InvestorsChallenge Natural Gas Companies to Increase Transparency, Reduce Risks toPublic Health and the Environment From Fracking Operations    Shareholders file resolutions withChevron*, Exxon Mobil*, and 8 other companies to spur more responsiblemanagement practices   Boston, MA—For a third consecutive year, concerned investors havetargeted energy exploration and production companies that rely heavily onhydraulic fracturing (fracking)and fail to disclose critical information aboutthe ways they are managing the associated risks.     Public concern about the environmentaland social impacts of fracking operations are growing across the country andcan have real business implications for the companies involved.   “Bans and moratoria are denials of companies’ sociallicense to operate and impose a wide range of costs on companies, ranging fromthe costs of delays to complete loss of access to valuable resources where sunkcosts must be written off,” said Larisa Ruoff, Director of ShareholderAdvocacy for Green Century CapitalManagement (Green Century). “Right now, companies are not providinginvestors, or the communities in which the companies operate, sufficientinformation on the steps they are taking to address and mitigate the risksassociated with hydraulic fracturing operations so shareholders are demandingincreased transparency.”   This year, shareholders have filed resolutions with ten companies,including Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Chesapeake Energy* calling on the companiesto provide a detailed account of how they are addressing the risks associatedwith community concerns, regulatory impacts, tightened regulations, andmoratoria.    “This year’s effort builds on the remarkable successachieved by investors last year, when similar proposals received an average 40percent** vote.  These high votes send strong messages to companies thatsignificant portions of their shareholders require increased disclosure on thisissue,” said Richard Liroff, Executive Director of the Investor Environmental Health Network(IEHN).  IEHN and Green Century coordinate investors’ engagements withcompanies on fracking.    These resolutions are part of a broader investor initiative challengingcompanies to address climate and sustainability risks.  Thus far in the2012 proxy season, investors working with Ceres, a coalition of investors andpublic interest groups working with companies to address sustainabilitychallenges, have filed 86 resolutions with 69 companies.   “Investors are concerned about the financial risks associatedwith the environmental, health, and social impacts of fracking,” saidMichael Passoff, Senior Strategist for As You Sow, which has filed atExxonMobil and Ultra Petroleum* since 2010.  “Concern about watersources, toxic chemicals, and wastewater has led to new regulations in severalstates and proposed federal legislation. Explosions, contamination incidents, and millions ofdollars in fines demonstrate that things can and do go wrong,” hecontinued.   This season, shareholders have a new tool in theirdialogue with companies.  In December, IEHN and the Interfaith Centeron Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) released “Extracting the Facts: An Investor Guide to DisclosingRisks from Hydraulic Fracturing Operations,” which isintended to help increase disclosure and mitigate the impacts of fracking.    “In order to maintain their social license tooperate, companies must fully disclose the steps they are taking to minimizerisks, to acknowledge their challenges and failures, and to clearly define themethods they will use to continually improve operations,” said LauraBerry, Executive Director of ICCR.  “The Guide offers a road map forcompanies to respond to the heightened concerns around fracking, andarticulates industry best practices that will reduce the risks, andconsequently, the impacts.”     Shareholder proposals were filed at Anadarko*,Chesapeake Energy, Chevron, EOG Resources*,Exxon Mobil, Noble Energy*, Penn Virginia*, RangeResources*, Stone Energy*, and UltraPetroleum.  These proposals have been filed by the following investors and investor advisors:  As You Sow,Green Century Capital Management, Mercy Investment Program, Miller/HowardInvestments, Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia,and Trillium Asset Management. 
Shareholders file resolutions with Chevron*, Exxon Mobil*, and 8 other companies to spur more responsiblemanagement practices
 
Boston, MA—For a third consecutive year, concerned investors havetargeted energy exploration and production companies that rely heavily onhydraulic fracturing (fracking) and fail to disclose critical information aboutthe ways they are managing the associated risks.  
 
Public concern about the environmentaland social impacts of fracking operations are growing across the country and can have real business implications for the companies involved.
 
“Bans and moratoria are denials of companies’ sociallicense to operate and impose a wide range of costs on companies, ranging from the costs of delays to complete loss of access to valuable resources where sunkcosts must be written off,” said Larisa Ruoff, Director of ShareholderAdvocacy for Green Century CapitalManagement (Green Century). “Right now, companies are not providinginvestors, or the communities in which the companies operate, sufficientinformation on the steps they are taking to address and mitigate the risksassociated with hydraulic fracturing operations so shareholders are demandingincreased transparency.”
 
