachs is another firm that focuses on veterans' services in its corporate citizenship profile, and CEO David Solomon posted a message on social media emphasizing the need to protect and restore the nation as the COVID-19 crisis intensifies. “We are ready to engage as [Biden and Harris] confront the important challenges of tackling the pandemic and rebuilding the economy,” he wrote.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon echoed that sentiment in a statement on Nov. 7, when the Associated Press issued its official call on the results of the general election. “We are a stronger country when we treat each other with dignity, share a commitment to a common purpose and are united to address our greater challenges,” Dimon said.

The message is clear: CEOs must support a peaceful transfer of power 

Taken together, these statements render a clear message that the good of the nation outweighs Trump’s personal desire to retain his hold on the office. That message may not convince a significant number of Trump’s supporters. However, it has already resonated with top business leaders, even before election day.

If snap polls from the Yale University Chief Executive Leadership Institute’s virtual CEO Caucus in September are any indication, Emily Murphy will be hearing from many more business leaders in the days to come.

“A majority of the business leaders gathered for the Chief Executive Leadership Institute’s virtual CEO Caucus on Sept. 23 gave President Donald Trump a failing grade on his response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the Yale School of Management reported, citing a figure of 55 percent for the attendees who gave the president a failing grade of "F.”

“An even larger majority of 84 percent of the group said that the administration’s response to the crisis had hurt their businesses; similar majorities said that the U.S. response is worse than other industrialized nations and that the government response had increased the number of deaths in the U.S,” the School of Management added. “Seventy-seven percent of the business leaders said they would be voting for Joe Biden over Trump in the November election.”

In the runup to election day, many business leaders advocated for change and took action to support voting rights, including making safe places for in-person voting available and providing employees with time off to vote.

Now election day has come and gone and a historic number of votes have been cast, but President Trump openly defies the foundation of American democracy. The hard part lies ahead, and more business leaders must speak up and  take aggressive action to defend the peaceful transfer of power.

Image credit: Pexels

Royal Dutch Shell received an unwelcome tutorial in how not to run a Twitter poll last week when the company asked users of the popular communications app what they would do to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The poll sparked a furious burst of outrage from climate action advocates, who accused the company of deflecting from its own responsibility for the climate crisis. Nevertheless, the the poll does raise some important points about the ability of individual action to make a difference in global emissions, even if they are not quite the points Shell intended to make.

This really was one weird climate action poll

The Shell poll headed for trouble right out of the gate when it launched on Nov. 2, partly because Shell declined to provide any introduction or context for the question. The company’s tweet simply read, "What are you willing to change to help reduce emissions?” and provided participants with four choices: “offset emissions,” “stop flying,” “buy electric vehicle,” and “renewable energy.”

Only Shell's team can say what they hoped to learn from that bare-bones approach, except that the poll seemed intended more as a conversation-starter than any meaningful attempt to gauge public opinion. After listing the choices, the tweet suggested continuing the conversation under the Twitter thread #EnergyDebate.

Some conversation! The poll received only 199 votes before Shell shut it down, possibly due to the overwhelming torrent of negative replies, numbering into the thousands. Greta Thunberg and U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez were among the high-profile climate activists who put their Twitter seal of disapproval on the poll, bringing even more unwanted attention upon Shell.

When is a choice not a choice?

Shell and other fossil fuel stakeholders are ultimately responsible for much of the climate crisis, all the more so because their own scientists confirmed and correctly predicted the impact of oil and gas extraction on global warming decades ago.

The proof is in the pudding. Decarbonization of the global economy is already under way, partly at the insistence of activist investors. Shell and other leading fossil energy companies are pivoting into renewables, and advocates insist they must accelerate change in order to avert catastrophic climate change in the coming years.

However, if Shell’s intention was to deflect blame on to individuals, the poll was a curious way to do it. The four choices presented in the poll are not really individual choices at all. Access to electric vehicles and renewable energy both depend on the availability of technology. Similarly, access to offsets depends on markets and financial instruments. For that matter, offsets are beyond the budget of many households, especially those that are already stretched to the breaking point during the COVID-19 crisis.

Of the four options, flight is the only one that does leave some leeway room for individual choice, especially where vacations and short trips are concerned. However, even that is somewhat misleading. Many people rarely or never fly in the first place, either because they don’t need it, they can’t afford it, or they are afraid of it. On the other side of the coin, many people who fly regularly have no other choice, unless they plan on switching careers.

