Last August, the chief executives of 181 of America’s largest corporations signed a document pledging their commitment to run their companies for the benefit of workers and communities, and not just for shareholders.

Some pundits celebrated the statement from the Business Roundtable as a historical milestone, the moment when corporate executives demonstrated sensitivity to public anger over economic inequality. But others dismissed the document as a canny public relations move: So long as executive pay remained tied to stock prices, shareholder interest would remain supreme.

Today, with the planet under assault from a pandemic that has delivered the most profound economic pain since the Great Depression, key signatories are furloughing employees, paying dividends to shareholders and provoking complaints from workers that they aren’t adequately protected from danger.

Their actions expose the reality that the rhetoric of the Business Roundtable did not alter the decisive question of American capitalism — where the money goes. In the run-up to the crisis, many companies used cash to buy back their shares and pay out dividends, rewarding shareholders, while leaving themselves with fewer resources to aid workers when disaster struck.