This year, shareholders have filed resolutions with ten companies,including Exxon Mobil, Chevron and Chesapeake Energy* calling on the companiesto provide a detailed account of how they are addressing the risks associated with community concerns, regulatory impacts, tightened regulations, and moratoria. 
 
“This year’s effort builds on the remarkable success achieved by investors last year, when similar proposals received an average 40 percent** vote.  These high votes send strong messages to companies that significant portions of their shareholders require increased disclosure on this issue,” said Richard Liroff, Executive Director of the Investor Environmental Health Network (IEHN).  IEHN and Green Century coordinate investors’ engagements with companies on fracking. 
 
These resolutions are part of a broader investor initiative challenging companies to address climate and sustainability risks.  Thus far in the 2012 proxy season, investors working with Ceres, a coalition of investors and public interest groups working with companies to address sustainability challenges, have filed 86 resolutions with 69 companies.
 
“Investors are concerned about the financial risks associatedwith the environmental, health, and social impacts of fracking,” said Michael Passoff, Senior Strategist for As You Sow, which has filed at ExxonMobil and Ultra Petroleum* since 2010.  “Concern about watersources, toxic chemicals, and wastewater has led to new regulations in several states and proposed federal legislation. Explosions, contamination incidents, and millions of dollars in fines demonstrate that things can and do go wrong,” he continued.
 
This season, shareholders have a new tool in their dialogue with companies.  In December, IEHN and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) released “Extracting the Facts: An Investor Guide to Disclosing Risks from Hydraulic Fracturing Operations,” which is intended to help increase disclosure and mitigate the impacts of fracking.
 
“In order to maintain their social license to operate, companies must fully disclose the steps they are taking to minimize risks, to acknowledge their challenges and failures, and to clearly define the methods they will use to continually improve operations,” said Laura Berry, Executive Director of ICCR.  “The Guide offers a road map for companies to respond to the heightened concerns around fracking, and articulates industry best practices that will reduce the risks, and consequently, the impacts.”  
 
Shareholder proposals were filed at Anadarko*, Chesapeake Energy, Chevron, EOG Resources*,Exxon Mobil, Noble Energy*, Penn Virginia*, RangeResources*, Stone Energy*, and UltraPetroleum.  These proposals have been filed by the following investors and investor advisors:  As You Sow, Green Century Capital Management, Mercy Investment Program, Miller/HowardInvestments, Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, and Trillium Asset Management. 

Sustainability Reporting describing the company’s environmental, social and governance business practices—co-filed with Walden Asset Management

Hydraulic Fracturing: Community Impacts – Risk Assessment -- disclosure on the impacts of fracking on local community and the financial risks of these impacts. This resolution includes both environmental impacts to water quality, health impacts from exposure to water and air, and is broad enough to include social ills documented in fracking towns.

Here is a sampling of the significant press coverage after last year’s votes.

New: Political Spending Resolution – response to Citizens United ruling. Calls on corporations to review policies and oversight processes related to political spending and public policy, both direct and indirect including through trade associations, and present a summary report by September 2012.

ORRVILLE, Ohio - The J.M. Smucker Co. perked up coffee-lovers by announcing that after four straight price hikes in little over a year, the company was cutting prices by an average of 6 percent.

The Orrville food company, which is holding its annual shareholders meeting today, said Tuesday's news applies to the prices on a majority of its coffee products sold in the U.S., including top-selling Folgers Coffee, Folgers Gourmet Selections and Dunkin' Donuts packaged coffee sold in supermarkets.

Smucker cut prices in response to declines in the price of raw green coffee futures, which slipped to $2.10 per pound in July, down 9 percent from a 34-year-high of $2.31 per pound in April.

That's still 65 percent higher than the $1.27-per-pound price in April 2010, but represents the third-straight monthly decline after more than a year of steadily climbing prices, according to the International Coffee Organization.

Those rising prices, on top of higher fuel and other production costs, prompted Smucker to increase its own coffee prices four times:

• 4 percent on May 18, 2010;

• 9 percent on Aug. 3, 2010;

• 10 percent on Feb. 8, 2011;

• and 11 percent on May 24.

Smucker's rivals, including Starbucks, Maxwell House, Peet's Coffee & Tea and Green Mountain Coffee have raised their coffee prices over the past year, too, but have not yet responded to Tuesday's announcement.

Dominic Caruso, vice president of Caruso's Coffee Inc., a specialty coffee roaster in Brecksville, said that while prices for some kinds of raw beans have fallen, they remain significantly higher than they were a year ago.

