Report on TIAA-CREF Campaign Activities (Feb. 5-10)

1. Thanks for your calls/emails to TIAA-CREF (TC) back in early February. We had enough that they started directing calls away from the CEO's office! Forward any responses you received—it helps us strategize.

2. Besides calls, we submitted a shareholder resolution to TC (see copy below). We also sent a letter to TC officers and distributed a press release (linked at www.makeTIAA-CREFethical.org)

3. We got our message out widely via the press release and calls to 100 individual media folks. We appeared on such sites as Yahoo, One World, World News Network, and TV station web sites (also mention in Investment Management Weekly ).

4. We’ve just added a Wal-Mart-related group to our coalition – (see www.sprawl-busters.com). And others have expressed interest.

5. We always try to get actual TC participants involved since they have the most influence with TC--and they can contact their colleagues. (The Indiana U. progressive faculty coalition and a Wheaton College (MA) group just asked how they can help.) So, please widely distribute the below piece to relevant faculty and staff groups/individuals.

6. If you’re not already on it, sign up for campaign updates (sent every month or two—repy with 'add to TC Coalition list' in subject line). Otherwise you’ll mainly just get occasional action alerts. Also, use ''add to SCSC list" in subject line to get updates for the specific campaign focusing on investing in low income area housing and other positive ventures ( Social Choice for Social Change).

7. Finally, we share with you a poem submitted by a supporter (see below). And on a one-time basis we include below information on the Graduation Pledge Alliance. ("I pledge to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider and will try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which I work."). Please inform/encourage/support students on this. Have possibly interested folks email nwollman@bentley.edu so we keep track.

Thanks,

Neil

Neil Wollman

Peace Studies Institute

MC Box 135

Manchester College

North Manchester, IN 46962

260-982-5346

nwollman@bentley.edu

Resolution Proposal

TIAA-CREF claims to exercise its voice to influence policies and practices of companies in whose stock CREF invests. Let it be resolved, therefore, that TIAA-CREF remain invested in Costco, Wal-Mart, and other general merchandise stores in order to transform them into less risky assets. Beyond fiduciary concerns, actions of these companies are antithetical to TIAA-CREF policies regarding social responsibility. A publicly stated timeline should be established for divestment, if these companies take no remedial action and their destructive practices persist.

Supporting Statement

Reflecting the moral values of the academic community, TIAA-CREF considers itself a “concerned investor” and its Policy Statement on Corporate Governance states “TIAA-CREF believes that building long-term shareholder value is consistent with directors' giving careful consideration to issues of social responsibility and the common good.” This is contravened by at least two companies in its portfolio, Costco and Wal-Mart, which put at risk the value of their brand by generating strong disapproval from the international community with their disregard for the law, the culture and the requests of communities where their outlets are established. With the support of corrupt local politicians, they have damaged culturally, ecologically and archeologically valuable sites. The High Commissioner for Human Rights of the United Nations noted the violations of human rights by the destruction in Cuernavaca, Mexico, of the Casino de la Selva, as well as infringement on freedom of expression of citizens. Nearly 150 organizations urged Costco to stop its destruction and close this outlet, but the company refused. The erecting of the Teotihuacan, Mexico, Wal-Mart store resulted in similar circumstances.

There is an international boycott against both companies, with related lawsuits against Wal-Mart. The Danish LO trade union has dropped Wal-Mart's stock. Such actions devalue the company brands and put at risk the investments of their shareholders, including TIAA-CREF participants.

Competition by Costco and Wal-Mart has caused many small local businesses to file for bankruptcy and result in loss of income sources worldwide. Furthermore, Wal-Mart retails merchandise from sweatshops and faces lawsuits for discrimination. These activities violate TIAA-CREF's Policy Statement regarding “egregious repression of human rights,” “equal employment opportunities for all segments of the population,” and “the common good of the corporation's communities and its constituencies.”

Additionally, Costco and Walmart are paradigmatic of the general merchandise store sector that typically disregard small businesses, provide low wages and poor benefits, and contribute to urban sprawl.

TIAA-CREF's Policy Statement on Corporate Governance allows for resolutions supporting divestment. There is also precedent by the large CalPERS pension system, which has sometimes divested (or not invested) in companies due to social concerns. These screens apply to all of the fund's participants, not just to those in socially responsible funds.

For the reasons above, the proponent urges you to vote to have TIAA-CREF actively press for change, reparations, and potential divestment from Costco, Wal-Mart, and other general merchandise stores that are egregious in terms of disregard for small businesses, providing low wages and poor benefits, and contributing to urban sprawl, while generating fiduciary risk.

PROMOTING A SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE TIAA-CREF

I am writing to assess your interest in promoting social responsibility within TIAA-CREF. Our group has made progress with them in a few areas of their operations and investment (see the statement below for a description of our work, with more details available at www.MakeTIAA-CREFethical.org). Providing us with the following information will help us in our future work.

