Amazon, Disney, AT&T donated to abortion opponents, Tesla faces racial discrimination lawsuit

Despite pledging to help employees obtain abortions, Amazon, Disney, and AT&T all donated to abortion opponents; Tesla has been hit with another racial discrimination lawsuit; and inflation is hitting July 4th food.

Video transcript

- We're fast forwarding to cut for time. Three stories, one minute each. And we start with this. Corporations, including Amazon and Disney, who pledged to pay for employee travel for reproductive medical leave. Well, guess what. They also donated money to political leaders who are in favor of restricting abortions. This is something that we had talked about when we first got the news that Roe v. Wade was going to be overturned. We speculated, OK, what are these companies doing on the other hand?

And Bloomberg is out with a report that companies like Amazon, AT&T, and Disney indeed are donating to folks like Bill Lee of Tennessee, Greg Abbott of Texas, Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, Ron DeSantis of Florida, all of them who have sought to limit abortion rights. So at the same time today, I believe there was a study out that talked about employees who wanted to work for companies that align with their values. Well, it's a little bit confusing if they tell you on the one hand they're going to pay for this travel, on the other hand, they're donating to these folks who are trying to limit abortion rights.

- Right. It's extremely backwards. And for the companies and how they're trying to attract new employees or even just retain the ones they have, it's going to be beyond what they're offering up in terms of some of the benefits that counter what the states are doing at this point in time as a reactionary message from the companies. But even more so, how are you proactively putting the dollars at work into the broader, not just economy, but into public policy, rather, that affects your employees too?

- I would like to see better disclosures by companies on this. You go into their annual reports, quarterly results--

- It's tough to find the info.

- It doesn't exist. They're not putting this stuff out at all. And they should.

- Obviously, we need more than a minute to talk about this.

- Much more. Much more. And more than a minute to talk about this next one as well. I changed mine, by the way. Sorry. Late heads up here. We got to talk about this, though. Tesla faces a new lawsuit as 15 Black former or current employees at Tesla filed a lawsuit against the electric carmaker alleging widespread race discrimination or sexual harassment here. And the back story here as well and the context for this, we had already seen Tesla have to defend itself against similar claims in the past.

There was $137 million-- a payout that didn't take place yet as a result of that case. A judge later came in and cut that to $15 million. But once again, you have Tesla in this position needing to defend its culture internally that previously there was a factory worker that had won that $137 million because of the allegations that were proven true about the hostile workplace, the racist workplace as well, and the interactions that they experienced there.

- No. The continued series of stories like this, guys, you have to think about, has Tesla just moved too fast to make quarters, make numbers, sell cars, and they don't have the proper internal controls set up in this company?

- Yeah. That's a good question. Maybe that's the reason why. And with all these things, you've got to look to the top, right. And is there not that kind of cultural attention to detail? Is that the production at all costs, to your point?

- All right. Well, switching gears here, and the cost of your July 4th holiday barbecue is going up. Ground beef prices are up a whopping 36% from a year ago, according to a survey from the American Bureau Federation. A bunch of farmers.

- American Farm Bureau Federation.

- Yeah. Something like that. Look, interesting here, prices are up 17% year over year. Almost cost $70 to feed a group of 10 folks. Very inflationary. 2 pounds of ground beef up 36% year over year. Big.

- I'm clearly not making pork chops for anybody that comes over unless-- I think it's going to be a potluck year. Everybody's got to contribute. They need to have equity in the barbecue if you're showing up for 4th of July or any holiday, quite frankly.

- I'm just squinting at this because I like an apples to apples comparison. I want to know what a pound of everything costs. Don't you do that when you go to the grocery store? Don't you look at the unit prices? You got to look at the unit prices.

- I shut my eyes. I'm the worst type of shopper.

- You look at the price below the big price. It tells you.

- I look for the most reddest ground beef, and it looks pretty in the package, and I put it in my basket.

- They put dye in that.

- Really?

- Yeah. You don't want that one.

- Don't go for the red.

- Yeah. No, no, no.

- I mean, you can go for the red. But I think they put dye in some of those to make them look especially red.

- Speaking of red, strawberries down $0.86 year over year.

- Wow. Pretty good.

- Oh, well, that's good. The strawberries have been good this year.

- A bearish move in strawberries.

- The strawberries have been good this year.

- I'm the second worst type of shopper. I shop hungry.

- Oh, no, no, no. Bad, bad thing.