This morning National Legal and Policy Center presented a “Review of China Business and ESG Commitments” proposal at The Boeing Company’s annual shareholder meeting, that asks the board of directors to conduct a third-party review of whether the Company’s activities and expenditures related to doing business in China align with its ESG commitments, and to address the risks to shareholders of any misaligned activities and expenditures and the Company’s plans, if any, to mitigate these risks.
The corporation’s board of directors opposed our resolution, as explained in its proxy statement. NLPC filed a proxy memo on Boeing, which includes its response to the board’s opposition statement, with the Securities and Exchange Commission last month.
Speaking as sponsor of the proposal was Paul Chesser, director of NLPC’s Corporate Integrity Project. A transcript of his three-minute remarks follows:
Last year our shareholder proposal for Boeing requested a “China audit” that asked the company to provide increased risk disclosures regarding its operations and supply chain in the communist country.
After the Company’s rejection last year for greater transparency over doing business with genocidal and slavery-loving dictators, this year our proposal seeks accountability over the incongruency between Boeing’s stated ESG commitments, and how it’s actually doing business.
ESG of course is an acronym for “Environmental, Social and Governance.”
The relevant aspects in play here, as it pertains to Boeing’s operations in China, are the “E” and the “S” parts of “ESG.”
If you buy the climate and Net Zero hoaxes, as Boeing claims to do – but even if you don’t buy into them – China STILL is the planet’s largest serial polluter.
This is whether you talk about carbon dioxide, or other so-called greenhouse gases, or real pollutants like toxic metals and air particulates.
For example, in 2023, China accounted for two-thirds of new global coal power plant capacity.
Our fellow shareholder activists who love to demonize coal and hydrocarbons have nothing to say about these corporate partnerships with China.
They would rather just disparage the energy source itself.
And under the “S” in “ESG,” China is as equally a menace to the planet as it is with the “E” in ESG – both within its own borders, and everywhere else in the world.
China is a chronic human rights violator, identified as a state sponsor of genocide by the U.S. State Department, and one that engages in slave labor and organ harvesting, among other atrocities.
If we were in the middle of World War II, China would be the equivalent of Nazi Germany, and the country would be isolated and rejected by Corporate America.
But instead we get from American companies like Boeing a posture that prostrates themselves before Chairman Xi, so they can continue to do business there.
And even that hasn’t done any good for Boeing, even after its CEO attended Chairman Xi’s forty-thousand-dollar a plate dinner and speech in San Francisco last year, for the privilege of sucking up to him.
In opposing our proposal, Boeing states that they “believe that singling out particular countries or groups of customers for scrutiny would … potentially damage our relationships with customers, suppliers, and regulators.”
Yes, God forbid we upset Chairman Xi.
Meanwhile, by its own admission, Boeing refuses to conduct third-party audits of suppliers to confirm no human trafficking or slavery are embedded in its supply chain.
Nor does it require its suppliers to certify that their production complies with human trafficking laws.
It’s plain to see that Boeing’s human rights practices are as careless and sloppy as its safety record.
Please vote FOR Item 4.
Read NLPC’s shareholder proposal for The Boeing Company here.
Read NLPC’s report to Boeing’s shareholders, filed with the SEC, here.
