Corporation Votes Proxy Favoring GM Management

The Harvard Corporation decided yesterday to vote against the two Corporate Responsibility resolutions at the General Motors annual meeting Friday in Detroit.

Turning down a request to vote Harvard's 287,000 shares of GM stock with the Washington-based Campaign to Make General Motors Responsible, the Corporation issued a carefully-worded four-page document outlining its objections to the two resolutions.

The resolutions call for:

creating an independent shareholders Committee to investigate the impact of GM's policies on auto safety, pollution, mass transit, and minority hiring and make recommendations for improvements to the stockholders next year;

expanding the GM Board of Directors to include three representatives of the public. Campaign GM has nominated Betty Furness, special consumer consultant to President Johnson; Rene Dubos, Pulitzer Prize winning environmentalist; and Rev. Channing Phillips, Washington evil rights leader.

The Corporation decision follows a barrage of petitions, letters, polls, and faculty statements which have been sent to it after a request for comments from the University April 6.

No Head-Count

About three-fourths of these urged the Corporation to support Campaign GM's two resolutions, the Corporation release stated. "However, all but a handful of the communications consist of a recommendation unsupported by consideration of what seem to us to be difficult issues raised by the resolutions," the statement added.

Consequently, the release stated, "the issues can best be resolved not by a head-count of supporters and opponents, but by thoughtful consideration of the means proposed to effect changes which most of us desire."

Responding immediately to the decision, the Harvard Environmental Law Society and Harvard Ecology Coalition deplored the action in a joint statement.

"The Corporation's statement at best represents a desire not to get involved, at worst reflects Treasurer [George F.] Bennett's reactionary attitude that the reform proposals will allow 'socialism' to upset the 'traditional American way of making business decisions,' "they said.

While acknowledging a mutual concern among all institutions in the country for the public health, safety, and welfare, the Corporation's document noted that "the question is whether the actions proposed by the Project on Corporate Responsibility are the rightmethod to achieve this agreed-upon objective."

"In our view, the Board of Directors and not the stockholders of a corporation constitute the proper body for the determination of difficult questions of allocation of resources," the statement read.

"Assuming that able and experienced people of judgment can be found who would be willing to devote the time necessary for effective service on the proposed [shareholder] committee," it continued, "we think that the amount of management time which would have to be expended in educating the Committee concerning the problems and affairs of General Motors Corporation would be so large as materially to interfere with the management's performance of its principal duties."

The Corporation also questioned the method proposed for selecting the investigating committee and the means for resolving "such differences as may appear between the Committee and management."

But Corporation members did recognize the legitimacy of Campaign GM criticisms of management. "It is, of course, true that particular decisions by General Motors in the areas of minority rights, pollution, safety and mass transit may be questioned," they said.

"In the clarity of hindsight; some of these decisions may appear to have been erroneous and the failure to take others a mistake, but we believe this to be true also of government at all levels . . .," they added.

"In view of the long public apathy toward these critical questions, we think the issue is not what General Motors may have done or not done in the past, but what it and all of us are doing now and will do in the future," they said.

In opposing the expansion of the GM Board of Directors, the Corporation warned that "we will look with favor" on a future expansion if new Board members do not reflect the concerns of all segments of society.

Uncooperative Nominees

But the Corporation dismissed the Campaign GM plan for representatives of the public because "individual members of Board of Directors should not be considered as representing special interests or groups," the statement said.

"The Project has furnished no evidence that the persons it seeks to add to the Board will work effectively with other Board members to discharge their duties to the investors as well as to the public," it added.