{"id":218,"date":"2010-04-13T11:19:49","date_gmt":"2010-04-13T17:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cwa6203.org\/?p=218"},"modified":"2010-04-13T11:19:49","modified_gmt":"2010-04-13T17:19:49","slug":"cwa-recommendations-for-voting-your-2010-proxies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cwa6203.org\/?p=218","title":{"rendered":"CWA RECOMMENDATIONS FOR VOTING YOUR 2010 PROXIES"},"content":{"rendered":"

SHOWN BELOW IS AN EXPLANATION OF THE PROPOSALS & RECOMMENDATIONS FROM NATIONALS FOR THE 2010 ANNUAL MEETING OF STOCKHOLDERS THAT WILL BE HELD ON 04-30-10. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR EACH SHAREHOLDER TO UNDERSTAND & VOTE REGARDING HIS\/HER INVESTMENT WITH AT&T. YOUR VOTING INSTRUCTIONS CAN BE DONE EITHER BY MAIL, INTERNET OR PHONE BUT MUST BE<\/strong> RECEIVED BY <\/strong>APRIL 27,2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

CWA Recommendations for Voting Your Proxies
\nat AT&T Shareholders Meeting
\nApril 30, 2010 \u00e2\u20ac\u201c Chattanooga, Tennessee<\/p>\n

Item 1: Vote for Directors: If individuals have a beef about an individual director, they
\nshould vote against him or her. Personally, I think the board does not pass the test of
\ngood governance and is top heavy in retirees. This means management does not
\nhave an independent board. I recommend a vote ABSTAIN.<\/p>\n

Item 2: Auditor: No reason to vote against. Ernst & Young has done nothing egregious.
\nShareholders should vote ABSTAIN if they do not like voting with the company.<\/p>\n

Item 3: Cumulate Voting: This is a proposal that good governance activists are pushing.
\nAT&T has 12 directors. If this proposal were to pass, each shareholder would have
\n12 votes to allocate as he\/she wants. For instance, none for candidates 1-11, but
\n12 votes for candidate 12. People like this because it offers more competition in the
\nelection of directors. So, alliances can be created to elect a director outside the
\nmainstream. I recommend a vote FOR.<\/p>\n

Item 4: Pension Credits: CWA has long championed this proposal at IBM and other
\ncompanies. Companies use pension surpluses to beef up their net profits. When
\nincentive compensation is based on net profits (without subtraction of pension
\nsurpluses), then executives are being partially compensated on umbers that have
\nnothing to do with how the company performed. To be honest, this was more relevant
\nfive years ago when pension surpluses were big in some companies. Since then,
\nseveral companies, such as GE in response to a CWA proposal, have agreed to
\nexclude pension numbers from net profit when calculating compensation. The
\nfinancial crisis blew a hole through most pension plans and surpluses are wishful
\nthinking for the time being. I recommend a vote FOR.<\/p>\n

Item 5: Shareholder Advisory Vote on Compensation or “Say on Pay\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: This proposal
\nsays that, if passed and the company changes policy, each year the company
\nwill offer as a management proposal (therefore, supported by management) the
\nopportunity to vote up or down on the pay of top executives and the method used
\n(the narrative disclosure) to pay them. This is the system in Britain, Australia, and
\nSweden. It appeared at one time in Barney Frank’s financial reform legislation. This
\nis the proposal we passed in 2007 at Verizon. Roughly 50 companies have voluntarily
\nadopted Say on Pay. Companies receiving TARP funds had to implement this
\nproposal. I recommend a vote FOR.<\/p>\n

Item 6: Right to Call Special Shareholders Meeting for Holders of 10 Percent of the
\nCompany’s Stock: On one hand, it is always good to give shareholders more rights
\nover management. And, the AFL-CIO in its proxy voting guidelines recommends
\nvoting for proposals that strengthen shareholder rights through the ability to call
\nspecial meetings. On the other hand, I am suspicious of lowering the threshold further
\nbecause it would offer private equity the opportunity to push management in directions
\nwe would disapprove. Currently, the company has a 15 percent threshold to call a
\nspecial shareholders meeting. Note that last year this proposal received 49 percent
\nof the vote. I recommend a vote FOR if shareholder wants to force defeat on the
\ncompany or ABSTAIN on the merits of the proposal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SHOWN BELOW IS AN EXPLANATION OF THE PROPOSALS & RECOMMENDATIONS FROM NATIONALS FOR THE 2010 ANNUAL MEETING OF STOCKHOLDERS THAT WILL BE HELD ON 04-30-10. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR EACH SHAREHOLDER TO UNDERSTAND & VOTE REGARDING HIS\/HER INVESTMENT WITH AT&T. YOUR VOTING INSTRUCTIONS CAN BE DONE EITHER BY MAIL, INTERNET OR PHONE BUT MUST […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwa6203.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwa6203.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwa6203.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwa6203.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwa6203.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cwa6203.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219,"href":"https:\/\/cwa6203.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218\/revisions\/219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwa6203.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwa6203.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwa6203.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}