Companies that don't take a stand are companies without integrity

Do you remember when the restaurant chain Max sent letters to its employees in an attempt to influence how they would vote? Many voices were raised in outrage, arguing that companies shouldn’t engage in politics, that business leaders have no right to try to sway their employees.

I’d like to argue the opposite:
A company that doesn’t take a stand is a company without integrity.

Brath is a company that has opinions—mostly about search engine optimization, where we clearly stand for doing things properly. That’s perhaps not very controversial. But we also have opinions about other things, and it’s entirely possible that we might lose customers because of it. So be it—we believe it’s worth it.

Now, we feel the need to speak a little louder than we have in the past. That’s why we’re running an ad in our local newspaper with the following message:

Örnsköldsvik needs more people

Many of you probably already know who we are. That’s why we’re not going to use this space to talk about ourselves, but about something more important.

We want to speak directly to those of you who believe that compassion and empathy aren’t good enough reasons to welcome people fleeing from war. If caring for others isn’t a strong enough reason to ensure as many refugees as possible come to Örnsköldsvik, then allow us to offer another one.

We argue that the greatest threat to northern Sweden right now is depopulation. That might not seem true when housing prices in the city center are rising fast—but across the municipality, empty homes are decaying.

This doesn’t mean Örnsköldsvik will be a ghost town next year. But when you and I are old, we’ll need someone to care for our city.

We’ll need dentists. We’ll need cashiers. We’ll need someone to manage the forests. We’ll need people for nearly every profession. And those needs won’t shrink—because we’re getting older. The only group that’s shrinking is the working-age population. The town might not be empty, but it’s not unthinkable that in a generation or two, we’ll have to travel to Umeå for dental care.

Örnsköldsvik needs people to move in. That’s why we at Brath ask you to consider this in the upcoming election:

Don’t vote for a party that wants to reduce immigration to our town.
You’ll be hurting yourself—and others—if you do.

And if that happens to upset someone, so be it.