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You Should Know: if you care about worker’s rights, always look over any proxy voting that is included in stocks you own, INCLUDING what may be in your retirement fund.

If you have a 401k, IRA, or any other stock, you may get a chance to do proxy voting for some companies. What this means is that, as a shareholder, you get to vote on some of the rules for the company. It can be really daunting because often there is 100 page packet describing everything in the company and what is being voted on. However, there are typically very few things in that packet that are actually necessary to read. What is important to read is the descriptions of questions that you can be voting on. That usually includes who does the financial organization for the company, which doesn't matter very much for any kind of political purpose. Then they will talk about executive compensation. That is essentially a useless vote because they will give you a multiple page description talking about stock options and compensation of executives, but…


If you have a 401k, IRA, or any other stock, you may get a chance to do proxy voting for some companies. What this means is that, as a shareholder, you get to vote on some of the rules for the company. It can be really daunting because often there is 100 page packet describing everything in the company and what is being voted on. However, there are typically very few things in that packet that are actually necessary to read. What is important to read is the descriptions of questions that you can be voting on. That usually includes who does the financial organization for the company, which doesn't matter very much for any kind of political purpose.

Then they will talk about executive compensation. That is essentially a useless vote because they will give you a multiple page description talking about stock options and compensation of executives, but then only give you a yes or no vote to what should be a multifaceted question. However, sometimes there will be a yes or no question submitted by shareholders regarding executive compensation (for instance capping the amount), that is more suitable to vote on. As a shareholder, there is also a process for you to submit questions like these yourself.

Other types of shareholder questions that are commonly voted on are things like what the diversity measures or environmental policy the company should have. And also approving of who the executives and CEOs are. They usually give a short bio for each executive, so, if you have an environmental agenda, for instance, you can search for any fossil fuel companies.

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