UNISON have taken the fight for a cleaner world and responsible investment to the BP annual general meeting in London.
UNISON and its staff pension fund have been involved in a coalition of 140 investors who are trying to bring BP and Shell to account for their exploitation of ‘oil sands’ in Canada
The union’s staff pension fund has been at the forefront in getting a shareholders’ resolution to the AGM over the company’s controversial plans to invest in extracting oil from 'tar sands'. The move was a result of collaboration between the union’s capital stewardship programme and the Fair Pensions campaign.
The union also encouraged members to use their pension funds to back the resolution, and had particular success with the Environment Agency Pension Fund.
The campaign has received wide coverage and has been global news in the investment community. UK companies are not usually confronted by share holder resolutions.
The fact that 15% of BP shareholders did not vote alongside management on the resolution is a strong signal that the oil sands issue remains an important one for investors, first nation people and environmentalists.
The union will also be at the fore in taking a similar resolution to the Shell AGM in May.
Summary of the key issues
• This was the first corporate shareowner campaign the union had been involved in and a first for the staff pension fund.
• 458 UNISON members used the on-line facility to email their pension funds.
• As expected the typical response from UNISON member’s pension funds was that they give discretion to their fund managers to make the voting decision or in the LGPS they follow the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum advice
• At the AGM, BP‘s Chairman, Carl-Henric Svanberg, faced a series of uncomfortable questions on issues including the companies’ use of demand projections that assume no change in governments’ climate change policies & imply catastrophic climate change, how adequate control of outsourced projects can be asserted, health impacts on local communities and financial concerns.
• The company won the vote, as was expected, but were forced to concede more information about their operations than they expected. Supporters also said that BP may have won the vote but they had not won the argument.
For more information see www.fairpensions.org.uk/tarsands/action