New Campaign GM Drive For Social Responsibility

The Campaign to Make GM Responsible has opened Round Two against the management of the world's largest corporation.

Campaign GM, a group of Washington lawyers supported by Ralph Nader, has placed three proposals on the General Motors Corporation proxy statement. These proposals would:

Allow shareholders to nominate by petition candidates for the Board of Directors who would be listed on the proxy statement alongside the management's nominees;

Expand the Board to include three Directors nominated by constituent groups of employees, consumers and dealers; and

Require the Corporation to provide specific information in its annual report on minority hiring, air pollution and auto-safety policies.

Bull's Eye

Campaign GM lists Harvard, which owns 287,000 shares of GM stock, in a table of 27 "target institutions" which the drive will focus on.

Last year Campaign GM at Harvard solicited student and alumni support. The Faculty also voted to support the drive. However, the Corporation voted its proxies in favor of GM management.

The Campaign resolutions last year called for expanding the Board to include three representatives of the public and creating an independent share holders' committee to investigate the impact of GM's policies on auto safety, pollution, mass transit and minority hiring.

Round Two of Campaign GM will shift its attention from universities to middle-sized institutions and individual shareholders, according to the two Boston-area Campaign coordinators-Barney Frank, Fellow of the Institute of Politics, and Michael A. Levett, Loeb Fellow in Advanced Environmental Studies at the Graduate School of Design.

"Last year was enough," Levett saidyesterday. "We could work again to get a student mandate and a Faculty mandate. But we got those last year and now we see no need to go back and get them again."

Common Knowledge

"Everyone knows that these groups support us." Levett added. "But if President Pusey thinks otherwise, we will go out and get the signatures again."

Campaign GM hoped to write to individual shareholders, Levett said. But the General Motors management charged $30,000 for a list of shareholders and the Campaign couldn't afford to buy it.

"It's hurt our plans," Levett said. "Now, we work this way: if your father owns stock, you ask who else owns stock. It's a rinky-dink way of running an operation, but without lists, what can you do?"