Businesses targeted by PCUSA moral watchdog committee
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, February 21, 2000
LOUISVILLE – The General Assembly Council has decided to expand the number of corporations that may be targeted for expressions of moral indignation by the denomination’s Committee on Mission Responsibility through Investment.
The committee teams with like-minded allies from other mainline denominations to offer shareholder resolutions condemning some corporate practices. For instance, if you sell products manufactured in emerging countries where workers are paid only a fraction of U.S. wages, the committee might put you on its hit list.
The council did not change the rules for determining what is morally un-Presbyterian. But it did say that once an issue is approved and a stockholder’s resolution written for one company, it could be reprinted for another company that has the same practices.
The Mission Responsibility committee has identified more than 150 corporations for possible resolutions in year 2000 shareholder meetings. That number might have been considerably higher if the committee had been vested with authority to send duplicate resolutions to other companies deemed to have committed similar offenses. Heretofore, the committee was required to get approval for each resolution submitted.
The views expressed in the resolutions are supposed to reflect official policies adopted by the General Assembly. In some cases, such as military and tobacco products, the General Assembly simply bans investment by the denomination.
The resolutions oppose some wage and pricing policies, low minority employment percentages, environmental policies, corporate welfare (tax incentives and breaks), executive pay, staggered terms for directors (limiting wholesale changes in corporate boards), “predatory” lending, alleged human rights abuses, lending policies to poor countries, and lack of “diversity” on boards, and other issues.
In the committee’s report to the General Assembly Council, the Rev. William Somplatsky-Jarman, associate for Mission Responsibility Investment, identified a number of newly emerging issues that may be spotlighted in resolutions to 2000 shareholders’ meetings. The new issues include genetically altered seed and agricultural products.
The Mission Responsibility committee’s 2000 recommended actions target, among other corporations: Abbott, Aetna, Airborne Express, Allstate, American Home Products, Anheuser-Busch, Atlantic Richfield, BankAmerica, Boeing, Caterpillar, CBS, Chase Manhattan, Circuit City, Coca-Cola, Corning, Duke Energy, Eastman Kodak, Ford Motor, Gateway, General Electric, General Motors, IBM, K-Mart, Lone Star Steak House, McDonalds, J.P. Morgan, Philip Morris, Proctor & Gamble, R.J. Reynolds, Sears Roebuck, Sprint, Wal-Mart and Whirlpool.