He said that while mass-produced coffee blends like Folgers and Dunkin' Donuts can compensate for more expensive beans by increasing the amount of cheaper robusta beans, coffee houses that specialize in premium beans or single-source coffees have less wiggle room to lower prices.

"On certain coffees, like breakfast blends and doughnut shop blends, we're going to try to pass along that savings to the customer," he said. "But on other coffees, like African coffees or Indonesian Sumatras and Javas, we're stuck" with higher prices.

Caruso doesn't expect many coffee house regulars to switch to brewing at home, however, because coffee is still an affordable indulgence. "The customer who's going to the coffee shop is going there for a lot of reasons besides price," he said.

The price cut news also came a day before Smucker's annual shareholders meeting, where two shareholder groups that advise investors on responsible and sustainable companies are seeking more information about the company's long-term coffee strategy.

Calvert Investment Management Inc. of Bethesda, Md., and Trillium Asset Management LLC of Boston want shareholders to approve their Proposal 5, requiring Smucker to provide a report to shareholders about how the company plans to deal with possible climate changes and threats to family coffee farms within six months of the annual meeting.

Because coffee makes up 40 percent of Smucker's net sales and 48.6 percent of its profit, the groups wrote a letter to shareholders saying that they want to know how the company plans to respond to climate changes like global warming, changes in rainfall patterns, and its "responsibility for its impact on the coffee farming families in its supply chain."

Rebecca Henson, Calvert's sustainability analyst, said: "The proposal is meant to encourage the company to take more meaningful steps" to protect shareholders, because so much of its business depends on coffee. "We just think there's more they can do to manage this risk."

Calvert, a mutual fund which offers advice to more than 400,000 individual and institutional investors, owns 4,269 shares of Smucker stock.

Trillium, the oldest and largest independent adviser devoted exclusively to sustainable and responsible investing, advises several hundred clients who own about 90,000 shares of Smucker.

Both groups say Smucker has provided "woefully inadequate" guidance on these topics and that it "lags significantly behind" its global peers Nestle, Sara Lee and Kraft in providing that information.

Sara Lee, for example, aims to have 20 percent of its coffee volume certified sustainable by 2015, while Nescafe will distribute 220 million disease-resistant coffee plantlets to coffee farmers around the world by 2020.

Smucker declined to answer questions Tuesday about the price cut or Proposal 5, saying that it was in its quiet period prior to Thursday's earnings conference call.

In an Aug. 9 letter to shareholders, however, Co-Chief Executives Tim and Richard Smucker responded that the company had already answered those requests.

They said that "in making the decision and expending time and resources to voluntarily publish a corporate responsibility report, it has taken appropriate action to address shareholder concerns" and that adopting Proposal 5 would be "unnecessary, duplicative and inappropriate."

Read the original article here.

By Jerilyn Klein Bier

Whether or not you’ve got environmentally conscious clients, it pays to know the financial and public health risks associated with a corporation’s toxic chemical policies. And one of the better go-to places for that information is the Investor Environmental Health Network (www.iehn.org).

IEHN is a collaborative partnership of different investment organizations that in aggregate manage more than $30 billion in assets. Its goal is to encourage companies to adopt policies that reduce and/or eliminate toxic chemicals in their products and operations.

IEHN’s operating principle is that safer chemical policies can help companies anticipate and avoid “toxic lockout” from the marketplace in the form of government bans or restrictions on products. In turn, that can reduce reputational and legal risks, as well as enhance brands and create greater long-term shareholder value.

“We needed to move beyond the chemical to chemical and look at the larger picture of what companies are doing,” says IEHN executive director Richard Liroff, who founded the network in 2004. “We’re trying to change the underlying ground rules that apply to all companies worldwide.”

IEHN’s members include Calvert Investments, Domini Social Investments, Parnassus Investments, As You Sow Foundation, First Affirmative Financial Network, faith-based institutional investors and other leaders in sustainable and socially responsible investing. The network is advised by scientific, policy and technical experts from roughly a dozen environmental health organizations.

Liroff, who spent more than two decades directing projects on toxic chemicals and other issues at the World Wildlife Fund, serves as a technical resource for IEHN and has helped develop the rationale for resolutions and written letters to companies.

Body Of Work

IEHN, which analyzes corporate, government and scientific data, gets most of its funding through smaller philanthropic organizations concerned about environmental health. In addition to working on environmental issues involving corporations, the organization does outreach and develops tools such as reports and fiduciary guides for pension plans and other investors.

