Corporate History Is a Workplace Accountability Issue
The question is not whether today's employees caused historical harm. The question is whether institutions still benefit from it while refusing to measure what their systems produce now.
Your employer may not have existed during slavery.
Its predecessor institutions may have.
Its industry may have.
The capital, property, insurance practices, banking relationships, and accumulated market power that helped build an institution may still shape how it operates today.
That is why corporate history is not separate from the workplace.
Institutions carry forward more than their brand. They carry assets, records, influence, networks, business practices, and wealth. Those advantages can continue long after the harm that created them has been pushed out of the story.
In August 2026, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination issued General Recommendation No. 40, calling on governments to address the continuing consequences of the trafficking and enslavement of Africans, colonialism, and racialized chattel slavery. The recommendation also names businesses, banks, insurers, universities, and religious institutions as actors governments should push toward examining their histories and contributing to reparative justice in proportion to their involvement and benefit. Read the UN's explanation and its guidance on reparatory justice for people of African descent.
Be clear on what this is and is not. A General Recommendation is interpretive guidance to the governments that signed the treaty. It does not create enforceable liability against a corporation. The United States has never accepted the individual complaint mechanism under that treaty. No American has a legal path to bring a claim under it, and no company faces a lawsuit because of GR40.
What it does is add international weight to a pattern that already exists on the ground: cities and states passing disclosure ordinances that force companies to open their books on request. Chicago did it in 2003. California did it for insurers. GR40 does not create new law. It gives the next wave of those ordinances, and the next round of public pressure, more legitimacy to point to.
That weak enforcement is not an accident of timing. The same US government that has no mechanism to hold a company accountable under GR40 is actively building one to go after companies that try to measure and correct racial disparity on their own. In January 2025, the administration issued an executive order directing federal agencies to identify "egregious and discriminatory" DEI programs at publicly traded corporations and build a plan for civil compliance investigations and litigation. That's the environment your employer is making decisions in right now.
The UN did not order every corporation to pay reparations.
It did make one thing harder to defend: corporations accepting inherited assets, accumulated capital, market position, and brand value while treating inherited responsibility as someone else's problem.
The Past Is Still in the System
The record matters because it turns denial into evidence.
In 2005, JPMorgan Chase disclosed that two predecessor banks, Citizens Bank and Canal Bank in Louisiana, had accepted approximately 13,000 enslaved people as collateral for loans and took possession of about 1,250 people after defaults. The disclosure came because Chicago's Slavery Era Disclosure Ordinance required it, not because the bank volunteered it. California ran the same exercise for insurers, and its Slavery Era Insurance Registry showed slavery wasn't only a labor system. It was a banking, insurance, and wealth-building system.
In 2023, Lloyd's of London committed £52 million after an independent review by Alexandre White and the Black Beyond Data project at Johns Hopkins found the marketplace played a significant role in enabling the transatlantic slave trade. Lloyd's directed £40 million to communities and regions affected by the trade, and £12 million to recruiting and advancing Black and ethnic minority employees.
Here is the part that actually proves the point of this article. Kehinde Andrews, professor of Black studies at Birmingham City University, called the commitment "reparations washing" and a PR exercise, because Lloyd's stopped short of direct reparations to descendants. An academic institution independently documented the harm. The company issued a public apology and wrote a check. Scholars in the field still don't call it accountability.
That is the whole argument. Apology plus payment is not the same as accountability. Accountability is measured by whether the institution changed what it investigates, discloses, and corrects going forward, not by the size of the check it wrote once.
Why Employees Should Know and Care
You may be thinking: what does any of this have to do with my salary, my promotion, my workload, or how I am treated at work?
Everything, if your organization refuses to measure how power and opportunity move through its own systems right now.
A company that avoids examining its past may also avoid examining its present-day outcomes. It may say it supports equity while refusing to answer basic questions about who is advancing, who is being paid equitably, who receives sponsorship, whose complaints are believed, and who gets protected when bias shows up.
The Federal Reserve found that in 2022, median wealth was $285,000 for White families and $44,900 for Black families, roughly six to one. Employers didn't create that gap. But every pay decision, every promotion, every equity award, every leadership opening made inside a company operates inside that gap and either widens it or closes it. That is not abstraction. That is payroll.
Reparations Are Not a DEI Program
A mentorship program is not reparations.
An employee resource group is not reparations.
A Black History Month post is not reparations.
Workplace equity asks whether people are treated fairly now. Reparative justice asks what harm occurred, who benefited, what remains unresolved, and what material action is required because of it. Both matter. Neither replaces the other.
What companies say | What employees should ask |
"We value diversity." | What do pay, promotion, retention, and leadership data show? |
"We acknowledge the past." | What historical research was conducted, and are the records public? |
"We support our employees." | What are the stated criteria for pay, promotion, performance, and exceptions? |
"We are committed to equity." | Who is accountable when disparities persist? |
A company cannot use present-day diversity activity as an exit ramp from historical accountability. It also cannot use a historical apology to avoid fixing current workplace inequity.
What Employees Can Do
You do not need to prove your employer has a documented slavery connection before asking whether its workplace systems are fair and transparent.
Start with questions.
Has the company researched its own history, including predecessor institutions, mergers, acquisitions, and subsidiaries?
Are the company's historical findings available to employees and the public?
What are the published pay ranges and promotion criteria for your role?
Who approves exceptions to salary ranges, ratings, promotions, and equity awards?
Has the company audited pay, promotion, performance, turnover, and leadership outcomes by race, gender, level, and business unit?
What happens when a department shows persistent disparities?
Put questions in writing when possible. Written questions create a record of what leadership was asked and how it responded.
Document your own experience. Keep copies of job descriptions, performance feedback, compensation communications, policy changes, and promotion requirements. Do not take confidential company information or violate policy or legal obligations.
Pay attention to patterns, not only isolated incidents. If several employees are receiving unclear feedback, being passed over under shifting standards, or seeing similar pay and promotion gaps, that is worth documenting carefully.
Talk to trusted colleagues. Consider an employee resource group, worker organization, employment attorney, or labor and employment agency if you believe discriminatory practices may be occurring. The right next step depends on your role, employer, location, and the specific facts.
One person asking for clarity can be dismissed. A group with documented patterns is harder to ignore.
The Measure of Action
An organization is not accountable because it issued an apology. Lloyd's proved that. It is accountable when it changes what it investigates, publishes, funds, measures, and corrects, not once, but as standard practice.
This is the evaluation question, and it's the same one I ask of every workforce investment I review: does the input change the output, and is that change verified or just declared? Lloyd's input was £52 million and a press release. The output nobody has measured yet is whether hiring, advancement, or pay for Black and ethnic minority employees at Lloyd's actually moved. A commitment that hasn't been verified isn't evidence. It's a claim.
For companies with documented historical ties, that means researching predecessor institutions, opening records, naming the harm, and making measurable commitments shaped with affected communities.
For every employer, it means examining present-day pay, promotion, performance, turnover, and leadership outcomes. It means publishing criteria. It means correcting patterns instead of explaining them away.
Your employer's history already exists. So do the outcomes of its current workplace systems.
The question is whether leadership is willing to examine both, in a moment when the government that could push it has no teeth, and the government that could stop it has plenty.
What would your employer find if it examined both its history and the outcomes of its workplace systems today?
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