TIAA-CREF’s Investments in Wal-Mart Stock Questioned

Activists across the country are urging the retirement fund, TIAA-CREF to reassess its ownership of stocks from companies like Wal-Mart that are socially deficient. Here’s the latest update from the Coalition that is working to change TIAA-CREF’s stance on socially responsible investments: “The nation’s largest pension fund, TIAA-CREF, a retirement fund mainly for educators, prides itself on being responsive to shareholders and a “concerned investor” with regard to social responsibility. The reality is that TIAA-CREF holds shares in some of the most controversial and notoriously unethical corporations, including Altria/Philip Morris, responsible for Marlboro-the #1 cigarette brand among youth; Nike and Wal-Mart, widely condemned for their use of sweatshop labor — and other bad practices for the latter company regarding domestic labor, sprawl, and effects on local economies… In the 1980s, participants lobbied the pension giant TIAA-CREF for five years to set up a socially responsible fund, the Social Choice Account. Now we are pushing for an improved fund with practices that are becoming standard in socially responsible investing. A coalition of groups urges the pension system to influence these companies to change these practices or to divest of shares in these corporations involved in human rights violations, and public health and environmental degradation, and instead invest in socially responsible ventures. We have done lobbying and taken direct actions to promote more social responsibility within TIAA-CREF. Because of the size and prominence of TIAA-CREF, if they make the changes we desire, it can lead other large institutional investors to do the same.”

For further background, go to www.makeTIAA-CREFethical.org . If you want to receive monthly updates on the campaign, write [email protected] and request “send MTCE updates” in the subject line. You can help by: 1) contacting TC and asking them to modify the Social Choice Account by investing in low-income area community development and in social venture capital for companies pioneering socially responsible products/services. 2) thanking them for agreeing to vote their shares in corporate stock in a socially responsible manner, and asking them to otherwise lobby those companies to be socially responsible. If you are a participant in TC, let them know that. Call CEO Herbert Allison at 800-842-2733; 212-490-9000 or email him at [email protected] (calls are preferable. You will be asked to leave a message with an assistant.)Allison, by the way, has a pay package worth more than $8 million. TIAA-CREF manages a reported $320 billion in assets, and has a $1.5 billion operating budget. The company spends more than $25 million on advertising. It could be using some of those funds to encourage companies like Wal-Mart to lift the pay and benefits of its 1.5 million workers as an investment in the community, and to stop forcing itself on communities that do not want their superstores.