Social Research & Advocacy in Action

Published, Summer 2004

The company briefs below report on the progress of shareholder initiatives led or participated in by Walden, as well as other newsworthy company actions.

The votes have been tabulated on the 2004 Walden-led shareholder resolutions that went to ballot. The conclusion: The results reveal continuing shareholder resolve for strengthened corporate governance and social responsibility practices. Each of the three companies that received our resolution to enhance board accountability by encouraging a policy of annual election of directors, as opposed to their practice of staggering director elections over three year periods, won overwhelming majority support (at Costco by 75.7 percent; Gillette 68.1 percent; and TJX 76.5 percent). The investor perspective is certainly clear as these companies and others continue to deliberate this proposed governance reform. Our repeat resolution at ALLTEL requesting a more comprehensive nondiscrimination policy that explicitly includes sexual orientation garnered a record level of support of 27.5 percent, more than twice the previous year’s results. Finally, a very solid 14.3 percent voted in favor of our first-time resolution asking Amgen to disclose equal employment opportunity statistics.

In addition to the above actions, Walden led five initiatives that were withdrawn when the companies agreed to the proposed reforms. Stryker and Dover adopted inclusive nondiscrimination policies and Avon, BellSouth, and SBC Communications implemented annual election of directors. The Securities and Exchange Commission for "ordinary business" reasons omitted our two climate change resolutions posed to insurance companies American International Group and Chubb, but we are in dialogue with both companies. Walden also participated in more than a dozen other proxy resolutions on a variety of issues including climate change, diversity and glass ceilings, vendor standards, human rights, water scarcity, HIV/AIDS reporting, and executive compensation.

In May, Dell committed publicly to boost its recovery and recycling of computer equipment by 50 percent in 2005 from the 2004 fiscal year level of approximately 21 million kilograms worldwide (about 45 million pounds). Dell will be reporting its results quarterly. This industry-leading precedent sets a "best practice" standard for other technology companies and requires strong tracking systems to monitor computer equipment recovery on a global basis. (For more information see the Dell Sustainability Report for 2004 on the company’s Web site.)

Alberto-Culver has communicated to Walden its intention to phase out polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic packaging in its Alberto VO5 product line. Relative to other plastics favored by many personal care product manufacturers, PVC plastic has a negligible recycling rate and can contaminate an otherwise recyclable plastic waste stream. Walden is monitoring the phase-out of PVC, as well as the company’s goals for the use of recycled content in its packaging and container recycling.

Marsh McLennan has added employees to work on emerging environmental risk initiatives. Part of their focus is to explore the potential impact and opportunities of climate change risk across the company’s diverse business lines. This Marsh McLennan effort is notable within the financial services sector.

Colgate Palmolive is demonstrating a strong commitment to address the HIV/AIDS crisis in Southern Africa through prevention, treatment and public-private partnerships with other organizations there. In May Walden met with the senior human resource staff person for South Africa and other Colgate-Palmolive executives, including a representative from the office of the Chairman, for an open discussion of its policies and practices to address the enormous economic and human implications of the health pandemic. Colgate is beginning to take lessons learned from Africa to high HIV/AIDS growth rate countries in other regions of the world where the company’s presence is significant.

In May Bank of America joined Citigroup in pledging to adopt a "no go zone" policy for all new extensions of credit and project specific bond underwriting. Among its most salient features, Bank of America will not finance resource extraction from, or the clearing of, primary tropical moist forests and intact forests identified by World Resource Institute (see Bank of America Forests Practices: Global Corporate Investment Bank Policy on the company’s Web site). The commitment includes funding to help map intact tropical, temperate, and boreal forest ecosystems to protect their future use and development. The bank’s initiative, in addition to other new policies on climate change and indigenous rights, earned strong praise from the nongovernmental organization Rainforest Action Network for bringing a new model of best practice leadership to the financial sector.

BP, Intel and Novartis recently published extensive sustainability reports that are available on their Web sites. Walden views the Novartis report as an exceptional model in that it is an "all-in-one" annual report that combines financial, corporate governance, social and environmental reporting. A combined report encourages its varied users to explore the complexities and interrelationships that exist in the multi-stakeholder environment of the "sustainable" corporation.