NWCRI CREATING A WORLD WHERE ALL CAN THRIVE
Mary, who passed on her 92nd birthday, was a hero in the best sense of the word. Her obituary tells the story of a mother of 9 children, who was a registered nurse, a curious and life-long learner, and very active in local politics and social justice movements.
Shortly after she moved to Seattle in 2010, Mary participated in a Justice workshop where she connected with the Intercommunity Peace & Justice Center (IPJC). When she attended a Justice Movie Night of “The Dark Side of Chocolate,” she learned about the reality of human trafficking and forced child labor on the cocoa plantations in West Africa and discovered that corporations like Nestle, where her husband Joe had worked for years, profited from the labor of children. Mary found hope in the work of corporate change and responsibility that quietly yet persistently emanated from IPJC’s Northwest Coalition for Responsible Investment Program (NWCRI).
After reflecting on her family’s long-standing connection with Nestle and considering what she had learned about child labor, she decided to write a letter to Nestle and donate her small monthly widow’s pension from Nestle to IPJC to support its work of creating corporate change.
Mary’s efforts to end child labor continued this year as we dialogued and filed a shareholder proposal with Hershey requesting the Company to eradicate child labor from its West African cocoa supply chain by 2025.
In the 28th year NWCRI engagements included:
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44 corporations
50+ dialogues
37 shareholder resolutions
We were inspired and motivated by Mary and all of you, who like us, are working to create a world where all can thrive.
“HEROES ARE NOT GIANT STATUES FRAMED AGAINST A RED SKY. THEY ARE PEOPLE WHO SAY: THIS IS MY COMMUNITY, AND IT’S MY RESPONSIBILITY TO MAKE IT BETTER.”
—TOM MCCALL▲ Cocoa beans drying in a village in Ghana © Francesco Veronisi, flickr
ICCR 2022 Proxy Season
NWCRI is a member of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, which pioneered the use of shareholder advocacy over 50 years ago. Our coalition of faith- and values-based investors is “inspired by faith, committed to action” to build a more just and sustainable world.
Highlights
f Record number of proposals filed in 2022— 504, compared to 307 in 2021
f Agreements with companies— 174 proposals; majority on climate issues (57) and racial justice/DEI (50)
f Shareholders won a majority of Security Exchange Commission challenges
f 37 resolutions won majority support compared to 20 in 2021
f Sturm Ruger resolution received the highest-ever vote for a Human Rights Impact Assessment—68.5%
NWCRI 2022 Proxy Season
▶ This new ICCR publication explains an important investor tool—a shareholder resolution or proposal—which is used when a dialogue with a corporation is unproductive. Resolutions typically ask corporations to disclose information, to measure and report on the potential impacts of their operations, or to adopt or change policies and practices to mitigate potential impacts.
https://tinyurl.com/2p86x4dn
Fossil Fuel Financing
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2022 report, released on April 4, gives an updated global assessment of climate change mitigation progress, and examines the sources of global emissions. The Report states that solutions to a warming planet are possible if we act immediately, and that new clean energy industries and the jobs they provide have the potential for strong economic growth. The report also points out that “Public and private finance flows for fossil fuels are still greater than those for climate adaptation and mitigation.” 1
Earlier, in October 2021, the IPCC had issued High-Level Recommendations for Credible Net-Zero Commitments from Financial Institutions which stated that financial sector alignment with a 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway requires “the immediate cessation of any new fossil fuel investments, and rapid decommissioning of remaining fossil fuel production.” 2
The climate work of NWCRI members this year focused on financial institutions, specifically Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. Banking on Climate Chaos 2022 reports that these three banks and Citi, have accounted for one quarter of all fossil fuel financing over the last six years.3
The shareholder proposal filed by NWCRI members requested the banks to build upon their net zero commitments by adopting policies by the end of 2022 that help ensure that their financing does not contribute to new
Fossil Fuel Funding
fossil fuel supplies inconsistent with the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario.
