One share, one vote!Shareholder activism in this country has become equated with changing the colour of faces in many boardrooms. But shareholder activism can also be used by workers as Tom Egan told Numsa Bulletin. If you have recently become a shareholder in your own company, read on!
How have you exploited the issue of workers who are shareholders in their own company?In a previous union job, we took 10 workers to their company’s shareholders’ meeting. Because they owned stock in the company they had the right to attend the meeting on par with all the other shareholders. At this meeting, workers publicly exposed management’s hypocritical statements. In this particular case a 20-year employee challenged the company CEO, “you’ve made statements saying you are continuing to eliminate unions and you have moved away from unionisation over the last 15 years. You’ve also made public statements saying that the union is good for the company. You can’t have it both ways. Where do you stand?’ A company’s shareholder meeting is a great venue for workers to talk directly to the company’s board of directors, other shareholders and the investment press.
Have you used it around management of factory issues? Often we get problems here for example a factory might be very poorly managed, or racist and where very little transformation has taken place. Is this a place where you could take that kind of problem?Absolutely. No company wants to be considered racist. Based on information we gathered during an organising campaign in the southern US, the union filed equal opportunity charges against the company. There was a blatant pattern of management displaying favouritism towards the white workers. This was a good way of organising workers around an important issue. Workers care about the issue because winning it can change their lives. At the company’s shareholders’ meeting a worker asked the CEO, “I’ve been working in this company for 18 years, I’ve been passed over time and time again, by white workers who are less qualified. What are your plans to put an end to this practice?” Other shareholders and the investment press may never have otherwise known about these charges.
Tom Egan is the Program Officer of the Solidarity Center of the US AFL-CIO