Sustainable investor group Ceres and the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) have penned a letter urging 48 members of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) to voice their dissent on a recent anti-ESG lawsuit.
NAM co-filed the lawsuit with the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR), alleging that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has become a “willing partner” to “an onslaught of activists seeking to hijack the proxy ballot to advance narrow political agendas.” The lawsuit argues that the SEC does not have authority to compel a corporation to speak, or subsidize shareholder speech, about shareholder proposals, instead stating that the proxy process is a matter governed by state law, not the SEC.
In the July 19 letter, Ceres and the ICCR urged members to reject the NAM lawsuit which they say is a “direct attack” which attempts to mischaracterize and politicize the SEC’s role to protect the rights of shareholders to engage responsibly with the companies they own on issues of long-term and material risk.
“A significant number of NAM members, including those on the board and executive committee, are active leaders in addressing issues like climate change, diversity, human rights, environmental pollution, and disclosure of sustainability information,” said the letter’s co-authors. “These forward-looking companies are not working to be leaders in sustainability due to ‘activist’ pressure; companies embrace sustainability because there is an irrefutable business case and strong support from their stakeholders for doing so.”
Some 48 members of the association were contacted, including 3M, Abbott, Accenture, Altria, Anheuser-Busch, Caterpillar, ConocoPhillips, Deloitte, Devon Energy, ExxonMobil, EY, General Electric, General Motors, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, and KPMG.
NAM represents 14,000 member companies across industrial sectors including 79% of Fortune 100 manufacturers.