Religious Activists Change Minds, Policies Shareholders Trying To Get Firms To Act More Conscientiously

Sister Patricia Daly has faith she can encourage the nation’s largest companies to consider the health of the world as much as the health of their pocketbooks.

That’s why the Roman Catholic nun and other holy activists have gone behind company lines to push shareholder resolutions on global warming at mammoth companies.

“There are many companies out there where we’ve had a great impact on their ethical policy,” said Daly, a Caldwell Dominican nun from Newton, N.J, who works with the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility.

The ICCR, based in New York, coordinates the shareholder advocacy programs of 275 religious orders nationwide with an estimated $90 billion in investments.

In past years, the group has taken on such issues as tobacco and helped persuade Kimberly-Clark Corp. to divest its cigarette paper business in 1995. ICCR has urged garment and shoe manufacturers not to use sweatshops and was among the activists that pressured PepsiCo into withdrawing from Burma.

This year the group is focusing on the environment.

“People in the religious communities think about these things all the time. They’re serious people,” said Dean Hoge, the chairman of sociology at Catholic University of America. “They want to do what they think the Lord wants and the environment is coming up on the scene.”

A coalition of 34 religious groups that own General Electric Co. stock tried unsuccessfully this April to pass a shareholder resolution demanding that the company clean up PCB contamination in New York’s Hudson River.

GE’s chairman and chief executive said the company doesn’t believe that there are any significant adverse health effects from PCBs and the proposal was soundly defeated.

But the proposal was only one that members of the ICCR had on the agenda for this year. It presented a total of 60 environmental resolutions this year to companies including General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co. None of them passed, but none were expected to.

Exxon Corp. was also asked to place global warming on its agenda at the annual meeting.

“They have a responsibility, as one of the world’s largest energy suppliers, to practice strong stewardship of the earth and its resources,” said Father Mike Crosby of Province of St. Joseph of the Capuchin Order in Milwaukee. “This company is not being proactive, it is being reactive.”

A resolution asking stockholders to support a committee that would review such things as potential liability and greenhouse gas emissions didn’t even come close to passing at the April meeting.

Exxon urged shareholders to vote against the measure saying it would duplicate current efforts and would be a waste of money.

But since more than 4 percent of Exxon shareholders voted in favor of the committee, it’s a large enough margin, according to current Securities and Exchange Commission rules, to ensure that supporters will be able to bring up the issue again next year.