In 2023 shareholders will advocate with the banks to adopt policies and plans to credibly achieve their net zero goals that align with science-based 1.5 degrees Celsius pathways, including a clear policy to phase down financing for new fossil fuel development.
Majority Vote at for Robust Financial Reporting
NWCRI members were among the two dozen faith-based and socially responsible investors who co-filed a resolution requesting Exxon to provide quantitative disclosure of the potential impacts of net zero emissions on their revenues, assets, and liabilities. Frank Sherman of Seventh Generation Interfaith Inc., said about the rationale behind the proposal: “Companies must adequately reflect the impacts of the climate crisis and the clean energy transition in their financial reporting if shareholders are to have confidence that their capital is being effectively allocated and assets do not become stranded. This reporting is especially crucial for a company like Exxon, whose business strategy appears to be built on continuing growth in demand for hydrocarbons for the next several decades.”
1 https://tinyurl.com/yc56y472 - pg. 17
2 https://tinyurl.com/mr3k6mzj - pg.15
3 https://www.bankingonclimatechaos.org/
Guns Leading Cause of Death for U.S. Children & Teens
In the spring, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the 2020 (most recent year available) data for firearm-related deaths in the US. Alarmingly, guns are the leading cause of death for children and teens. For more than 60 years, motor vehicle accidents were the leading cause of death for children. We changed that statistic with safety features including seat belts, air bags, car seats, technology, and driver education.
The CDC data shows that there were a record 45,222 firearm-related deaths in the U.S. in 2020. About 10% of those deaths—4,357 in total—were children. Can we change that statistic? YES, we can! But do we—legislators, firearm manufactures, gun owners, and communities—have the will to do it?
Investors to Assess Your Human Rights Risks
NWCRI members and a majority of Sturm Ruger investors—over 68%—said YES! we will change that statistic when they supported a proposal urging the Company’s board of directors to oversee a third-party Human Rights Impact Assessment which assesses and produces recommendations
for improving the human rights impacts of its policies, practices and products. Recognizing that shareholder votes are advisory, we remain hopeful that Sturm Ruger will honor the request of the majority of its shareholders and say, YES! we will conduct a meaningful human rights risk assessment of our business and products.
Shareholders Hold Accountable
For a third year NWCRI led 15 faith-based co-filers in urging Smith & Wesson to develop a human rights policy, which we believe would enable the company to take a more proactive stance in addressing potential human rights risks.
The proposal garnered 42% support, strong evidence that the Company’s shareholders agreed with us that a human rights policy would demonstrate to stakeholders that Smith & Wesson is not callous to harms resulting from the misuse of its products, and to legislators that it is willing to collaborate in the development of solutions to end gun violence.
Practices & Profits of Gun Manufacturers Beyond Irresponsible
On July 27, 2022, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform invited the CEOs of Daniel Defense, Smith & Wesson, and Sturm Ruger to a hearing examining the responsibility that the firearm industry bears in contributing to the gun violence epidemic in the U.S. and the steps that Congress can take to hold manufacturers accountable.
Ahead of the hearing, the Committee released findings from its investigation into the sales and marketing of AR-15-style assault rifles.
f revenue from the sale of AR-15-style semiautomatic weapons in the last decade was more than $1 billion
f dangerous marketing tactics are used to sell assault weapons
f companies do not take even basic steps to monitor the deaths and injuries caused by their products
Following the hearing Congresswoman Maloney concluded that the gun manufacturers were “beyond irresponsible.”
Mark Smith, the CEO of Smith & Wesson, did not appear at the hearing so the Committee issued a subpoena for documents related to the Company’s manufacture and sale of AR-15-style assault weapons and the Company’s internal communications around recent mass shootings.4
4 https://oversight.house.gov/news/press-releases/at-committeehearing-gun-manufacturers-refuse-to-take-responsibility-for-fueling
“STATISTICS ARE HUMAN BEINGS WITH THE TEARS WIPED AWAY.”