Among its activities, IEHN has pressed regulators to close corporate liability accounting loopholes that enable companies to conceal damaging scientific findings and their full potential liabilities associated with toxic chemicals. It has also provided suggestions to the Global Reporting Initiative on how it can better address toxic chemicals in its upcoming guidelines.

IEHN’s résumé includes tackling issues such as bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates used in plastic products, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in packaging, pesticides in food, and nanomaterials in cosmetics.

One of the coalition’s pressing tasks of late has been calling out energy companies on the environmental and business risks of hydraulic fracturing technology used in oil and natural gas drilling. And IEHN member Domini filed resolutions with Coca Cola in 2010 and 2011 asking it to disclose how it’s responding to safety concerns about BPA used in its can linings.

IEHN members have been the lead filers on two-thirds of the 103 shareholder resolutions on toxic chemicals filed by investors since 2006. Of the 44 resolutions that were voted on during that period (many others were withdrawn due to favorable company responses), two dozen received more than 20% of shareholder votes.

“That’s a significant enough number to get a company’s attention,” says Larisa Ruoff, the director of shareholder advocacy at Green Century Capital Management in Boston, one of IEHN’s partner organizations.

For broader context, a first-year resolution filed with a company needs to get at least 3% of the vote in order to be refiled the following year.

Solutions, Not Just Talk

Roger McFadden, a senior scientist with Staples Advantage, the business-to-business division of Staples Inc., circulates IEHN information with the office supply retailer’s key decision makers. “I view IEHN as a credible and relevant information resource to identify chemicals of high concern, but more importantly, to identify safer alternatives,” he says
As a result of talks with IEHN, Staples has eliminated endocrine-disrupting nonylphenol ethoxylates from its own brand cleaning supplies; stopped using thermal register receipts coated in BPA; and now uses PVC-free packaging materials for its own brands.

IEHN has helped oil and gas exploration company Apache Corp. identify important questions regarding hydraulic fracturing. “While other people spend time preaching to their own choirs and valuing opinion over fact, Rich spends time crunching numbers, reading footnotes, reaching out to new people from across the spectrum, and forging doable-but-meaningful deals,” says Sarah Teslik, Apache’s senior vice president of policy and governance.

Liroff encourages financial advisors to use information resources on IEHN’s web site, including case studies, reports and articles. IEHN staff also provides fee-based services for people who want to dive deeper into these issues.

In addition, Liroff recommends checking out the SIN (Substitute It Now!) List developed by the nonprofit International Chemical Secretariat, or ChemSec. It includes 378 substances identified as very high concern under REACH, the European Community Regulation on chemicals and their safe use.

Down the road, Liroff expects companies will talk more about their toxic footprints like they’ve begun to do with their carbon and water footprints. IEHN’s partner organizations believe that’ll help achieve the trifecta of improved corporate operations, public health and shareholder value.

NEW YORK – Target is having labor pains.

Until recently, the Minneapolis discounter largely had avoided the labor disputes and public relations challenges that have plagued Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer. But now Target could face the same union opposition as its much bigger rival.

Target had its first union election in two decades in June amid allegations by workers of skimpy wages and reduced hours at a Valley Stream, N.Y., store. The measure ultimately failed after Target suggested to workers that the store might not survive if they vote to unionize.

But the labor dispute – and Target’s handling of it – is widely seen as a precursor to a bubbling national battle between Target and labor groups similar to the one Wal-Mart has been locked in for at least a decade.

“There is no question that this is becoming a hostile, caustic battle of wills,” says Don Schroeder, a Mintz Levin labor attorney who has represented corporations in labor battles for 18 years.

While Wal-Mart Stores Inc. remains the biggest target for labor groups as the largest U.S. private employer, unions are increasingly setting their sights on the nation’s No. 3 retailer as it adds locations across the country and aggressively expands into the heavily unionized grocery business.

In addition to New York, more labor disputes are expected in big cities such as San Francisco, Seattle and Minneapolis – where Target is based and remains the second-largest employer behind the Mayo Clinic.

The opposition is coming at a particularly vulnerable time for Target, which is grappling with slack sales growth as shoppers are pulling back amid the painfully slow economic recovery.

Already, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union’s Local 1500 New York chapter, which organized the election in the Valley Stream store, intends to contest the election results and ask the government to order a new one because it says Target intimidated workers. It also plans to fight to get all 26 stores in the New York area unionized.

And the UFCW’s local 1189 in St. Paul, near Minneapolis, is using the New York election as an impetus to recharge its campaign, which failed a couple of years because it didn’t collect enough votes.

