GM Executive Debates Its Policies With Coordinator of Campaign GM

The General Motors proxy fight moved into round two yesterday at M. I. T. when a GM executive met a representative of Campaign GM for the first time on a university campus.

Speaking before the Corporation Joint Advisory Committee-which will advise the M.I.T. Corporation on how to vote the university's 291,000 shares of GM stock-Roger Smith, GM Treasurer, defended the GM record of public responsibility.

He charged that Campaign GM's two stockholder resolutions were intended "to harass the corporation and its management and to promote the particular economic and social views of the Project (on Corporate Responsibility.)"

Speaking for the two resolutions, Joseph Onek '62, coordinator of Campaign GM, countered, "We believe GM is now behaving irresponsibly and the record bears us out."

"Instead of action, GM provides misleading accounts of what it has accomplished," he said. "In its Annual Report... GM states that its 1970 cars, as equipped for California use, reduced hydro-carbon emissions by 80 per cent.

"What General Motors did not say is that the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare tests demonstrate that once the 1970 cars have been on the road a while, as many as four-fifths of them fail to meet the standards which GM claims to have met."

The two stockholders' resolutions included on the GM proxy ballot will:

create a shareholder's committee-appointed by a GM representative, a representative of the United Auto Workers, and a Campaign GM representative-to investigate the impact of GM policies on the economy and consumers.

expand the Board of Directors from 24 to 27 members to include three "representatives of the public."

Smith charged that the first resolution gives a majority vote in selecting the committee to unsympathetic groups and therefore the committee will not represent the interests of the stockholders.

In a rebuttal speech, Onek said Campaign GM will "gladly relinquish" its voice in choosing the shareholder's committee to any "truly independent" body.

"We would certainly consider C. Douglas Dillon or John W. Gardner qualified to be on our high level commission-since they're on all high level commissions," he said.