In addition, the whole issue of flight and carbon emissions may become moot in the coming years as the aircraft industry transitions to biofuel, batteries and fuel cells.

What Shell omitted

If anything, the poll puts the burden of action squarely back where it belongs: on the shoulders of Shell and other historic polluters.

To be clear, though, the poll does not absolve individuals from their responsibility to contribute to a more sustainable future.
 
If Shell really wanted to deflect responsibility on to individuals, it could have listed real choices that individuals make on a daily basis, with varying degrees of access based on their financial situation and other circumstances. Some of these choices can also have a ripple effect, if they help grow the market for more sustainable products.

For example, energy experts have long recognized that energy efficiency is one of the low-hanging fruits of decarbonization, whether it simply involves changing a lightbulb or caulking windows, or investing in weatherization, energy-efficient appliances or a new HVAC system.

Choosing reusable bottles and other long-lasting items over disposable ones is another area in which individuals can exercise their influence on manufacturers. The same goes for choosing to buy household products that require less packaging, or products that eliminate petrochemicals.

Choosing to recycle is another area in which individuals can exercise a powerful influence, especially in future years as next-generation recycling technology becomes available.

Why it matters

Although some environmental advocates hesitate to focus on lifestyle choices, that is also going to become a key issue as the decarbonization trend accelerates, simply because sustainable products are not free of impacts.

Biobased products, renewable energy, electric vehicles, and other products are fraught with land competition issues including the use of agricultural lands, forests, and natural habitats, in addition to impacts related to mining and manufacturing.

Be that as it may, Shell has a long road to travel before it can shuffle blame for the climate crisis on to individuals.

As reported by Energy Voice, in September Shell dealt itself into a raft of new offshore oil assets through the firm Kosmos Energy.

On Nov. 4, just two days after Shell dropped the Twitter poll like a hot potato, reports surfaced that the company had acquired a stake in the Transkei and Algoa oil and gas exploration basin off the coast of eastern South Africa. The deal gives Shell a hand in the ongoing exploration of a 17,698-square-mile expanse, and the company has announced plans to speed up the timeline of work already under way.

Image credit: Kouji Tsuru/Unsplash

Of all the circumstances that we might have imagined kickstarting America’s smart city aspirations, a pandemic surely wasn’t on our list. And yet, our anxieties over disease transmission might just be the fuel that propels us towards a future in which autonomous cars become the urban norm.

A huge setback for public transit

For the last several months, the COVID-19 pandemic has compelled us to change our perspectives to suit a newly disease-aware world. We’ve adapted our day-to-day routine to suit social distancing recommendations and become leery of crowded, high-traffic areas. Our faith in public transit, in particular, has been shaken so profoundly that it very nearly demands an innovative fix. Time magazine recently described COVID-19’s impact on public transit as “apocalyptic.”

“[Buses] that once carried anywhere from about 50 to 100 passengers have been limited to between 12 and 18 to prevent overcrowding in response to coronavirus [...] Seattle transit riders have described budgeting as much as an extra hour per trip to account for the reduced capacity, eating into their time at work, school or with family,” Time’s Alejandro de la Garza wrote in July. 

Sometimes, riders’ anxieties compel them to leave the bus before their stop; one woman who de la Garza interviewed described exiting several stops early with her seven-year-old son after the driver allowed a crowd of people to board at once. 

“It’s very trying,” the source, Brittany Williams, shared. “I’ll put it in those terms.”

How can we keep public transit viable?

The obvious answer to the overcrowding and slow-transit problems would be to add more buses -- but such a move doesn’t seem economically feasible with the current decline in public transit use. In July, the Transit App reported a 58 percent year-over-year reduction in travelers within Williams’ home city of Seattle. 

Numbers are a little worse in Washington D.C., with a 66 percent decline in Metrobus use and a 90 percent drop in Metrorail traffic. The losses experienced in New York City are among the worst, with the Transit App noting a 95 percent loss in the spring and a still-alarming reduction rate of 84 percent in late summer. 

Pandemic fears have limited traveling, which in turn has limited fares to a trickle and all but eliminated cities’ abilities to add to their public transit fleets. According to a recent McKinsey report, 52 percent of American respondents travel less than they did before COVID-19. Many who do travel opt for a private vehicle over bus or train trips. A full third of surveyed consumers say that they “value constant access to a private vehicle more than before COVID-19.” 

