Fidelity Responds With Offer to Meet

Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka and UNITE! President Bruce Raynor led a former Enron employee, a busload of Stanley Works employees from Connecticut and 300 local workers and investors in demanding that Fidelity reveal to the public its record on shareholder votes. Fidelity responded with a preliminary offer to meet union leaders to discuss the issue.

"Fidelity Investments uses its $1.5 trillion of our money to prop up the worst behavior in corporate America-to re-elect Enron directors, and to support CEOs like John Trani who wants to run away from America and move Stanley Works to Bermuda," explained Trumka.

A busload of Stanley Works employees drove up from the company's Connecticut headquarters to join the demonstration near Fidelity-the largest institutional shareholder in Stanley Works. Fidelity is believed to have supported Stanley Works' initial effort to reincorporate from Connecticut to Bermuda to evade taxes. That vote was thrown out after employee shareholders complained that Stanley Works misled them about how their votes would be counted.

On Tuesday, the AFL-CIO urged the SEC to take action on mutual fund reforms laid out in a rulemaking petition the federation filed in 2000. The petition recommended major reform of current law to stop mutual fund companies from legally hiding shareholder-voting records.

Unlike investment managers of defined benefit pension plans who routinely disclose their voting decisions, mutual fund firms that manage 401(k) money, such as Fidelity, are not required to tell their investors how they voted. Because Fidelity boasts so much money in worker savings and is one of the top shareholders in many of the largest U.S. companies, it has unprecedented influence over the governance of corporate America. "Investors deserve to know if Fidelity votes in the interests of its investors or if the company uses its vote to curry favor with management and win more 401(k) business," said Trumka.

The Fidelity protest capped off three days of "No More Business As Usual" events. The tour began Monday, July 29, outside Stanley Works headquarters in New Britain, Connecticut, included a major address to more than 1000 union members by AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney on Wall Street in New York and ended near Fidelity's office in Boston on Wednesday.

For Information Contact: Kathy Roeder (202) 285-9633