The UUA Committee on Socially Responsible Investing and the UU Service Committee 
are engaged in shareholder advocacy to encourage corporations to join the fight to stop the spread of Global AIDS. Successful advocacy has engaged corporations doing business in Africa and pharmaceutical corporations to do HIV/AIDS impact reports on their own operations and the communities in which they do business. This had led to further steps including corporate-sponsored broad community education about HIV/AIDS and the provision of free testing and anti-retroviral drugs to employees.
The UUA and the UUSC are both members of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) which use their ownership in US corporations to challenge the managers of these companies to improve their policies concerning social, environmental, and corporate governance activities. For 35 years ICCR members have been effective in convincing many of these corporate managers that the faith-based institutional investors have a special place in these dialogues. Success in these efforts result from careful and patient efforts over several years, and many large- and medium-sized companies now have new and improved policies in a number of these areas.
The ICCR members represent a broad cross section of institutional investors. Catholic religious orders, Protestant denominations, faith-based pension funds, and major health care providers are joining mutual funds, professional money managers, and organized labor in the effort. ICCR members have a combined $110 billion in assets under investment. Many of the organizations have staff on the ground in under-developed countries fighting the HIV/AIDS-TB-Malaria pandemics.
Daniel Rosan of ICCR has said about Global AIDS: “Here, the role of the faith community is clear as crystal: we must say, again and again, and as loudly as we can, that every person living with AIDS is a member of our family. That we love them, that we do not judge them, and that they have an inalienable right to treatment and care.”
In recent years, concerned ICCR members have come together as an HIV/AIDS Caucus to draw particular attention to the unique challenges the HIV/AIDS-TB-Malaria pandemics present to corporations and shareholders. It has chosen US-based global companies in two categories: pharmaceuticals and large employers in Africa.
Within the pharmaceutical group, ICCR points out that these drug companies must address the core business risks presented by the HIV-TB-Malaria pandemics. Investors can not assess how pharmaceutical companies are managing HIV/AIDS-related risks without systematic and forward-looking reporting.
ICCR also points out that these drug companies have not fulfilled their core mission of developing and distributing life-saving medicines. In a recent report, ICCR identifies best practices in the areas of research, pediatric needs, accessibility, reporting to shareholders, philanthropy, and political engagement. A particular focus in this report is the urgent need to develop improved pediatric formulations of life-saving AIDS drugs. Because of a lack of accessible diagnostic and treatment options, half of all children with AIDS die before they are two years old.
In 2004, ICCR prepared a major report that outlines best practices summarizes the critical issues for US pharmaceutical companies:
Failure to respond effectively to the global health crisis creates a wide variety of risks to shareholders. That is why we are calling for Board-level, strategic leadership. We recognize that some companies have taken some steps in the right direction. But a range of approaches is required, and no pharmaceutical company is taking advantage of all the policy options available to increase access to medicines.
The report identifies best practices in the areas of research, pediatric needs, accessibility, and reporting to shareholders. It focuses particularly on the needs of HIV-positive children, who are both more difficult and more expensive to treat than their adult counterparts.
ICCR members are currently engaging Abbott Laboratories, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glaxo SmithKline, Merck, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and the biotechnology company, Gilead Sciences.
Another focus is major employers in Africa. ICCR is asking for improvement in their response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic to provide anti-retroviral drugs to employees and their families where governments do not provide adequate coverage, and to offer prevention campaigns and confidential voluntary testing programs.
Major employers in Africa that have been engaged by ICCR members include Exxon and Chevron in the extractive industry , and Coca Cola and Pepsi in the soft-drink bottling industry, Ford and General Motors in the automotive industry, and others including Colgate-Palmolive, Procter and Gamble, and Caterpillar. Several more companies will be added to these lists in 2005 including Marathon Oil, BP and Conoco Phillips in the extractive group and IBM, Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard, Anheuser-Busch, and Lucent Technologies.
Successful results have been achieved mainly with the large employers, rather than the pharmaceuticals. Several employers have agreed to report their activities on the HIV/AIDS issue, and several have gone further and adopted workplace policies about how they will support their employees and their families. And some have even decided to support medical facilities in the communities in Africa where they have significant numbers of employees, and include educational programs, voluntary and confidential testing and treatment.
With the pharmaceutical companies the results have been less tangible and direct. Several have reported to the shareholders (and the public) about their related activities. Continuing dialogue sessions with some of these companies allow the filers to question the companies on a number of fronts, and urge them to take further steps to contribute their knowledge, skills and products to addressing the problems, particularly in the poor and developing countries in Africa.
ICCR's campaign on the HIV/AIDS issue has gotten broad support within the ICCR community, and includes involvement of its program director in meetings and events at the UN and other venues. It also sponsors press campaigns at the time of annual meetings when the resolutions are being voted on by the shareholders. ICCR also participates with other NGOs interested in the issue and co-sponsors joint statements identifying next steps for corporations to take.
Along with dialogue, shareholder advocacy involves bring resolutions to corporations' annual shareholder meetings. This year the UUA is the primary filer on ICCR's HIV/AIDS resolution with Marathon Oil Corporation. Several other ICCR members are co-filers, including the national Lutheran church, a Catholic hospital and a Catholic order of religious women. Jim Gunning has already had one substantive conversation with a middle-level executive of Marathon, and plans to have more in the near future. It is hoped that Marathon will agree to have their Board review the economic effects of the HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria pandemics on the company's business strategies, and its initiatives to date, and report to shareholders within (6) months following the next annual meeting. This report, developed at reasonable costs and omitting proprietary information, will identify the impacts of these pandemics on the company.
Such reporting has led corporations doing business in Africa, including Pepsi and Coca-Cola companies, to take steps to stop the spread of HIV/Global AIDS. They have engaged in broad education about HIV/AIDS in the communities where they do business and are providing their employees and members of the communities with free testing and anti-retroviral drugs.
Other co-filing activities on this issue include Abbott Laboratories, Chevron, Conoco Phillips, and Gilead.
