Taking on Executive Pay at Shareholder Meetings

CWA members and other union activists are ready for this year's round of corporate annual meetings, with news conferences, demonstrations and other actions planned for major CWA employers.

At the IBM meeting in Knoxville, Tenn., on April 24, members of Alliance@IBM, CWA Local 1701 will speak to three proposals and urge shareholders to adopt the measures on executive compensation, offshoring and pension and retirement medical benefits.

That same day in Greenville, S.C., IUE-CWA and CBC – Coordinated Bargaining Committee of GE Unions -- activists also will urge shareholders to support proposals tied to executive pay and other good governance issues.

The CBC is pressing for shareholders to approve proposals to separate the position of chairman and chief executive officer to provide for more independent oversight of management; to require a report on the pay differential between GE's senior executives and the lowest paid 10 percent of current employees, both in and outside the U.S., and to provide for representation of GE's retired workers with a non-executive retiree as a candidate to sit on the board of directors. 

Hundreds of CWA, IBEW and other union activists are making plans for the Verizon annual meeting May 3 in Pittsburgh. They will rally at the United Steelworkers headquarters and march to the convention center, the meeting site. Inside, a sea of union supporters wearing red shirts and union shirts will be visible in support for shareholder resolutions on executive compensation, compensation consultants who may not be making independent recommendations on executive pay and shareholder approval of executive severance payments. 

The AFL-CIO is leading a campaign aimed at investors at Verizon and other companies that spotlights how the pay of many executives has little connection to how well a company performs. Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg earned more than $109 million over the past five years, while shareholders experienced a negative 5 percent return in the same period. "Working people are fed up with a system that showers CEOs with lavish rewards with little or no accountability," said AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Richard Trumka.

Trumka, IBEW President Edwin Hill and CWA District 13 Vice President Jim Short will be among those attending the Verizon annual meeting.