Yahoo Finance Amazon Braces For Compensation Criticism at Annual Meeting
(Bloomberg) -- Amazon.com Inc. will face a record 18 shareholder resolutions at its annual meeting this week, with outside groups urging the company to disclose more about its treatment of employees and more closely tie executive compensation to performance.
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Major shareholder advisory firms recommend investors approve calls for assessments of Amazon employees’ working conditions and freedom to organize, as well as the risks posed by the company’s sales of surveillance products. Between them, Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. and Glass Lewis & Co. are urging investors to support five resolutions brought by outside shareholders.
The two firms say shareholders should block the re-election of director Judith McGrath, chair of the board’s leadership and compensation committee, and recommends a no vote on a symbolic measure to ratify Amazon’s executive pay. The company’s annual meeting of shareholders, held virtually since the beginning of the pandemic, is scheduled for Wednesday. The shareholder resolutions and say-on-pay votes are nonbinding.
Investors delivered a rebuke to Amazon in 2022 over its pay practices, only narrowly approving salaries amid concerns about big stock grants awarded to top executives regardless of how well the company performed in subsequent years. The board conducted outreach with major investors following that vote but didn’t adjust its plans, which Glass Lewis called “significantly concerning.”
Amazon says its pay practices, which emphasize stock grants, align executives’ priorities with the long-term health of the company. Spokesperson Glenn Kuper said in an emailed statement that the company disagreed with the recommendations “against our say-on-pay proposal and are disappointed that it recommends against any executive compensation at any company that doesn’t fit a traditional model.”
Amazon has for years grappled with activism from shareholder groups, especially on labor and environmental issues. That pressure has grown amid government investigations of injury rates and reporting practices at the company’s warehouses, as well as US labor board findings that Amazon repeatedly acted illegally in its efforts to beat back union drives.
Amazon has denied wrongdoing. The company, along with rival Walmart Inc., is among dozens of corporations being urged to do more to improve employee health and safety.
Last week, a group of Danish pension funds that collectively manage $732 billion threw their support behind a resolution asking Amazon to commission an independent report on labor rights.
“As active investors we have individually all previously sought to bring to bear our influence on Amazon in order to ensure workers’ rights,” AkademikerPension, which holds Amazon stock worth around $60 million, said in a statement. The new initiative will “increase the likelihood of making a real difference both at the coming annual general meeting and over time.”
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