FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT:
December 15, 2003 Patti Lynn, Infact 617-695-2525
David Lerner, Riptide Communications 212-260-5000

TIAA-CREF CHALLENGED OVER ISSUES OF CORPORATE GOVERNANCE AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Teachers’ Pension Fund Urged to Make Major Changes this Holiday Season at CREF Annual Meeting
(NEW YORK CITY)—As issues of corporate governance continue to rock Wall Street firms, the nation’s largest pension fund is once again coming under fire. At the CREF annual meeting, advocacy groups are joining shareholders to demand that TIAA-CREF—the $300 billion pension fund for educators and researchers—to take advantage of the holiday spirit and become more accountable. As demonstrators picket outside TIAA-CREF headquarters with banners, placards, holiday attire, and live music, shareholders will speak-out inside the CREF annual shareholders' meeting. Recent exposure of TIAA-CREF Chair and CEO Herbert Allison’s 2003 pay package of at least $9.5 million is fueling calls for the pension fund to improve its corporate governance.
Three shareholder resolutions on corporate governance are on the agenda for the meeting. The resolutions urge the pension fund to: require that different people hold the positions of CEO and Chair of the Board; re-establish the independent committee that nominated some trustees; and adopt the governance recommendations of the Conference Board’s “blue ribbon” commission. Resolutions proposing that CREF divest from tobacco and gold mining corporations are also on the ballot. The annual meeting was moved from mid-November to December 15th because of mistakes made in sending out ballot and proxy information.
“For a group that is indeed a leader in corporate governance reform, TIAA-CREF is amazingly weak and contradictory in a number of areas in their own governance. The resolutions point out some of these areas. Someone has to watch this watch-dog,” says Neil Wollman, Senior Fellow and Professor of Manchester College.
Pressure groups are also asking TIAA-CREF to do the following: (1) drop its stock in Philip Morris/Altria, the world’s largest tobacco corporation; (2) remove Nike and Wal-Mart from the fund's portfolio due to their notorious sweatshop abuses; (3) divest of British Petroleum because of this company's involvement in egregious human rights violations associated with gas extraction in Chinese-occupied Tibet; (4) take action on Unocal, a company in its stock portfolio that is invested in Burma, which has one of the world's worst human rights records; and (5) demand that Costco close its illegal warehouses in Cuernavaca, Mexico, or divest because of human rights and environmental abuses. Also, after eliminating their past holdings, TIAA-CREF needs to vow no new purchases of World Bank bonds.
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In its Policy Statement on Corporate Governance, TIAA-CREF says they factor social concerns into all investment decisions and that doing so builds long term shareholder value (“TIAA-CREF: A Concerned Investor”). The policy states that companies should be concerned with "environmental impact...the corporation's communities and constituencies... deliberate and knowing exploitation of any non-shareholder constituencies,” yet they won't reveal how they do so.
“It is, quite simply, unacceptable for TIAA-CREF to continue to invest teachers’ pension funds in some of the world’s most abusive corporations. Providing alternatives does not end TIAA-CREF’s complicity in the abhorrent practices of corporations like Philip Morris/Altria, Nike, Unocal, Costco and BP,” says Patti Lynn, Campaign Director for the national corporate accountability organization Infact. “There is no better time than the holiday season to have a change of heart and institute policies that will save lives and protect workers and the environment.”
One group has pushed for years for the financial giant to invest, instead, in institutions that make a positive difference in peoples' lives. Former CEO John Biggs had said that he would support the creation of a new retirement fund that moved in that direction, but that there was a need to show financial interest from shareholders. To date, shareholders have pledged over $17 million to such a possible fund—but TIAA-CREF still resists.
Howard Zinn, noted historian, says, “I hope that more and more people will insist that TIAA-CREF funds be invested in socially responsible ways.” University of Pittsburgh Professor Dennis Brutus, the anti-apartheid campaigner who spent time in prison with Nelson Mandela for opposing the racist apartheid government in South Africa, says, “Not only interest, but the interests of the people must be borne in mind when making sound and moral decisions.”
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The US Campaign for Burma * Infact * International Tibet Independence Movement * Press for Change * Social Choice for Social Change * Students for a Free Tibet * U.S. Tibet Committee * World Bank Bonds Boycott* Citizens Coalition

Organizations Calling for Greater Social Responsibility and Corporate Governance from TIAA-CREF:
The United States Campaign for Burma
“TIAA-CREF must end its support for Burma's brutal military junta through its investments. Companies in which it owns stock bankroll oppression in Burma.”
—Aung Din

Contact: Aung Din, Director of Policy, 202-547-5985, 301-602-0077 (cell), aungdin@freeburmacoalition.org
The United States Campaign for Burma is a grassroots organization with members and affiliates across the United States and around the world. USBN works to raise awareness about the horrific human rights violations in Burma's illegitimate military dictatorship and supports the call for international sanctions against Burma by 1991 Nobel Peace Prize recipient Daw San Suu Kyi. USCB calls TIAA-CREF to ask Unocal, the oil giant currently being sued in U.S. courts over human rights abuses in Burma, to withdraw from Burma. If Unocal refuses, TIAA-CREF should also divest its Unocal stock.