The chapter is organizing a group of people to go door-to-door to almost 2,000 Target workers in four stores. It’s also planning to reach out to UFCW’s local Chicago, San Francisco and Seattle chapters to enlist them to join the battle.

“I was inspired. Once we heard that Local 1500 had been building toward an election, we thought we better ramp it up,” said Bernie Hesse, director of special projects at UFCW’s St. Paul chapter. “We have been intrigued with what a national campaign may look like.”

Target Corp. declined to comment on its strategies to counter an escalating labor fight, but spokeswoman Molly Snyder said the company does not intimidate workers or have any “companywide efforts to restructure or reduce hours.”

“Our emphasis is on creating a workplace environment where our team members don’t want or need union representation,” Snyder said.

Labor disputes new

Labor disputes are new for Target, which has used its marketing prowess to become the discount industry’s darling by offering trendy products while Wal-Mart built its no-frills business by offering everyday low prices.

The companies started in the same year: 1962. And analysts say they pay workers similar wages of between $9 and $11. But the similarities end there.

Wal-Mart., which has 1.4 million U.S. workers, for years has been battling labor unions and politicians seeking to block it from opening stores in big cities amid allegations of poor treatment of workers, among other concerns.

By contrast, Target has faced little to no opposition and at times has even had the red carpet rolled out for it – literally.

For instance, Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., so far has not been able to penetrate New York City after fighting for years to get its stores there, but Target has opened 10 stores in the five boroughs without any union protests. And when Target’s Harlem location opened last year, there was a red carpet event attended by New York politicians and celebrities such as Jerry Seinfeld and Moby.

As union opposition against Wal-Mart grew across the country, the retailer began employing hardball tactics to discourage workers from organizing.

In 2004, for instance, the company shuttered a Canadian store after it became the first in North America to win union certification, for instance. In 2000, 11 workers in the meatpacking department at a store in Jacksonville, Texas, voted to join the UFCW. Soon after, Wal-Mart began stocking only pre-wrapped meats, effectively eliminating the positions.

The moves hurt Wal-Mart’s public image, and anti-Wal-Mart sentiment spread among labor groups. So, the retailer beefed up its public relations staff, spent hundreds of millions of dollars to settle lawsuits alleging that its workers were denied breaks and rolled out lower-priced health insurance to its employees, among other changes.

Wal-Mart acts

Analysts say Wal-Mart’s efforts to repair its battered reputation worked and deflected the attention at least partly over to Target, which is a fifth of the size of Wal-Mart with annual revenue of $65.7 billion in its latest fiscal year.

To be sure, some of the increased focus Target is experiencing from labor unions is simply a growing pain of being a bigger employer. Target now employs 355,000 workers and operates more than 1,700 stores, up from about 280,000 workers and 1,050 stores ten years ago.

But there is another big reason unions are beginning to scrutinize Target. The company is aggressively expanding its grocery business, which threatens to shrink market share of unionized supermarket chains. The UFCW says 80 percent of its 1.3 million members are grocery workers.

How Target handles the new scrutiny will be critical, analysts say.

So far, they say, the union battle in Valley Stream, N.Y., exposed how a still-harsh economy has pushed Target to compete better with Wal-Mart and copy the retailer on all fronts – including wages and benefits.

Over the past year, Target has followed Wal-Mart by shifting more of its workers to part-time, analysts say. Some employees say their hours have been cut from 30 per week to less than 10. Part-timers must bank at least 20 hours a week, on average, to qualify for benefits.

Tashawna Green, 21, who started working at Target’s Valley Stream, N.Y., store a little more than a year ago, said she voted in favor of organizing because her weekly hours have been cut from 30 to just over 20 in the past year. She recently got an 8-cent raise added to her $8 per hour pay – an increase she says isn’t satisfactory.

“I can’t live off this,” said Green, who has a 6-year old daughter and lives with her aunt in Queens. “We’re just looking for more respect.”

When addressing workers’ concerns, analysts say Target should look closely at what worked – and didn’t work – for Wal-Mart. They say one of the biggest mistakes Wal-Mart made was to not respond quickly enough.

Schroeder, the Mintz Levin labor attorney, says Target should get ahead of the attacks by making sure managers are sensitive to workers’ needs.

It also should hone a message that’s conciliatory, not arrogant, he says, and communicate better with workers.

“You have to think how you’re going to change,” he says. “If you don’t change, it will come back to you.”

Read more here.