Teamsters call on National Express to respect workers rights

This is interesting, there have been long-standing complaints from US trade unionists about how the National Express US schoolbus business Durham School Services treats its drivers. They are now starting to talk to people in the UK, where the business is listed, about it.

TEAMSTERS TAKE DEMANDS FOR U.S. WORKERS’
RIGHTS TO NATIONAL EXPRESS
GROUP HEADQUARTERS
U.S. School Bus Workers Join UK Trade Unionists
(BIRMINGHAM, England) – Teamster school bus drivers who work at National Express Group PLC (NEX: LN) rallied with British members of Unite the Union outside the company’s headquarters today, demanding the multinational transport company honor the human rights of its North American workers.
The drivers expressed their concerns over what the union believes are National Express’s anti-worker, anti-union policies in its North American operations, which includes Durham School Services L.P. (“Durham”) in the U.S. and Stock Transportation in Canada.
They delivered a letter from Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa to National Express Group Chief Executive Dean Finch, calling on National Express to better respect the rights of its workers. Read the letter at www.teamster.org/hoffanexletter.
“It is deeply concerning when a United Kingdom-based public limited company engages in conduct that violates U.S. workers’ rights and deprives them of decent working conditions and respect. National Express’s subsidiaries should be operating in the pursuit of the highest standards, not failing to uphold the human rights that should be afforded to all its workers throughout the world,” Hoffa said.
Sebrina Isom, a former Durham driver and member of Teamsters Local 509 in West Columbia, South Carolina, USA, came to England for the second year in a row. The 25-year school bus driver traveled there to speak up for U.S. school bus workers.
“We are here to hold this company accountable. In my view, their anti-worker behavior has to stop,” Isom said. “We transport children, we work hard and it’s not too much to ask that National Express take more responsibility and treat us with fairness and respect.”
“I believe National Express has earned the reputation in all its operations as being the most hostile of the big British employers toward its employees,” said Tom Cashman, a National Express driver and shop steward from the South East coach station.
The delegation of Teamster school bus workers is meeting this week with major National Express stakeholders—union leaders, investors and political leaders—about the company’s negative human rights and labor relations record in North America.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which oversees U.S. labor law, issued 57 informal complaints since 2001 against Durham. These complaints resulted in settlements.
The complaints came as a result of charges by Durham workers, including disparate treatment, discipline and discharge of employees engaged in union organizing; surveilling workers engaged in union activity; and threatening workers with reduction in benefits, working conditions and the loss of employment for supporting unionization.
Durham recently filed objections with the NLRB to the union election in Santa Rosa County, Florida, USA, despite a strong vote in favor of unionization by the workers. The company claimed that the NLRB held no authority to investigate or hold a hearing, relying on a recent court decision—a theory that the Teamsters believe would disenfranchise the workers. The NLRB’s decision is pending.
“We voted overwhelmingly to have our union, but the company is not respecting our decision,” said Diane Bence, a Durham driver from Santa Rosa County who traveled to Birmingham, U.K. “Durham told us they would respect our vote, but that was before we voted. After the vote, the company didn’t respect what the majority of us wanted.”
National Express is the second-largest operator of school bus services in North America. The Teamsters represent 4,700 National Express workers. The company reports that 94 percent of the U.K. work force is covered by a collective bargaining agreement, as compared to only 32 percent of its North American work force.
Drive Up Standards is a global campaign to improve safety, service and work standards in the private school bus and transit industry. For information on the Teamsters Drive Up Standards campaign, go to http://www.driveupstandards.org.
Founded in 1903, the Teamsters Union represents 1.4 million hardworking men and women throughout the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Visit www.teamster.org for more information. Follow us on Twitter @Teamsters and “like” us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/teamsters.

UK unions take big step forward in capital stewardship

I am, to put it mildly, quite pleased to see this new initiative from the TUC, Unite and Unison. Getting the unions to vote their shareholdings in a co-ordinated way is something I've always thought was a really good idea. I know it took a lot of hard work over a long period to pull this off, so massively well done to those involved, you know who you are!

Now let's see how it works in practice...

New share owner group will ensure union values are reflected at company AGMs

The TUC and its two largest affiliated unions, Unite and UNISON, are today (Tuesday) launching Trade Union Share Owners – a new group which aims to put union values at the heart of the world of corporate governance, with a new approach to the way in which their investments are voted on at company AGMs.

From now on at any AGM of a FTSE350 company where either the TUC staff pension fund or those of its two biggest unions hold shares, the group will work with shareholder advisory group PIRC to ensure that their funds take a common voting position in accordance with a new set of policy guidelines drawn up by the TUC.