To risk stating the obvious: not everyone can buy or store a public car, nor should they even if they could. The environmental impact of replacing public transit with individual vehicles would be environmentally disastrous and dramatically exacerbate existing traffic and parking problems. Moreover, reports indicate that purchasing intent has dropped with the economic downturn; people don’t want to buy new cars when their incomes are uncertain.

An opening for autonomous cars

But I would argue that city-dwellers don’t necessarily need private cars -- they just need a mode of transport that offers the isolated, sterilized feel of personal vehicles with the cost-efficiency and dependability that characterizes good public transit. Ridesharing services like Uber and Lyft have set the groundwork for this, but aren’t a perfect fit. They’re expensive, focused on one person at a time, and naturally pose a virus-spread risk to passengers and drivers alike. But what if there were no drivers, only a limited number of masked and isolated passengers traveling pre-defined, regular routes?

Years ago, architect Peter Calthorpe painted a vision of California cities with autonomous cars that was very nearly this, writing: “Down the center of El Camino, on dedicated, tree-lined lanes, [would be] autonomous shuttle vans. They’d arrive every few minutes, pass each other at will, and rarely stop, because an app would group passengers by destination.”

There's a window of opportunity to reshape consumer perception of autonomous cars within a public-transit perception. Instead of anxiously fleeing buses inundated with close-seated crowds, mothers like Brittany Williams could order an autonomous ride and sit, as per a COVID-optimized version of Calthorpe’s vision, either alone or with one or two distanced others. Between routes, these cars could be sanitized and sent off to support new passengers. Such an approach would establish self-driving vehicles not as a one-person luxury, but a new and COVID-thoughtful form of public transportation. 

The sustainability and convenience benefits of adding a self-driving shuttle service to public transit are countless. These include lessening the need for private cars, mitigating traffic deadlock, and improving passenger convenience. Autonomous shuttles could shoulder at least some of the burden carried by other public transit services and lessen the need for additional (if half-filled) buses and trains. 

While it is true that Uber and Lyft have been talking about developing autonomous cars and next-gen taxi services for years to no avail, we are now closer than ever before to achieving viable autonomous driving technology. Earlier this year, the GM-backed driverless car startup Cruise received a permit from the California DMV that would allow the company to test driverless cars without safety drivers, albeit only on specific roads. 

This represents a significant step forward in the deployment of autonomous cars and, if successful, could lead to the first fully-autonomous vehicles. It is worth noting that despite delays, Cruise hopes to launch a self-driving taxi service soon; its fourth-generation autonomous cars features automatic doors, rear-seat airbags, and, notably, no steering wheel. 

If Cruise can manage to accomplish this, it stands to reason that autonomous shuttles are not all that far away. If anything, cities might have more opportunities to partner with self-driving startups and incorporate autonomous shuttles into municipal transit. Given that pandemic-prompted anxieties will likely persist until (if not well beyond) the emergence of a mass-produced vaccine, it seems likely that the window of opportunity for piquing consumer interest in socially-distanced autonomous transit could extend out over years. 

Of course, there are few clear speed bumps in the way. 

For one, there is still a pervasive stigma around the perceived safety of autonomous cars. Uber memorably halted its experiments in 2018, when one of its experimental vehicles struck and killed pedestrian Elaine Herzberg in Tempe, Arizona. 

At the time, there were rumors that the company planned to divest itself of its self-driving interests entirely; however, the company has begun to restart its efforts on a significantly smaller scale in recent months. Cruise -- and any other autonomous car startup that takes on the challenge -- will need to assure the public of its products’ safety before it can achieve widespread acceptance. 

Another major issue will be cost. 

With public transit in such dire straits, obtaining the funds for a partnership between self-driving car startups and municipal transit may prove difficult in the short term unless the local government is convinced of the public’s need for autonomous shuttles and the revenue that such an approach could attract as a result of said need. Proponents will need to launch a media campaign to raise public awareness and bolster backing for adding autonomous shuttles to municipal transit. 

If we can get beyond some of these initial hurdles, we can kickstart a smart, sustainable and COVID-aware urban transit system. As with the early days of online shopping, consumer perceptions of autonomous driving will quickly shift from it being a laughable luxury to a must-have public service, especially under pandemic conditions.

Image credit: Cruise

An immigrant himself, Chobani founder and CEO Hamdi Ulukaya knows the struggles of establishing oneself in a new country, including finding a job that pays a living wage. Such fears felt by many U.S. workers are even more exacerbated as the fate of a second stimulus bill is still in limbo as of press time.

