SalesForce or Abortionforce?

In September, Marc Benioff, CEO of the tech giant Salesforce, threatened that the company would leave states that protect the life of the unborn. In an interview with Poppy Harlow of CNN, Benioff was asked a number of questions about corporate social responsibility. The Salesforce CEO reiterated the standard litany of ESG affirmations: climate change (he plans to have the company plant a trillion trees), stakeholder capitalism (“the homeless” and even “the planet” are key stakeholders), and protection of diversity and equality (with no reference to religious or viewpoint diversity).

Then Harlow took the conversation in a direction which few large company CEOs are interested in going, abortion. Benioff recounted his actions in 2015 rallying CEOs to threaten a boycott and divestment of Indiana in reaction to a state-level version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). Readers will likely remember that then-Gov. Mike Pence caved to that pressure tactic. The CEO seemed to see that as a precedent for corporate America to do the same on the abortion issue.

Last year Benioff promised to pay relocation fees to any employees who wanted to move out of Texas due to legislation protecting the unborn, no questions asked. But in Friday’s interview he took things a good deal further. When Harlow asked him about pulling out of states that extend protections against abortion, he said, “We have to be for the equality and dignity of every human being. And if you’re not for equality and dignity, then this is not something I can work with and we’re gonna have to exit your city or your state, just as we have in many places.”

The lack of self-awareness is stunning. The “dignity of every human being” is not an argument for abortion; it’s an argument against it. Universal human dignity is exactly the reason states are passing pro-life laws. Benioff claims that this is an employee support issue, that it’s a way of saying “100 percent we have your back,” but it’s hard to see how uprooting thousands of employees, or at least forcing them to choose between their jobs and their current homes, is a 100 percent backing of employees.

Salesforce is already committed to paying for abortion costs out of shareholders’ investment money. Does this policy “have the backs” of pro-life investors? Is it really treating all employees with equality and dignity to upend the lives of the vast majority, who will never seek an abortion, just to spare a small minority the inconvenience of a (reimbursed) trip to adjacent, abortion-friendly Illinois for the procedure?

Let’s take Benioff at his word, and consider one word in particular, “I.” His pronouncements on this issue are laden with the first-person singular pronoun, “not something I can work with”, something “I had to deal with”, etc. Benioff is an outspoken man of the left. He sets the agenda in terms of his own philosophy and then imposes it on “stakeholders” whether they like it or not. And the fact that some of these discussions began with employees who complained about having to live in a pro-life state does not change that fact one bit, because the CEO decides which employees to listen to.

This CEO listens to pro-abortion employees because they tell him to do what he already clearly wants to do, to pursue his ideological vision, but with investors’ property. Stakeholder capitalism is a powerful justification for CEO power. It demotes the real boss (the owners) down to the same level of “the homeless” and “the planet” in the chain of authority, which really puts power in the hands of the person who chooses which stakeholder to serve at any given time.

In 2015 Christians were shocked by the sudden intervention by Salesforce and its allies into the RFRA debate and even more shocked that the conservative Christian governor of a conservative state knuckled under to it. Of course, readers of this column will be aware that this had been building for some time. Decades of LGBTQ activists’ hyper-organization and Christian neglect finally bore bitter fruit.

But this time around, there has been thus far no widespread rally of top-tier companies to Benioff’s call to arms. More self-aware CEOs have learned to read the room when it comes to middle-America’s revolt against companies telling them what to think about politics. The right is tired of CEOs using their own money against them.

But backlash is not enough. CEOs like Benioff need regular reminders that they work for us. They are highly compensated, but ultimately they are hired hands, hired to run companies not countries. It’s time for Christians to add proxy voting and speaking up at annual meetings to the list of civic responsibilities. It’s also time for Christians to see corporate leaders like Marc Benioff for who they are. It’s not like Benioff is hiding his agenda.