1. Do you support this effort? ________________

2. What is your institutional affiliation? ________________

3. Would you be willing to contact TIAA-CREF on occasion by phone or email in support of these efforts? __________ (There are ways to get further involved--let us know if interested.)

4. Would you tell others at your institution about our TIAA-CREF efforts? _____________ (We can send something to distribute by email.)

The nation's largest pension fund, TIAA-CREF, a retirement fund mainly for educators, prides itself on being responsive to shareholders and a "concerned investor" with regard to social responsibility. The reality is that TIAA-CREF holds shares in some of the most controversial and notoriously unethical corporations, including Altria/Philip Morris, responsible for Marlboro-the #1 cigarette brand among youth; Nike and Wal-Mart, widely condemned for their use of sweatshop labor; Unocal, the oil giant currently being sued for human rights abuses in Burma. TIAA-CREF has now sold all its World Bank bonds, which have resulted in harm to many Third World citizens, but it needs to assert that it will not buy any new ones.

A coalition of groups urges the pension system to divest of shares in corporations involved in human rights violations, and public health and environmental degradation, and instead invest in socially responsible ventures. We have done lobbying and taken direct actions to promote more social responsibility within TIAA-CREF. Because of the size and prominence of TIAA-CREF, if they make the changes we desire, it can lead other large institutional investors to do the same.

Neil Wollman; Ph. D.; Senior Fellow, Peace Studies Institute; Professor of Psychology; Manchester College, North Manchester, IN 46962; nwollman@bentley.edu; 260-982-5346

Daniel North, UK

THE CAGE OF UNETHICITY

You should really by now

Be getting the message

To stop violating civil liberty

And putting human rights in a cage.

But instead you repeat the same old evils

Again and again

Chasing money no matter whom it hurts

By placing people’s futures firmly down the drain.

Because you keep on ignoring, discarding the facts

Anyway I thought the risks of smoking were clear..?!

But you still blank out all what Altria has caused

Hoping that in time the truth will eventually smear.

Also rather than helping

You encourage the crippling of the Burmese

Destroying employment and allowing the slave trade

Watching on as economies crumble around their knees.

So please don’t buy any more of their WB bonds

As we will no longer be taken for a fool

In hope that they learn from the errors of their ways

So that the TIAA-CREF will become a lot more ethical.

GRADUATION PLEDGE ALLIANCE

Humboldt State University (California) initiated the Graduation Pledge of Social and Environmental Responsibility. It states, "I pledge to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any job I consider and will try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which I work." Students define for themselves what it means to be socially and environmentally responsible. Students at over a hundred colleges and universities have used the pledge at some level. The schools involved include small liberal arts colleges (Colgate and Skidmore); large state universities (Oregon and Utah), and large private research universities (Princeton and Stanford). The Pledge is also now found at graduate and professional schools, high schools , and schools overseas (e.g., in France, Taiwan, Canada, and Australia).

Graduates who voluntarily signed the pledge have turned down jobs with which they did not feel morally comfortable and have worked to make changes once on the job. For example, they have promoted recycling at their organization, removed racist language from a training manual, worked for gender parity in high school athletics, and helped to convince an employer to refuse a chemical weapons-related contract.

Manchester College now coordinates the campaign effort, which has taken different forms at different institutions. At Manchester, it is a community-wide event involving students, faculty, and staff. Typically, over fifty percent of students sign and keep a wallet-size card stating the pledge, while students and supportive faculty wear green ribbons at commencement. The pledge is printed in the formal commencement program. Depending upon the school, it might take several years to reach this level of institutionalization. If one can get a few groups/departments involved, and get some media attention on (and off) campus, it will get others interested and build for the future. The project has been covered in newspapers around the country (e.g., USA Today, Washington Post, Associated Press, and Chronicle of Higher Education), as well as being covered in magazines (e.g., Business Week), national radio networks (for instance, ABC), and local T.V. stations (like in Ft. Wayne, IN).

In a sense, the Pledge operates at three levels: students making choices about their employment; schools educating about values and citizenship rather than only knowledge and skills; and the workplace and society being concerned about more than just the bottom line. The impact is immense even if only a significant minority of the one million college graduates each year sign and live out the Pledge.

The Campaign has a web site, at http://www.graduationpledge.org PLEASE KEEP US INFORMED OF ANY PLEDGE EFFORTS YOU ARE EVEN CONSIDERING TO UNDERTAKE, AS WE TRY TO MONITOR WHAT IS HAPPENING, AND PROVIDE PERIODIC UPDATES ON THE NATIONAL EFFORT (INCLUDING HINTS ON HAVING A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN). Contact nwollman@bentley.edu for information/questions/comments.