Covering such issues as the membership of boards, the advertising for new director posts and the level of top directors’ pay and bonuses, the TUC guidelines and Trade Union Share Owners are being launched later today at PIRC’s annual corporate governance conference in the City.

The three organisations will start out with over £1bn of assets between them and the TUC hopes that many more of its affiliated unions will want to get involved in the coming year, as they see this new, co-ordinated approach as an effective way of getting workers’ voices heard in company boardrooms.

The new voting and engagement guidelines have been drawn up to ensure that corporate governance policies that unions have long been critical of – all-male boards, excessive director pay and bonus packages, and the non-advertisement of new director positions – will be challenged by union voting at company AGMs.

The TUC has long been concerned that when fund managers of union pension funds vote on remuneration reports at company AGMs, they often do not reflect the views of the ordinary people whose money is being invested. This is something that the TUC’s Fund Manager Voting Survey has highlighted over the last decade.

In an attempt to bring a more common sense approach to directors’ pay and the make-up of company boards, the three organisations will be using the voting and engagement guidelines to ensure that wherever their money is being invested, any votes are a genuine reflection of their views and of the ordinary members of the three pension schemes.

Commenting on the new guidelines, TUC General Secretary Frances O’Grady said: “This initiative represents a new approach to tackling corporate irresponsibility for unions. From now on the TUC, Unite and UNISON will be voting in line with our values at company AGMs. Our doors are open to all unions and other organisations who want to join us to bring about a change in the way corporate Britain runs itself.

“The UK’s families might be struggling to cope with the biggest squeeze on their incomes in living memory, but that hasn’t discouraged top directors from awarding themselves austerity-busting pay and bonus packages worth millions.

“It’s time to inject a long overdue dose of reality into British boardrooms and we are going to use the power of our pension funds to make a difference and to encourage a new and more responsible corporate Britain.”

UNISON General Secretary Dave Prentis said:”I am very pleased to announce the participation of UNISON’s staff pension fund in this new labour movement initiative.

“Unions are all about collective principles and action to enable progress and tackle inequity. Now we can demonstrate this with our collective investment power. We will be active shareowners of FTSE companies, in the interests of our scheme members and other stakeholders in the companies our funds own. We will be modern, responsible investors.”

Unite General Secretary Len McCluskey said: “Unions must use all the means at their disposal to fight for social justice. This is why Unite and its sister unions are launching this share owners initiative. Trade union values of decency and fairness ought to be present in the boardroom, but if we cannot trust that they will be then we need to use our share ownership to influence corporations.

“All too often, business takes decisions that are bad for this country and its people. Last week, just as the Chancellor was demanding more austerity from working people, Barclay’s executives rewarded themselves share fortunes worth £40 million.

“This is a clear reminder that corporations need to be forced to behave responsibly. Unite will now be doing just that by putting our values at the heart of corporate governance.”

The trade union voting and engagement guidelines contain a variety of policy positions including:

·     Moves to limit the growing gap in the pay of those at the very top and bottom of companies, with the aim of achieving a 20:1 pay ratio, and for pay increases to directors to mirror those being offered to ordinary employees.

·     Persuading all companies to become living wage employers on the basis that decent wages lower staff turnover and absence rates, and lead to a more motivated, productive workforce.

·     Encouraging companies which are keen to include worker representatives in their corporate governance structures.

·     At least a quarter of the board positions to be held by women.

·      All board vacancies to be advertised, rather than people simply being invited to join.

·     A limit to the number of board positions that directors can hold. Where individuals are unable to devote enough time to their role their re-election should be opposed.

"They'll just move to Switzerland..."

It's been a popular refrain of opponents of pay restraint for high earners in the City that if we put too much pressure on the 'talent' will leave the UK to work somewhere that really values them. For a long time Switzerland has been one of the places highlighted as the destination of those taking part in a future tax exodus (movement of ok yah people).

Obviously the success of the Minder Initiative has put a slight dent in this. The Swiss public apparently aren't any more convinced than their counterparts here that our corporate leaders can't cope with a little austerity of their own. As a result of Minder's campaign, Swiss companies will have to introduce a binding shareholder vote on pay, and there will also be a ban on golden hellos/handshakes. This goes a little bit further than the UK's regime, though still is very much within mainstream corporate governance territory.

But it isn't over yet. The youth wing of Swiss Social Democratic Party is now putting forward its own proposal to limit internal company pay ratios to... ahem.... 12:1. This is so no-one earns more in a year than anyone else in the same firm earns in a year. Apparently initial polling suggests that almost half the Swiss public like the idea. Needless to say, if enacted this would a pretty serious shift, I can't imagine the Swiss business community or Swiss shareholders liking this one bit. But that's the Swiss political system for you.