Since Ulukaya, a Turkish-Kurdish native, started the company in an abandoned Kraft factory in upstate South Edmeston, New York, in 2005, Chobani has hooked the country on Greek yogurt. The company has grown to 2,000 employees and makes about $1.5 billion annually. Ulukaya, though, felt that many of his employees — especially those on factory floors — were not directly benefiting from the company’s exploding success. “Society moves on the shoulders of people like that,” Ulukaya told Fortune.

To help fold those workers into the Chobani success story, the company has pledged to increase the starting hourly wage to at least $15 an hour, which is more than double the national minimum wage of $7.25. About 70 percent of Chobani employees are paid hourly. Workers in manufacturing plants in New York and Twin Falls, Idaho, will now earn an average hourly rate of about $19. The increases are expected to take effect in the first quarter of 2021.

Hourly employees in New York City, including those who work at the Chobani Café, will see their minimum hourly rate climb to $18, due to the area's high cost of living.

Employee hours, benefits and other programs will not be tapped to cover the increases. “This kind of spending is not an expense,” Ulukaya explained to Beth Kowitt of Fortune. “These are the best investments you can do for your company.”

The increases reflect Chobani’s commitment to employee support, which includes a parental leave policy and generous fertility treatment benefits. Since the pandemic began, the company has been providing bonuses and increased protections for frontline workers and is continuing to provide a subsidy for childcare, since many childcare facilities remain closed. The company has also strived to take on food insecurity with various initiatives.

Almost 30 percent of Chobani’s workforce are refugees, representing about 20 nationalities. When Ulukaya first started the company, he worked alongside employees in the factory to learn about their jobs and the business. 

The wage bumps put Chobani’s workers in a better position than most nationwide. The federal minimum wage has been stagnant for more than 10 years — the longest period without a boost in U.S. history.

Nationwide, there has been some progress toward raising the minimum wage. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has pledged to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. States can also implement minimum wages higher than the federal rate. If the U.S. minimum wage were raised to $15 an hour by 2025, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that 17 million workers would earn more and as many as 1.3 million Americans could be hoisted above the poverty line.

But the CBO also warned that a higher minimum wage could lead to layoffs, lower business income and higher product prices.  Undaunted, seven states have pledged to raise the minimum wage to at least $15 in the next two to three years. Major companies that have raised their hourly minimum wage to $15 or more include Target, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Amazon.

Chobani began talking about wage increases last year, but the coronavirus pandemic has put a sharper focus on worker conditions. The pandemic “is an opportunity to see things a lot deeper and say, ‘These are fundamentals that need to change,’” Ulukaya told Fortune. “We do not have to wait for the government to act on it. We, as businesses and CEOs and brands, must do our responsibility, and this is the time to do it.”

Image credit: Chobani/Facebook

Black Friday will certainly look different this year. Shoppers won’t be camping outside of stores in the early dawn or stampeding to chase flat screen TVs. Instead, many deals are extending for the whole month of November, and most are moving online. But beyond an extended Black Friday, there’s also another, more meaningful, trend that may also affect sales: choosing to shop at Black-owned businesses.

Long before Black Friday, the outlook for Black-owned businesses was bleak

Black business owners have been twice as likely to close up shop during the coronavirus pandemic than other small businesses, an August study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York finds. Meanwhile, of course, there have been continued protests over police shootings of Black men and women and the failures of the justice system. In this extremity, many have taken action with their wallets, and some Black-owned businesses have seen increased sales.

Some large companies have also created programs to support Black-owned businesses. Facebook released a #BuyBlack Friday Gift Guide, and this week TikTok launched a hub for Black entrepreneurs that includes special partnerships and initiatives available on its app.

Black-owned businesses need sustained efforts to overcome structural barriers

A new report from management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., though, notes that more than one-off decisions, actions and donations are needed to transform the economic landscape in which Black-owned businesses strive to survive. In other words, our attempts to transform the economy must transcend moments of protest and celebration. These efforts for equity would pay off. In a landscape where Black-owned businesses earn the same amount of revenue as their white counterparts, the United States would gain $190 billion in GDP, the study estimates.

McKinsey’s report also details the challenges Black-owned businesses are facing, especially during the pandemic, and the type of coordinated action required to achieve revenue parity and community prosperity.