Infact
“Philip Morris/Altria is the global leader in hooking kids to tobacco. How can an investment fund dedicated to serving the education and research communities justify funding the spread of addiction, disease and death to kids around the world?”
—Patti Lynn

Contact: Patti Lynn, Campaign Director, 617-695-2525, patti@infact.org
Since 1977, Infact has been exposing life-threatening abuses by transnational corporations and organizing successful grassroots campaigns to hold corporations accountable to consumers and society at large. Through the Tobacco Industry Campaign, launched in 1993, Infact is pressuring Philip Morris/Altria to stop addicting new young customers around the world, and to stop interfering in public policy on issues of tobacco and health. TIAA-CREF is one of Philip Morris/Altria’s largest institutional investors. CREF and Philip Morris/Altria also share a board member, Elizabeth Bailey, Professor of Business Ethics at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business.

Social Choice for Social Change: Campaign for a New TIAA-CREF
“We successfully lobbied TIAA-CREF to establish a socially responsible fund and then to modify it to not only exclude certain industries, like tobacco and heavy polluters, but to take the positive features of companies into account when making investments. We are now seeking for them to invest in enterprises that will make direct influences in peoples' lives, like low-income housing and venture capital for producing socially and environmentally responsible products and services."
—Neil Wollman, Senior Fellow and Professor of Manchester College
Contact: Neil Wollman, Co-Coordinator, 260-982-5346, nwollman@bentley.edu

Press for Change
“Along with the much needed attention that corporate financial irresponsibility has been given recently, it is equally important that focus is given to corporate social irresponsibility. Nike is a classic case of such irresponsibility and this is no more evident than in their dealings with the women and men at PT Doson in Indonesia.”
—Jeff Ballinger

Contact: Jeff Ballinger, 617 494 5106, jeffreyd@mindspring.com
Workers in Nike contract factories have continued to make demands on abusive factory managers, but there has been little meaningful change. Just six weeks ago, several thousand Nike workers protested at the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta because the sports shoe giant withdrew orders from a factory (PT Doson) which employed 7,000 workers. Independent union leaders in Indonesia believe that Doson's workforce was singled out because workers had stood up resolutely to Doson management. TIAA-CREF should immediately drop Nike from its investment accounts and undertake serious research on the issue of overseas apparel production.

Students for a Free Tibet
Contact: Alma David, 212-358-0071, sft@igc.org

International Tibet Independence Movement
Contact: Professor Larry Gerstein, 317-579-9015, rangzen@aol.com

U.S. Tibet Committee
“For over two years BP has failed to make any positive use of their influence with PetroChina, and has been less than forthright in dealing with the legitimate concerns of their own shareholders regarding the company's operations in Tibet,” said Sophia Conroy, National Coordinator of the U.S. Tibet Committee. “For as long as BP continues to hold PetroChina stock, there should not be a place for the company in TIAA-CREF's portfolio.”

Contact: Sarah Hoffman, National Coordinator, 212-481-3569, (cell 917-662-7328), ustc@igc.org

Tibetans and supporters oppose investment in BP, because they are the largest foreign shareholder in PetroChina, the state-owned oil giant responsible for China's politically motivated exploitation of Tibet's gas resources. PetroChina's pipeline projects threaten Tibet's fragile ecosystem, facilitate Chinese population transfer into Tibet, and help consolidate Chinese control over the region. As the largest foreign shareholder in PetroChina, BP is complicit in China's brutal occupation of Tibet.

World Bank Bonds Boycott
Contact: Katrina Abarcar, 202-393-6665, katrina@econjustice.net

The World Bank Bonds Boycott is an international grassroots campaign that is building moral, political and financial pressure on the World Bank. The World Bank raises most of its funds by issuing bonds. Ordinary people, through their pension funds, labor unions,
churches, municipalities, and universities are exerting pressure for change on the World Bank by refusing to buy its bonds. The campaign demands an end to the World Bank's harmful "structural adjustment" policies; 100% debt cancellation; and an end to environmentally destructive projects, especially for oil, gas, mining, and dams. TIAA-CREF divested its World Bank bonds and should now adopt a policy against future purchase of such bonds.

Citizens Coalition
Contact: fcpcdls@yahoo.com, madretierra7@avantel.net.mx
We are a group of citizens from Cuernavaca, Mexico, conformed of artists, families, workers ecologists, and academics. We have been beaten and jailed for protesting against the destruction of an environmentally, economically, and culturally important site in our city. Two years ago, on June 30, 2001, we created our organization, called Frente Civico, to defend murals, centenary trees, a 3500 year Olmec archeological site and our way of life. The heritage was found in the hotel "Casino de la Selva" now demolished to make way for two giant warehouses. Cuernavaca is ideal for rest and a tourist attraction. With the loss of the urban forest that was there and historic sites we will lose air quality, tranquility and tourism based jobs. We request that TIAA-CREF divest from Costco, an unethical company that flagrantly breaks the law and that has gone to the extreme of sustaining fascist policies in our country. Please visit www.procasino.org to promote our boycott called for until the company closes the stores.