By Jonathan Stamp
(Reuters) – Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway joined a growing list of American companies on Saturday to publicly change their approach to discuss their dedication to diversity and inclusion.
The Berkshire annual report contains a section that describes how the 189 operational companies of the Conglomerate, which employ around 392,400 people, are dependent on human capital and resources, and that every practices determine to attract and retain employees.
Last year’s report said that the companies have partially achieved this by hiring practices “intended to identify qualified candidates and to promote diversity and admission to the workforce.”
This year’s report left the discussion about diversity and inclusion and ended that passage after ‘candidates’.
The Buffett assistant did not immediately respond to a request for comments.
Berkshire has long said that the decentralized structure enables individual operational companies to make their own daily operational decisions without interference from the top.
The company became a member of dozens of large American companies, including Amazon.com, Boeing, Citigroup, Ford, McDonald’s, Morgan Stanley and Walmart in curbing public support or initiatives for diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace.
Such initiatives were attacked by many conservatives, including US President Donald Trump, who tried to eliminate Dei from the federal government.
During Berkshire’s annual meeting last May, shareholders with an almost 4-1 margin voted on a proposal that Berkshire revealed more about his efforts to promote Dei at the workplace.
The Berkshire board of directors opposed the proposal.
Buffett has run Berkshire since 1965. Geico Car Insurance, the BNSF Railroad and a range of energy, industrial, retail and service companies based in Omaha, Nebraska, owns Geico Car Insurance.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stamp in New York; Edit by Rod Nickel)
