Compensation

Our compensation policy reflects the commitment to broadly shared rewards. Socially responsible investors have long used ratios of CEO pay to the average of all other workers or the median of all other workers to gauge fairness. Typical ratios of publicly held companies are often well over 400X the average of other workers. Our policy on compensation is to pay competitive salaries to all staff, with senior manager and CEO targets relative to comparable companies and aimed somewhat below the average of comparable size firms.

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All employees receive merit and profit sharing bonuses computed as a percentage of operating profits. Profit-sharing bonuses are pro-rated (using salary as the denominator) through all staff without consideration for rank. The company matches contributions to the 401(k) retirement plan of any employee up to 3% of their salary. Merit bonuses are awarded from an all-company budget. CEO compensation numbers above include all compensation for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2003.

Our salary policy for the company is to pay all employees competitive salaries, regionally adjusted. Professionals are to be paid low median salaries for companies of similar sizes in our industry.

On Shareholder Initiatives

From time to time, Trillium Asset Management Corporation (”Trillium”) sponsors, co-sponsors, or votes proxies on shareholder resolutions that deal with corporate governance issues. These resolutions are disclosed under our proxy voting policy and actual results. Detailed descriptions of sponsored resolutions are available on this web site. The list of resolutions below should facilitate comparisons between our activism work and our own policies:

  • Disclosure: Support resolutions that ask for the names and titles of executives that are entitled to receive more than $250,000 in annual base pay to disclosed in future proxy statements
  • Executive Pay Cap: Support resolutions that seek to cap executive pay at a multiple of the pay of the lowest employee
  • Executive Pay Tie to Dividends: Oppose resolutions that ask companies to tie any executive compensation to the amount of dividends paid to shareholders
  • Executive Pay Freeze During Downsizing: Support resolutions that ask companies to freeze the pay of corporate executives when they eliminate significant numbers of jobs
  • Executive Pay Link to Social Performance


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