 |
to Add Anti-Bias Policy Victory Hailed by Gay Rights Groups & NYC Employees Sexual Orientation Measure Garners Highest Issue Vote |
|
Compiled By GayToday
"This vote shows shareholders with millions of dollars of ExxonMobil stock are concerned about ExxonMobil's substandard equal employment opportunity policies," said Diane Bratcher, chair of the Equality Project, a coalition of lesbian and gay shareholders that coordinated Wednesday's successful vote. "ExxonMobil is falling behind the Fortune 500 and its oil industry peers by not barring sexual orientation discrimination. This is a business issue and ExxonMobil needs to move forward like General Electric, McDonald's, American Home Products, Johnson & Johnson and hundreds of other major corporations have in the last few years." Shareholders voted on the measure Wednesday at ExxonMobil's annual stockholder meeting in Dallas. The non-discrimination issue garnered a higher percentage of votes than any of the other eight measures on the shareholder ballot with the exception of electing the board of directors and approving the company's accounting firm. None of the several hundred attendees at the meeting spoke against the non-discrimination measure.
"ExxonMobil has gone on record as opposing innovation in this area and letting the government set the pace and agenda of change," said investment analyst Shelley Alpern of Trillium Asset Management Corp., a co-sponsor of the proposal. "That's a fine strategy for letting your competitors get out ahead of you." A similar resolution by the Equality Project received the support of 5.9 percent of votes cast at last year's Exxon stockholder meeting. The Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force supported the non-discrimination measure this year, and urged their members before Wednesday's meeting to contact their mutual and pension fund managers to lobby them to vote in favor of the proposal. Because the Human Rights Campaign is a shareholder, an HRC representative attended the meeting, voted HRC's shares and spoke in favor of the non-discrimination measure. "By refusing to add the words 'sexual orientation' to its non-discrimination policy, ExxonMobil continues to subvert its own mandate to be on the 'leading edge of the competition in every aspect of our business,'" noted Kim I. Mills, HRC's education director. "ExxonMobil's key competitors already have this policy in writing, as do 70 percent of the Fortune 100 corporations. Not only does ExxonMobil deal in fossil fuels, it is becoming a fossil with respect to its employment policies." Chevron, BP Amoco, Sunoco, Shell and Texaco ban discrimination and harassment based on sexual orientation, and BP Amoco, Shell and Chevron offer same-sex domestic partnership benefits. "Equality in the workplace for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered employees represents the very essence of a fair and democratic society," said Elizabeth Toledo, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "ExxonMobil's rejection of equality sends a chilling message to its customers, its stockholders and its potential investors about the values it embraces." ExxonMobil shocked Mobil employees, the gay and lesbian community and civil rights groups in December when, following Exxon's merger with Mobil Corp., it rescinded the former Mobil non-discrimination policy that specifically included sexual orientation and chose not to extend Mobil's domestic partner benefits policy to employees of the new company. ExxonMobil is the first company to remove protection agains sexual orientation discrimination from its equal employment opportunity policy. The company was flooded with angry phone calls, faxes, e-mails, letters from Congress and protests outside its Houston office, which prompted managers to close early on Jan 28. ExxonMobil has been unwilling to change its policies despite separate meetings with the shareholder coalition and the Human Rights Campaign. Co-filing the proposal with NYCERS were Equality Project stockholders Dr. Ellen Birenbaum, Marianne Weil, Steven Strauss and other individual shareholders represented by Trillium Asset Management, a socially responsible investment firm. www.equalityproject.org Complete information about the proposal; text of proposal; contact information for reaching the investment managers of ExxonMobil's largest institutional investors, as well as the trustees of all 50 states' public pension funds. www.hrc.org/worknet A full list of employers that include sexual orientation in their non-discrimination policies and that offer domestic partner benefits is available from the Human Rights Campaign's WorkNet. www.ngltf.org www.ngltf.org National Gay & Lesbian Task Force |
Dallas, Texas--A total of 8.2 percent of ExxonMobil shareholders have voted in
favor of adding sexual orientation to the company's written
non-discrimination policy, a 35 percent increase over last year. Proponents
of the measure termed the vote a success, noting that it is sufficient to
bring the issue before stockholders again next year.
