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AFL-CIO Proxy Voting: A Response by Agrawal

By Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance

(Editor?s note: The Agrawal study is described on our blog here; the initial AFL-CIO response is available on our blog here; two reactions to that AFL-CIO response - from Ashwini Agrawal and from Steven Kaplan - are available here; the subsequent AFL-CIO response is available here).

I am writing to respond to the recent post by Daniel Pedrotty, director of the AFL-CIO Office of Investment, critiquing my study on AFL-CIO proxy voting.

First, in contrast to Pedrotty’s claim that I was never in contact with the AFL-CIO Office of Investment, I contacted Michele Evans, office administrator of the AFL-CIO Office of Investment by email on May 22, 2007, and received a reply from her by email on June 1, 2007. The email exchange is available here.

Second, I would like to respond to Pedrotty’s request that I share my data with the AFL-CIO on a confidential basis with the AFL-CIO committing not to share it with any rival researcher and to use it solely to ?check the accuracy? of my findings. Given that the AFL-CIO has not provided me data and information when I have requested it and has made what I consider false and misleading statements about my research, I have serious concerns, as do my advisors, that the AFL-CIO will misuse and mischaracterize any data I send them prior to publication. I therefore will not enter into the requested confidentiality agreement with them. Instead, I suggest they consult the public sources of data I use in writing my paper and replicate the findings themselves.

Third, I would like to respond to Pedrotty’s claim that the study is not possible to replicate using public information. Pedrotty makes a useful point that I did not fully describe the information I obtained from Investor Relations departments, however, as I will make clear in the next version of the paper, the findings in the paper are the same if one relies on the public data sources described in the paper. The next draft will explain that I contacted four companies whose investor relations departments confirmed, consistent with the lack of discussion of unionized workers in their 10-K’s, that they did not have union workers (an assumption I discuss in the paper). I will also make sure to fully describe any information I get from additional investor relations departments or other sources that I may choose to contact while revising my study.

As for other claims raised by Pedrotty, I have addressed them already in my earlier post, available here.

Full post as published by The Harvard Law School Corporate Governance Blog on April 17, 2008 (boomark / email).