6-02-06, 11:06 am

Angry shareholders at two Fortune 500 companies recently revolted over exorbitant CEO pay and the lack of openness in corporate America. At annual meetings of The Home Depot and Exxon Mobil Corp., shareholders made it clear they are fed up with business as usual. And a top stock-rating company announced it is removing Comcast from a list of socially responsible companies mutual funds use as a guide to investing.

At The Home Depot meeting May 25 in Wilmington, Del., CEO Robert Nardelli stifled debate, according to The New York Times, about his $245 million in salary and benefits since he took over in 2000—while company stock dropped 12 percent. The Associated Press (AP) reported that the company’s directors, who approve Nardelli’s compensation, didn’t even show up for the meeting. And Nardelli, who refused to allow any general questions from stockholders, shut down the meeting after only 30 minutes, AP said.

Outside the meeting, demonstrators from AFSCME demanded the company allow shareholders to vote on executive pay. One protestor dressed in a chicken outfit carried a sign saying, “Home Depot Is Too Chicken to Let Stockholders Vote.”

Inside the meeting, three union-supported resolutions came to a vote. AFSCME’s resolution on allowing votes on executive pay and one submitted by the unaffiliated Laborers calling for stockholder votes on retirement pay failed, receiving less than a majority of the vote. One union-backed initiative did pass—a non-binding resolution submitted by the unaffiliated Carpenters, calling for majority rather than plurality votes to elect directors. A vote total for all three proposals was unavailable after The Home Depot refused to announce the levels of support, as is customary at annual meetings.

Not only does Nardelli receive more money in one year—$38 million—than the president and vice president of the United States, the entire Cabinet, the U.S. Senate and the Supreme Court combined, but with the cooperation of The Home Depot board, he is guaranteed to receive one of the largest CEO pensions around, no matter how well he does his job.

But his nonunion employees are offered only a cutely named “FutureBuilder” 401(k) plan and an Employee Stock Purchase Plan to build their retirement nest eggs. These plans do not provide guaranteed annual pension benefits.

When Nardelli, 57, was hired at the nation’s largest home-improvement retailer, he was guaranteed a pension equal to 50 percent of his salary and bonus at age 62. Even if Nardelli’s performance does not entitle him to a bonus, his pension benefit will be calculated as if he had earned a $4.5 million bonus.

Altogether, Nardelli’s annual pension package is worth $4.6 million, placing him in the top five pension plans, according to the AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch website. Other notable features of Nardelli’s golden parachute include $20 million in cash, immediate vesting of stock options and restricted stock and forgiveness of a $10 million loan.

At the Exxon Mobil meeting May 31 in Dallas, shareholders blasted management and peppered them with questions about the retirement package former CEO Lee Raymond, another one of the Executive PayWatch top five, received. Raymond got $69.4 million pay in 2005, his last year on the job, along with a cash payout of $98.4 million.

Exxon’s stockholders apparently have had enough. In a rare show of independence, the stockholders overrode the objections of management and passed a nonbinding resolution calling for majority election of directors.

According to The Washington Post, Walter Durham, a vice president of East-West Ministries International, said in the meeting that Raymond’s package represented “colossal greed” and won loud applause when he called on the board to “never again grant such excessive compensation to an Exxon executive.”

Comcast, meanwhile, is expected to be dropped soon from the prestigious Domini 400 Social Index, a closely watched and widely used listing of socially responsible companies, according to the Philadelphia City Paper. The index, compiled by KLD Research & Analytics, is used by many mutual funds and big investors to determine which companies’ stock to purchase.

Comcast has a long history of firing, harassing and discriminating against union-represented workers—a history detailed in a study, No Bargain: Comcast and the Future of Workers’ Rights in Telecommunications, by the worker advocacy and research group American Rights at Work. The largest cable company in the nation also has a long history of anti-consumer actions across the country. Here are just a few examples from the website, Comcast Watch, sponsored by the Communications Workers of America and the Electrical Workers:

- Comcast fired Will Goodo, a longtime employee who is not represented by a union, after he testified before the Oakland City Council and at a Workers’ Rights Board hearing, also in Oakland, on Comcast’s violations of workers’ rights.

-The Comcast charter guarantees CEO Brian Roberts has one-third of the voting power of all Comcast shares even though he owns less than 3 percent of the total outstanding equity. (In 2003, Roberts and his father, Comcast founder Ralph Roberts, received $20.3 million in compensation and an additional $34.2 million in exercised stock options).

Meanwhile, Comcast’s cable rates are going up at double the rate of inflation.