On Shareholder Rights

We endeavor to vote:

• Against pro­pos­als that limit share­hold­ers rights to call spe­cial meet­ings because mat­ters may arise between annual meetings.
• Against pro­pos­als that seek to insti­tute super­ma­jor­ity vot­ing pro­vi­sions in a company’s by-​laws.
• For cumu­la­tive stock­holder vot­ing for direc­tors since this would enhance the abil­ity of work­ers, com­mu­ni­ties, envi­ron­men­tal groups and oth­ers to influ­ence board membership.
• For con­fi­den­tial vot­ing to pre­vent man­age­ment from iden­ti­fy­ing dis­sent­ing shareholders.
• For pro­pos­als to allow share­hold­ers space in proxy state­ments to state their views on con­tested issues and for pro­pos­als to allow share­hold­ers to nom­i­nate Direc­tor can­di­dates as long as nom­i­na­tors own a sub­stan­tial amount of stock and the nom­i­na­tion is not a friv­o­lous one.
• For most requests for more infor­ma­tion or more study of poten­tially harm­ful prod­uct sales or pro­duc­tion meth­ods if we believe the infor­ma­tion can be pro­vided with­out unrea­son­able expense.