Some of the barriers Black entrepreneurs face in earning revenue and scaling include being disproportionately located in economically disadvantaged states and neighborhoods, disconnection from mentorship opportunities and, most importantly, intentional exclusion by financial institutions from potential capital, the report details. Black-owned businesses start with an average of $35,000 at their outset, while white-owned counterparts begin with $107,000, a 2016 study from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research found.

Even before March, 58 percent of Black-owned businesses were at risk of financial distress, compared with 27 percent of white-owned businesses, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York claims. Pandemic-related distress has only heightened the risks of closure — one to remember this Black Friday as weather across the U.S. gets far colder, adding to the risks people face in contracting COVID-19.

“The aggregate barriers to starting and sustaining a Black-owned business translate structural bias into less access to capital, lower revenue, and dimmer prospects for business growth,” the McKinsey report states. “The mainstream financial system’s role in those barriers has helped to maintain Black Americans’ distrust of the financial sector as well as fear of debt.”

Recommended solutions in a pandemic response that resolves persistent issues include building what McKinsey calls “supportive ecosystems” for Black-owned businesses. These community-focused, cross-sector ecosystems would counteract structural barriers based on racism and exclusion using interventions such as enforcing anti-discrimination laws, increasing available capital contributions and developing more diverse management teams in the private sector.

Five ways to build supportive ecosystems for Black entrepreneurs

McKinsey lists five interventions as remedies to the barriers that Black entrepreneurs face:

First, build relationships between anchor institutions in the community and Black-owned businesses with a mix of advisory and advocacy roles.

Next, public, private and social sectors should work together to ensure that anti-discrimination laws and policies are updated and enforced.

Most importantly, financial institutions could provide greater opportunities for start-up and expansion capital with fewer strings attached, as well as offering guidance on finding and securing funding.

Anchor institutions in the private and social sectors can also offer resources to re-skill and up-skill workers to help reinforce business capabilities and build systems of knowledge-sharing, with a special focus on digitizing management and workflows.

Finally, the private sector can consciously form mentorship and sponsorship networks for Black workers and leaders within companies, and — on a larger scale — cities and regions developing partnerships between startups and similar established businesses.

More cities are responding to the needs of Black businesses

Some cities had already been striving to strengthen their Black-owned businesses before small business distress, new cases of police brutality and resulting protests hit the news this year. In Memphis, The 800 Initiative aims to help Black-owned firms in the city increase their revenue by $50 million within five years. Inspired by Memphis, fellow Tennessee city Knoxville created its own 100Knoxville plan with a mission to increase the revenue of Black-owned firms with paid employees by $10 million by 2025. Part of Knoxville’s strategy is improving access to social, political and financial capital — methods that directly align with McKinsey’s recommendations.

Brandon Bruce, lead partner in the 100Knoxville initiative, notes that achieving marked progress in breaking down stubborn barriers requires tireless efforts. He writes, “When it comes to supporting Black-owned businesses in Knoxville, it’s about sustained commitment to growth in order to create jobs and wealth in our community for generations to come.”

This type of commitment can certainly begin on Black Friday, but it must last for many Fridays to come if communities are to see results.

Image credit: Paul Sableman/Flickr

Interface, the global commercial flooring company known most for its popular carpet tiles, recently unveiled a collection of carbon-neutral products called Embodied Beauty.

The new carpet tile collection features designs inspired by nature, which the company manufactures in line with its "Climate Take Back” mission statement. The seven new carpet styles will all be carbon neutral across the entire lifecycle, adding to the company’s carbon-neutral floors product line launched in 2018. Further, three of the new styles will also achieve what the company says is a first: a carbon-negative carpet tile, one example of the company’s cradle-to-gate program Interface announced last week.

Interface states in a video that companies must learn to “love carbon” as a “building block” that gives them a path toward designing and building better products.

These latest developments build on the company’s long sustainability journey, which has enabled Interface to reduce its tiles’ carbon footprint by 74 percent since 1996, in part with its claims that some of its carbon tiles can actually sequester carbon.

Interface turns to Japanese design

Japanese aesthetics of minimalism, restoration and natural organic beauty inspire this new Interface collection, says Kari Pei, vice president of global product design at Interface. The collection’s design evokes feelings of connectedness with nature by embracing the principles of ikigai, the Japanese idea of "having a purpose."

Pei adds that there are elements of another concept, kintsugi, which represents the art of mending broken objects to create new things, which fits with the manufacturer’s closed loop approach to flooring. Finally, the texture of the tiles invokes sahiko, a decorative Japanese form of stitching.