—PAUL BRODEUR
Cotton: A Breakthrough Years in the Making
For over a decade, NWCRI collaborated with the Cotton Campaign to end forced labor in Uzbekistan. Each year the government would shut down schools and public offices for months at a time to enlist students, teachers, nurses, and civil servants to harvest cotton.
In 2010 investors raised the issue of forced labor in the cotton industry with companies and requested that they sign the Company Pledge Against Forced Labor in the Cotton Sector of Uzbekistan, publicly committing not use Uzbek cotton. Over 331 brands and retailers signed the Pledge.
During the 2021 cotton harvest, the Uzbek Forum for Human Rights found no government-imposed child and forced labor. The Uzbek Cotton Pledge was lifted.
Cotton: A Breakthrough Needed
On August 31, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) issued its Assessment of human rights concerns in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, People’s Republic of China. In the introduction, the OHCHR states that it began receiving increasing allegations
5 https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/ countries/2022-08-31/22-08-31-final-assesment.pdf
related to the Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minority communities in late 2017. The Assessment concludes that serious human rights violations have been committed in the Uyghur region. 5
In June, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act took effect. This U.S. legislation presumes that all goods mined, produced, or manufactured wholly or in part in Xinjiang involve the use of Uyghur forced labor. It bans the import of anything produced in Xinjiang unless companies can provide “clear and compelling evidence” it wasn’t made with forced labor.
Xinjiang grows 80% of China’s cotton and China is the source of 40% of all clothing sold in the US. Because it is a violation of U.S. law to import apparel made with forced labor, investors are pressuring companies to map their supply chains down to the raw material to ensure that they are not linked to the Uyghur region and complicit in forced labor.
Impossible Choice Stay Home or Go to Work
More than 26 million people working in the private sector have no access to paid sick days, and millions more have no paid sick time to care for a sick child or family member, leaving working people in the US facing an impossible choice when they are sick: stay home and risk their economic stability or go to work and risk their/the public’s health.
NWCRI and ICCR members are engaging companies around the growing reputational, financial, and regulatory impacts associated with the lack of a comprehensive paid sick leave (PSL) benefit for all employees. Members sent letters to over 40 companies making the business case for a permanent PSL benefit for all workers.
NWCRI co-filed a proposal at Kroger asking the company “to adopt and publicly disclose a policy that all employees, part- and full-time, accrue some amount of PSL that can be used after a reasonable probationary period.” The resolution was withdrawn after we learned that the Company had a PSL policy and that it was publicly available.
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“To end forced labor and promote decent work for cotton workers in central Asia”. © Cotton Campaign withpermission
Co-founder Dr. Paul Farmer mentors clinicians and medical students on a visit to PIH-supported Koidu Government Hospital in Kono, Sierra Leone.
The health equity work of faith-based investors is grounded in a commitment to the common good. We advocate for systemic and corporate reforms that promote access to affordable and quality health care for all, especially for those in marginalized communities. The disproportional impacts of the pandemic, in terms of who was affected and who had access to therapies, led us to release our Pharmaceutical Equity Expectations in 2022. In dialogues we call on companies to adopt principles, policies, and practices rooted in equity and justice and affirm the human right to health.6
Value: Equity
We believe that every person deserves to be seen, heard and cared for. This happens when we are inclusive, act with integrity and reduce health care disparities.
Shareholders withdrew a second-year resolution with Pfizer asking how the Company accounted for public financial support in the development of Covid products when setting prices after Pfizer published the following: “Pfizer did not receive any public funding for the development of the Comirnaty® COVID-19 vaccine or for PAXLOVID™, Pfizer’s oral COVID-19 treatment. Any government funding received by our partner, BioNTech, was not a factor in setting Pfizer’s access strategies for the vaccine.” 7
A proposal asking Pfizer to transfer its technology to facilitate the production of Covid vaccines to qualified manufacturers in low- and middle-income countries was supported by 27% of shareholders.
In addition, members sent a letter to Pfizer regarding its refusal to share its license for PAXLOVID™ with several countries including the Dominican Republic.
