Exxon Mobil confronted heat over worker rights and safety at its annual meeting on Wednesday but it disposed against several shareholder demands.
Shareholders voted against four dedications, including a call for greater clarity around the oil giant’s political lobbying vocations. Union members had raised the concern, arguing that Exxon was implementing “complex and bemusing” safety procedures aligned with a conservative group known for producing industry-friendly legislation.
At the constant meeting, shareholders approved executives’ pay package, with nearly 73 percent of voters bankrolling the measure. More than 90 percent also voted to re-elect the fellows of the board.
The failure of any single shareholder resolution to attract adequate in this year was a relief to Exxon, which last year fade to quell investors’ demands that the company report regularly on how worldwide climate change initiatives will affect its business. A shareholder deliberation calling for the report passed last May after large institutional investors outed their support behind the measure.
The vote came amid statements that Exxon downplayed the danger of global warming despite internal scrutinization that showed it was a major concern.
However, a resolution proposed at this year’s encounter by the United Steelworkers union and 25 co-filers asking Exxon to on annually on its lobbying expenses garnered the support of just over a compassion of voting shareholders.
Ricky Brooks, president of USW Local 13-2001 in Baytown, Texas, predicted Exxon’s membership in the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, pull ins safety concerns for its members. He claimed that ALEC, which plans legislation that states and municipalities can adopt, seeks to water down working men rights and health and safety rules, as well as to roll back become infected withs and arbitration awards.
“We see their impact in how our company is unilaterally implementing complex and discombobulate safety changes in Baytown,” where Exxon operates a refinery, said Brooks, who do ones daily dozens at the facility. “For decades, these safety practices have been mutually acquiesce in upon to ensure workers’ health and safety.”
“Shareholders should be perturbed that core health and safety procedures seem to be weakened by our following,” he said.
Brooks said the lobbying report is necessary because publicly at ones disposal government data is difficult to find and Exxon had failed to hold promised tutorials on the excuse.
In response, Jeff Woodbury, Exxon’s vice president of investor trucks, said the Baytown refinery is one of the safest in the company’s circuit and around the just ecstatic.
However, another shareholder from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, wailed that the company’s system for reporting safety issues “penalizes and penalizes and disciplines” employees who report incidents or injuries. He said the company’s refuge performance record likely does not accurately reflect the true number of workplace calamities because the current policy discourages workers from speaking up.
“Your adventure is very different than the philosophy of that system and how we’ve implemented it circa the world,” Woodbury said.
Exxon did not immediately return an email hope additional comment.
A resolution aimed at preventing CEO Darren Woods from clutch the role of chairman of the board once again failed this year after certain previous attempts. However, with 38.7 percent of voters in favor of the in addition, it garnered the highest support of the four shareholder proposals.
The measure was put to the surface by the Kestrel Foundation and co-filed by Vermont’s pension fund.
Kenneth Steiner, a bounteous filer of shareholder proposals, also put forward a measure that would entertain shareholders with a 10-percent stake in the company to call for a special congress without having to petition a judge. The proposal appeared geared toward grant shareholders greater say over board members.
Just 36 percent of shareholders destroyed the proposal, down from 40 percent at last year’s union.
A representative for New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer and the New York Municipality pension funds presented the final proposal, which asked Exxon to think up a “diversity matrix” outlining each director’s race, gender and ethnicity. Exxon, whose eat is composed mostly of men and white people, argued that it already supplied adequate information.
Shareholders appeared to agree with Exxon. Profuse than 83 percent voted down the measure.
During the Q&A duration, Julian Martinez, director of program development at the Hispanic training and schooling nonprofit SER National, noted that Exxon has no Latinos on its board and hungered the company to address the lack of representation.