Full of carbon, as well as Zen

The Embodied Beauty collection is currently available in the Americas and will launch globally in 2021. The collection features three styles which combine with the company's new sustainable carpet backing.

This backing, says Interface, uses specialty yarns along with a proprietary tufting process. Tufting builds on an ancient tradition of knitting that allows extra yarn to be looped into a knitted base with “U” shapes, creating a denser knit, which in turn means more material is available to act as a carbon store. The base of the tiles includes bio-based materials as well as content with a high amount of recycled content.

John Bradford, Interface’s chief science and technology officer, says that by capturing carbon in the carpets’ raw materials, these same materials can be used over and over again. He adds that 70 percent of a material’s carbon footprint is attributed to the extraction and processing of raw materials. By reusing materials again and again, the carpet's carbon impact is lowered even further.

The popularity of sustainable is rising

The growth of the sustainable flooring industry reflects wider pressures on designers to specify products that have a lower carbon impact through third-party environmental product declarations (EPDs). Interface, for example, can point to at least two dozen EDPs by which the company measures its products’ environmental performance.

The global building industry is responding to these trends. For instance, over the last five years the nonprofit Climate Bond Initiative has launched over 80 climate certified bonds for low-carbon buildings. These trends reflect growing calls for low-carbon development by international bodies like the United Nations Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction. In terms of the global flooring market, a recent market report found a growing emphasis within the industry on research and development for sustainable and recyclable flooring. There are growing markets for supporting the use of sustainable building components and finishes, too.

Interface’s new carbon-focused flooring products are a relatively small, yet crucial element to achieving a net-zero economy. Of course, the red carpet might not be rolled out any time soon to announce a fully sustainable flooring industry, but at least Interface is rolling out the green.

Image credit: Interface corporate website

It is easy to descry companies engaging in activities that drive biodiversity loss, but there is another player that is equally, if not more responsible. Both direct and indirect involvement with corporations’ activities in global food production, mining, fossil fuels and other harmful environmental practices accelerates when provided with the capital to do so.

To that end, according to a report produced by Portfolio Earth, the world’s largest banks invested more than $2.6 trillion in sectors that resulted in biodiversity loss and wildlife destruction in 2019. 

The issue here, according to the report’s authors, is banks loaning and funding companies that engage in biodiversity destructive activities without any accountability. These banks lack environmental liability regulations and frameworks that measure the environmental impact of its activities. According to the report’s findings, activities like tourism, infrastructure and the relocation of people - along with mining, fossil fuels, and global food production, together comprise the primary drivers of the current biodiversity crisis.

What is this crisis? Portfolio Earth claims that three-quarters of earth’s land surface and two-thirds of ocean surface has been altered, leaving only 23 percent of land and 13 percent of ocean as wilderness. This is the furthest we have come to pushing environmental boundaries and according to Portfolio Earth, we are facing the consequences. 

Portfolio Earth is a collaboration of financial and environmental experts who analyze the financial sector's role in biodiversity destruction and ways of combating this. The report analyzed the financial activities of financial institutions including Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Mizuho Financial, Wells Fargo, BNP Paribas, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial, HSBC, SMBC Group and Barclays.

The report’s authors compared investments in sectors: forestry and non-food forest commodities, fossil fuels, tourism, metals and mineral mining, relocation of goods and people, infrastructure, food production and agricultural commodities. Of all financial activity analyzed, 32 percent was related to infrastructure, 25 percent for metal and mineral mining, 20 percent for fossil fuels and 10 percent for food production – and the global food sector, says Portfolio Earth, has the largest impact on biodiversity worldwide.

While bank investments may be diverse, these financial institutions have one thing in common - no systems are in place to measure the impacts of their funding. 

The biggest change stressed by authors is to “rewrite” financial rules. This means institutionalizing and standardizing frameworks that financial institutions must navigate when they provide funding and loans to their clients. Such frameworks would hold banks responsible for any environmental harm caused by its activities and allow for its impact measurement. While some banks engage in socially responsible efforts, such efforts are not as sufficient as having environmental liability regulations in place. Portfolio Earth says Brazil is the only country with such regulations on the books.

Along with new regulations, the report’s authors call for transparency and banks to stop funding fossil fuels, overfishing, deforestation and ecosystem destruction. An example of direct funding is the financing of gold mining operations; indirect funding covers the use of gold in other industries, such as the manufacturing of computers and other electronic devices, also has an impact on the environment.