Credo
Our Credo challenges us to put the needs and well-being of the people we serve first.
This year a majority of Johnson & Johnson (J&J) shareholders—63%—called on the Company to live up to this Credo by conducting a third-party audit which would assess and produce recommendations for improving the racial impacts of its policies, practices, and products. The Company plans to engage in the audit which will be made public.
Johnson’s Baby Powder was introduced in 1893. The first records of the harmful effects of talc on human tissue date back to the 1930s. J&J issued a recall of Baby Powder in October 2019 after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found trace amounts of asbestos in a sample. Then on May 20, 2020 J&J announced that the talc-based Baby Powder would no longer be sold in the U.S. and Canada. Finally, on August 11, 2022, the Company announced it would no longer sell the talc-based product globally and will transition to a corn starch-based formula for all customers by 2023.
This victory is a long time coming and is the result of a global-wide movement of investors, health and justice organizations, government agencies, investigative journalists and concerned people who took action to hold J&J accountable to its Credo.
6 https://www.iccr.org/iccr-pharmaceutical-equity-expectations
7 https://www.pfizer.com/science/coronavirus/vaccine/working-toreach-everyone-everywhere
“THE IDEA THAT SOME LIVES MATTER LESS IS THE ROOT OF ALL THAT IS WRONG WITH THE WORLD.”
—PAUL FARMER 1959-1922, PARTNERS IN HEALTH
2021-2022 NWCRI Shareholder Activities
NWCRI members brought 13 justice issues to the boardrooms of 44 corporations, filed 37 shareholder resolutions and participated in over 50 dialogues.
Since its founding after Sandy Hook, RAWtools has partnered on gun buybacks, or receiving confiscated weapons from law enforcement, to transform over 1000 firearms into garden tools. Mike Martin and his father Fred are living out Isaiah 2:4: “They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
Investors are embarking on a campaign to engage with companies on valuing water. The vision is that companies will recognize fresh water as the world’s most precious natural resource, essential to whole industries and all communities and ecosystems.
NWCRI’s advocacy on a living wage for workers saw progress when Bank of America raised its minimum wage to $22 an hour on June 30. This is part of the Bank’s longstanding plan to get its starting rate to $25 by 2025.
Investor concern about Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risks was indicated by the companies receiving the highest number of shareholder proposals in 2022: Amazon (20), Alphabet (12) and Meta (Facebook 12).
NWCRI continues to advocate for children living with HIV. In June the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority approved a treatment contained in strawberry-flavored granules which can be sprinkled on breast milk, formula, or other ageappropriate foods, for infants and children living with HIV.
Amazon will conduct a racial-equity audit of its nearly one million hourly workers after shareholders urged the company to provide more transparency into how its policies affect diversity, equity, and workplace inclusion. The audit will be led by former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch.
Members
Adrian Dominican Sisters
Benedictine Sisters
Cottonwood, Idaho
Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel Congrégation des Soeurs des Saints, Noms de Jésus et de Marie Congregation of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace
Jesuits West
Northwest Women Religious Investment Trust
PeaceHealth
Providence St. Joseph Health
Sisters of Providence, Mother Joseph Province
Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia
Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon
Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus & Mary, U.S.-Ontario Province
Tacoma Dominicans
NWCRI
A program of the Intercommunity Peace & Justice Center, NWCRI is a member of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, a national coalition of over 300 faith-based investors who are Inspired by Faith, Committed to Action.
These highlights summarize the work that NWCRI has done in collaboration with ICCR during the past year.
Judy Byron, OP Director, NWCRI“WE NEVER KNOW HOW OUR SMALL ACTIVITIES WILL AFFECT OTHERS THROUGH THE INVISIBLE FABRIC OF OUR CONNECTEDNESS.
IN THIS EXQUISITELY CONNECTED WORLD, IT’S NEVER A QUESTION OF “CRITICAL MASS.” IT’S ALWAYS ABOUT CRITICAL CONNECTIONS.”
—GRACE LEE BOGGS