It also shows just how far the mainstream of corporate governance opinion is from public opinion on executive pay. I personally think that, unless this gap is addressed, exec pay is the issue that undermines a lot of what we currently take for granted in corp gov land.

And you bankers out there had best put off buying those tickets eh?

Nice Richard Rorty quote

Picked this up from Zygmunt Bauman's LSE lecture (he uses a lengthier quote) I just listened to on iTunes. I believe it comes from the book Philosophy and Social Hope.

We should raise our children to find it intolerable that we who sit behind desks and punch keyboards are paid ten times as much as people who get their hands dirty cleaning our toilets and a hundred times as much as those who fabricate our keyboards in the third world.  We should ensure that they worry about the fact that the countries which industrialised first have a hundred times the wealth of those which have not yet industrialised.  Our children need to learn early on to see the inequalities of between their own fortunes and those of the children as neither the will of God nor the necessary price of economic efficiency but as an evitable tragedy.  They should start thinking  as early as possible about how the world might be changed so as to ensure that no-one goes hungry while others have a surplus. 

Safestore AGM - some interesting votes

RNS on the AGM here. There was a vote of (almost) 20% against the rem report (res 8). Also a vote of 15% against a share issue authority (res 10). And 20.5% against a notice for meetings resolution (res 13).

The last vote probably tells us that some overseas holders are involved. Looking at its annual report we can see a few big "ex-UK" investors amongst its notifiable holders -

CBRE Global Investors 6.75%
BNP Paribas Investment Partners 6.48%
APG Investments 5.89%
Morgan Stanley Investment Management 5.82%

Also, cos I'm a voting data nerd, I know that Morgan Stanley is one of the managers that routinely opposes this type of resolution, see its voting record here (PDF). Their position is a little odd as, although the parent is obviously US, it has a long-standing UK operation. You might have thought, therefore, they would vote more like a UK investor (all of whom - for the votes I can see - support this type of res) than an ex-UK one. 

The Leveson (lack of) effect on share prices

Being the sad type of person I am, I thought I would go and have a look at what happened to the share prices of listed media companies yesterday, The Day The Free Press Died.

I'm not saying that this tells us anything particularly insightful, but I thought it was worth a look. First up Daily Mail & General Trust, owner of the paper that backed Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists. Its share price...err...went up. (NB - I'm linking to 5-day views)

What about Trinity Mirror? Its share price went down initially, then recovered a bit (down about 10% on the day). But if we look back there was a far steeper drop on the 14th - the morning the hacking arrests were announced (and I wonder if the Monday fall wasn't a bit of an overspill, given the potential for more cases as revealed in the 'supergrass' story that the Indy reported).

I also looked at two non-UK companies with big UK operations - Thomson Reuters was basically unchanged, and News Corp was up a bit. 

Again, I wouldn't read much into this, for all the usual reasons about finding anything you want in share price movements. I think all we can safely say is that investors in Trinity Mirror were spooked by the hacking arrests. But it doesn't obviously look like investors in media companies are (yet?) worried about the impact that the Leveson deal will have on their investments.

Going a bit further, we cannot assume that this means a lot in terms of whether we have a free press or not. After all, some investors in media companies might prefer a muzzled press, as it might be less likely to end up facing some or other form of retribution, with knock on financial effects. Where this leaves people who argue that the only only guarantee of editorial independence is profit is a another question... 

Still, the immediate impact of Leveson on investors' assessments of media companies may be not much at all.

BSkyB 2011/2012 AGM voting

Being the voting data geek that I am I've been trying to pull together all the voting data I can for last year;s BSkyB AGM, and specifically the vote on James Murdoch's re-election. Here's a comparison of how various asset managers voted on JM's election in 2011 and, where I can find a vote, 2012

Asset Manager     2011 vote    2012 vote
Aberdeen             Oppose       For
Aviva                   Oppose       Oppose
BlackRock           For            ?
Capital                 For*            ?
F&C                    Oppose       For
Fidelity                 For              ?
Goldmans            Abstain         ?
Hermes               Oppose         ?
JP Morgan          Oppose         ?
Jupiter                 Oppose         For
Kames                Oppose         For
L&G                   Oppose         For
M&G                  For               For
Martin Currie       Abstain         ?
Newton               Oppose         Oppose
Royal London      Oppose         For
Schroders            Oppose         ?
Standard Life       Oppose         For
State Street          Abstain         ?
SWIP                  For                For
UBS                    Oppose         For

* got this via US mutual fund disclosure