Resolution: Socially Responsible Corporations

Be it resolved that we should create the option for alternative kind of corporation, the socially responsible corporation, specifically Minnesota bills: Senate File 1153 and House File 404.

With all the research goodness that you could want!

Precinct Version with whereas portion:

Whereas we, the people determine the charter under which corporations operate

Whereas current corporate charter allows shareholders to sue if profit is lost from an ethical decision

Whereas people are asking for the opportunity to invest in socially responsible companies

Be resolved that we should create the option for alternative kind of corporation, the socially responsible corporation,
specifically Minnesota bills: Senate File 1153 and House File 404.

Short Speech:

Basically, this resolution would allow a second type of corporate charter, the socially responsible charter. Specifically

1. Directors will have an affirmative duty to all stakeholders,
2. Employees and representatives of the public interest will be on the Board of Directors,
3. Directors will be protected from shareholder suits when they choose to consider other stakeholders and the public interest,
4. Socially Responsible investors and consumers will know where to invest their money, and
5. Socially Responsible Companies will be protected from hostile takeover.

This would allow companies to be environmentally responsible without fear of shareholder suit. This would allow investors to choose to invest in only socially responsible companies. The Citizens for Corporate Redesign has campaigned for this and has had good progress. This is totally consistent with living by our morals and ethics.

Local groups advocating for this type of change:

Citizens for Corporate Redesign

"C4CR envisions a world in which corporations work for a just, peaceful and sustainable global society." This is a bold statement. It challenges our basic ideas about corporations. Corporations exist to maximize shareholder profit and often perpetuate injustice, war and unsustainable practices. How can they ever possibly work for a just, peaceful and sustainable global society when many believe that corporations are the perpetrators of exactly the opposite?

C4CR maintains that the answer is in state law. It is states that give life to corporations. By adding 28 words to the corporate charter, management of corporations will be able to pursue non-shareholder interest and could be held liable for harms caused by the activities of the corporation. The 28-word clause, The Code for Corporate Responsibility (The Code), would be added to all corporate charters and will read: "Directors and officers would still have a duty to make money for shareholders ‘but not at the expense of the environment, human rights, the public health or safety, the communities in which the corporation operates, or the dignity of its employees.’" A change in the state law would insert this 28-word miracle clause into the corporate charter of all corporations incorporated in that state, revolutionizing our society and fulfilling the mission of C4CR, "To transform the legal purpose of corporations to include responsibility to employees, communities and the environment."

Sign the online corporate petition here!

Network of Spiritual Progressives

The Tikkun Community and our Network of Spiritual Progressives proposes a Social Responsibility Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Every corporation with income of over $50 million/yr would be required to get a new corporate charter every ten years which would only be granted if they could prove a history of social responsibility to a jury of ordinary citizens. The SRA would save the US billions of dollars in lost tax revenues. Here is why: a story of corporate social irresponsibility.

Endorsed by the Minnesota Chapter of the Network of Spiritual Progressives and the DFL Progressive Caucus

The best rhetoric from Roosevelt's Second Inaugural Address:

We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics. Out of the collapse of a prosperity whose builders boasted their practicality has come the conviction that in the long run economic morality pays. We are beginning to wipe out the line that divides the practical from the ideal; and in so doing we are fashioning an instrument of unimagined power for the establishment of a morally better world.