Kellogg 2023 Pay Equity Disclosure is just one of several issues to be voted on before the annual meeting at 10 am Pacific on April 28, 2023. Vote AGAINST Burns, Cahallane, pay, auditor & audit looking for discrimination against white males; FOR#6 pay equity disclosure.
Kellogg Company and its subsidiaries manufacture and market snacks and convenience foods. I voted with the Board’s recommendations 38% of the time. View Proxy Statement via SEC’s EDGAR system (look for DEF 14A). Read Warnings.
Kellogg 2023: ISS Rating
Kellogg Company’s ISS Governance QualityScore as of April 1, 2023, is 7. The pillar scores are Audit: 3; Board: 8; Shareholder Rights: 8; Compensation: 5. Corporate governance scores courtesy of Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). Scores indicate decile rank relative to index or region. A decile score of 1 indicates lower governance risk, while a 10 indicates higher governance risk.
Kellogg 2023: How I Voted
| Item | Egan-Jones Recommendation | CorpGov.net |
|---|---|---|
| 1A-1C – Election of Directors | FOR, WITH EXCEPTION OF (1B) STEVE CAHILLANE | AGAINST: Burns, Cahallane |
| 2 – Approve Executive Compensation | FOR | AGAINST |
| 3 – Frequency of Future Vote on Executive Compensation | 1 YEAR | 1 YEAR |
| 4 – Ratification of Auditors | AGAINST | AGAINST |
| 5 – Shareholder Proposal: Civil Rights, Non-Discrimination & Return to Merits Audit | FOR | AGAINST |
| 6 – Shareholder Proposal: Additional Reporting on Pay Equity Disclosure | FOR | FOR |
Kellogg 2023 Votes Explained
Briefly, Egan-Jones recommended against Steve Cahillane because the Chair should be an independent director; agreed. I also voted against Burns, who is on the nominating committee & the Board isn’t 20% ethnically diverse. I voted against pay because it is more than 200 times the median at Kellogg and the auditor because 86 years is too long to remain independent.
National Center for Public Policy Research seeks a study to find reverse discrimination (against white males) in proposal #5. I don’t think that is a problem. Of course, I voted for our proposal on pay equity disclosure, #6.
I had help with my voting from Egan-Jones, my own proxy voting policy through Iconikapp. and by briefly looking and some funds that announce their votes in advance.
Kellogg
2023: My Pay Equity Disclosure Proposal
This proposal is from me, James McRitchie. “Kellogg is committed to providing a work environment consistent with our K-Values of acting with integrity and showing respect.” They say they are committed to “equal employment opportunity and fair treatment of employees.”
However, Kellogg has shown no willingness even to set a multi-year timeline for disclosing adjusted or unadjusted median pay gaps. Only unadjusted median pay gaps tell us how our company assigns value to employees through the roles they inhabit and the pay they receive.
Do minorities and women hold as many high-paying jobs as white men? We won’t know because many pay gaps can be explained away with the excuse that minorities and women just aren’t working at the same level.
The only benchmark to measure if the real pay gaps are shrinking is the unadjusted median pay gap. Why trust “K-Values” without verification?
Refusal to commit to eventually publishing unadjusted pay gap data or even adjusted pay gap data reflects badly on our company’s reputation. Let’s change that.
Vote FOR Proposal 12. Better reporting will lead Kellogg to make better use of all its human resources. That will profit employees and shareholders alike. (see our SEC filing)
Other Recommendations
In looking up a few funds in our Shareowner Action Handbook, I see several funds have reported their votes. All voted FOR #6.
Kellogg 2023 2024: Mark Your Calendar
Shareowner proposals submitted for inclusion in our Proxy Statement for the 2024 Annual Meeting of Shareowners must be received by us no later than November 3, 2023.
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