Napa, CA -  A leading Bay Area socially responsible investment advisory firm reacted to newspaper reports that three major U.S. tech firms plan to implement a plan - known as the Global Network Initiative - to adopt voluntary guidelines that will govern their business practices in nations like China that restrict free speech.

Harrington Investments, Inc., (HII) has submitted binding bylaw amendments that would create Corporate Board Committees on Human Rights at Google, Yahoo, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, Oracle and Microsoft. 

"Over my career I have seen countless voluntary codes of conduct come and go, usually with no discernable improvement on the issue at hand.  Protecting human rights is a fiduciary duty of every corporate director of every publically traded corporation in this country.  Any agreement to address this issue must include legitimate mechanisms for monitoring and enforcement." said John Harrington, President and CEO of HII.

"Voluntary corporate codes of conduct are nothing more than meaningless noise coming out of the mouths of corporate management.  Meaningful change will only come about when shareholders, the owners, amend the bylaws to force boards of directors and management to accept human rights responsibilities as fiduciaries - or when governments change the law.  Until either or both of those things happen, corporations will continually be sued under Alien Tort Claims and shareholders will lose money because of reckless, weak, or ignorant directors and managers," Harrington concluded.

HII's Director of Research and Advocacy, Jack Ucciferri, will be presenting bylaw resolution on human rights at the annual meetings Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems on November 5 and November 13, respectively.  A representative will present the proposal for HII during the Microsoft annual meeting in Seattle, WA on November 19.

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