Labor to Press for Changes in Corporate Governance
Making use of the momentum generated by public outrage over a growing wave of corporate scandals that today forced President Bush to sign into law a corporate reform bill much stricter than he had hoped, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney will today announce a new nationwide corporate reform campaign (see WIT for July 26, 2002). The AFL-CIO will step up its efforts to force companies to count stock options offered to executives as expenses, prohibit corporate executives from selling stock options while in office, pay workers their full severance packages regardless of bankruptcy proceedings, and use separate accounting firms for consulting. Having already done much to secure passage of the tough new laws ratified today, the sixty-six union, 13 million member strong labor federation will accomplish these new goals both through political lobbying and using the enormous amount of shareholder votes exercised by union pension funds totaling $5 trillion.
See "Labor to Press for Changes in Corporate Governance", STEVEN GREENHOUSE, The New York Times, July 29, 2002