Why is making such a distinction important? The report reveals that 66 percent of funding was related to biodiversity loss activities and 34 percent was investments in companies that indirectly contribute to biodiversity loss. Direct impact investments were higher among banks in Africa and the Asia Pacific Region compared to banks in North America and Europe.

It’s not just the financial sector that requires change. Portfolio Earth calls upon governments to stop protecting banks and enforce financial rules to hold banks accountable for damage caused by their funding. This report has made one thing very clear: The world’s largest banks are propelling wildlife destruction and change is required from the top down.

Image credit: Trevor Cole/Unsplash

Last month, Microsoft announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with Alaska Airlines to purchase sustainable aviation fuel. The agreement involves the purchase of credits to be used by Microsoft on Alaska Airlines routes traveled most frequently by the tech giant's employees — namely from Seattle to Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Jose, respectively. Microsoft said the move to purchase sustainable jet fuel will significantly reduce the carbon dioxide emissions associated with its flight-based business travel. 

The fuel credits will be purchased from Amsterdam-based SkyNRG, which makes sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) out of various feedstocks including used cooking oil. SkyNRG's SAF is a blend of waste oils and conventional aviation fuel. Theye Veen, managing director of SkyNRG, said he hopes that the partnership with Microsoft will encourage other large companies to enter similar agreements. Veen went on to assert that SAFs are a “once in a century” opportunity to change the energy source used by an entire industry.

Microsoft responds to an evolving travel industry

As part of the partnership, Microsoft, Alaska Airlines and SkyNRG say they will participate in Clean Skies for Tomorrow. Run by the World Economic Forum, the coalition's goal is to increase the aviation industry’s demand for sustainable jet fuel and educate suppliers on switching from conventional fuel mixes. One advocate of sustainable jet fuel is the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), an organization run by the United Nations. The ICAO recently stated that SAFs, along with carbon offsetting, operational improvements and new technological standards are crucial to reducing aviation emissions. 

Alaskan Airlines itself is no stranger to sustainable fuels, having tested and advocated their use since 2011. The airline has also recently announced a four-year SAF agreement with Neste, another sustainable fuel refiner. On that point, Neste claims its fuel achieves an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases compared to conventional jet fuel.

To date, approximately 30 airlines have tested sustainable aviation fuels globally. Hence Alaska Airlines' claims that its greenhouse emissions reductions of 16 percent since 2012 make it stand out across the aviation sector. Across the entire aviation industry, emissions rose by 32 percent between 2013 and 2018. Considering that commercial air travel is responsible for 2 to 3 percent of global carbon emissions, much work lies ahead. 

A long journey for sustainable jet fuels

If sustainable jet fuels are going to get off the ground, then the issue of volume comes into play, too. The sheer volume of jet fuel required by the industry each year, some 73.7 billion gallons (278 billion liters), is staggering. To replace this or even supplement this with sustainable fuels will require a “mammoth effort” says Joanne Bailey, an industry commentator. Not only that, the debates around fuel versus food crops still rage on. Yet, alternatives that do not compete with food such as algae, do offer some potential. To that end, in 2014 TriplePundit reported on Southwest Airlines' use of forest residue waste biofuel in its aviation fuel, another potential solution. 

Carbon negative ambitions at Microsoft 

As far as Microsoft is concerned, sustainable fuels are just one part of an ambitious sustainability strategy. Microsoft aims to be carbon negative by 2030, which means it must remove more carbon than it emits. Yet, Microsoft is going a step further, stating that by 2050 it aims to completely eliminate all historical emissions, dating back to the company's founding in 1975, from the company. Aviation is one of the more difficult barriers to these goals, according to Judson Althoff, Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Worldwide Commercial Business. Yet, he asserted that the new sustainable fuel agreement will help Microsoft get ahead of any possible large scale return to flying after business travel rebounds from the ongoing COVID-19 shutdowns. 

Business travel post COVID-19

Althoff’s comments highlight a salient point amid COVID-19 shutdowns. The future of work, how we travel there, and if we go at all, have never been more relevant. Microsoft itself is leading the charge for home working, having introduced a “hybrid-workplace” plan to encourage home working last month. Google is doing the same. However, only time will tell if workers return in their droves to the flight check in desk. If they do, at least at Microsoft they will be doing it more sustainably.

Image credits: Alaska Airlines Newsroom