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Amazon.com Inc

Amazon Labor Union, With Renewed Momentum, Faces Next Test

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The Amazon Labor Union has built momentum leading up to an election this week at an 800-person warehouse near Albany, N.Y.

A federal labor official recently endorsed the union’s election victory at a Staten Island warehouse in April, which Amazon has challenged, while workers’ frustrations over pay and safety have created an opportunity to add supporters and pressure the company to bargain.

But the union faces questions about whether it can translate such opportunities into lasting gains. For months after its victory at the 8,000-person warehouse on Staten Island, the union appeared to be out of its depths. It nearly buckled under a crush of international media attention and lost a vote at a second Staten Island warehouse in May.

At times, it has neglected organizing inside the original warehouse, known as JFK8, where high turnover means the union must do constant outreach just to maintain support — to say nothing of expanding. Christian Smalls, the union’s president and a former JFK8 employee, seemed distracted as he traveled widely. There was burnout and infighting in the group, and several core members left or were pushed out.

attempt to overturn its victory, which consumed time and resources, as supporters and leaders testified in hearings that dragged across 24 business days beginning in mid-June. The union delayed plans to train more workers as organizers. A national organizing call was put on hold.

a party in Hollywood and decided that the Amazon Labor Union “understood where we were coming from,” she recalled in an interview.

could spend years appealing the election result on Staten Island, and the company still has enormous power over JFK8 workers. After workers protested Amazon’s response to a fire at the site last week, the company suspended more than 60 of them with pay while, it said, it investigated what had occurred. The union filed unfair-labor-practice charges over the suspensions; Amazon said most of the workers had returned to work.

unusually high injury rates, among other safety issues. The facility was evacuated after a cardboard compactor caught fire last week, two days after the JFK8 fire, which was similar.

“The timeline to fix things is before something tragic happens,” Ms. Goodall said.

She accused Amazon of running an aggressive anti-union campaign, including regular meetings with employees in which it questions the union’s credibility and suggests that workers could end up worse off if they unionize.

Mr. Flaningan, the company spokesman, said that while injuries increased as Amazon trained hundreds of thousands of new workers in 2021, the company believed that its safety record surpassed that of other retailers over a broader period.

“Like many other companies, we hold these meetings because it’s important that everyone understands the facts about joining a union and the election process itself,” he said, adding that the decision to unionize is up to employees.

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Musk’s SpaceX and T-Mobile plan to connect mobile phones to satellites, boost cell coverage

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Aug 25 (Reuters) – U.S wireless carrier T-Mobile US Inc (TMUS.O) will use Elon Musk-owned SpaceX’s Starlink satellites to provide mobile users with network access in parts of the United States, the companies announced on Thursday, outlining plans to connect users’ mobile phones directly to satellites in orbit.

The new plans, which would exist alongside T-mobile’s existing cellular services, would cut out the need for cell towers and offer service for sending texts and images where cell coverage does not currently exist, key for emergency situations in remote areas, Musk said at a flashy event on Thursday at his company’s south Texas rocket facility.

Starlink’s satellites will use T-Mobile’s mid-band spectrum to create a new network. Most phones used by the company’s customers will be compatible with the new service, which will start with texting services in a beta phase beginning by the end of next year.

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SpaceX has launched nearly 3,000 low-Earth-orbiting Starlink satellites since 2019, handily outpacing rivals OneWeb and Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) Project Kuiper.

SpaceX’s next-generation Starlink satellites, the first of which are planned to launch on SpaceX’s next-generation Starship rocket whenever it is fully developed, will have larger antennae that will allow connectivity directly to mobile phones on the T-mobile network, Musk said.

SpaceX Chief Engineer Elon Musk and T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert take part in a joint news conference at the SpaceX Starbase, in Brownsville, Texas, U.S., August 25, 2022. REUTERS/Adrees Latif

“We are constructing special antenna. … They are actually very big antenna that are extremely advanced,” he said. “The important thing is you will not need to get a new phone. The phone you currently have will work.”

Meanwhile, U.S telecom firms are in a race to build up the mid-band portion of their 5G networks to catch up with T-Mobile, which bagged a chunky 2.5 GHz of mid-band spectrum thanks to a buyout of rival Sprint.

Mid-band or C-Band has proven to be perfect for 5G, as it provides a good balance of capacity and coverage.

The carrier said it aims to pursue voice and data coverage after the texting services beta phase.

Satellite communications firm AST SpaceMobile Inc (ASTS.O) is also building a global cellular broadband network in space that will operate with mobile devices without the need for additional hardware.

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Reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington, Akash Sriram and Eva Mathews in Bengaluru; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Leslie Adler

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Indexes drop as Walmart profit warning spooks investors

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  • Walmart cuts profit forecast; news hits retailers
  • McDonald’s up as sales, profit top estimates
  • Coca-Cola up on forecast raise
  • Indexes: Dow down 0.7%, S&P 500 down 1.2%, Nasdaq down 1.9%

NEW YORK, July 26 (Reuters) – U.S. stocks ended sharply lower Tuesday as a profit warning by Walmart dragged down retail shares and exceptionally weak consumer confidence data also fueled fears about spending.

Walmart (WMT.N) shares sank 7.6% after the retailer cut its full-year profit forecast late on Monday. Walmart blamed surging prices for food and fuel, and said it needed to cut prices to pare inventories. read more

Shares of Target Corp (TGT.N)fell 3.6% and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) dropped 5.2%, while the S&P 500 retail index (.SPXRT) declined 4.2%. read more

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On Tuesday, data showed U.S. consumer confidence dropped to nearly a 1-1/2-year low in July amid persistent worries about higher inflation and rising interest rates. read more

“The majority of companies that reported today beat (on) earnings, and that’s been the case. But of course there have been some warnings, and that’s what the market is focusing on,” said Peter Cardillo, chief market economist at Spartan Capital Securities in New York.

Amazon, which said it would raise fees for delivery and streaming service Prime in Europe by up to 43% a year, was the biggest drag on the Nasdaq and S&P 500, while consumer discretionary (.SPLRCD)fell 3.3% and led declines among S&P 500 sectors. read more

The Federal Reserve started a two-day meeting, and on Wednesday it is expected to announce a 0.75 percentage point interest rate hike to fight inflation. read more Investors have worried that aggressive interest rate hikes by the Fed could tip the economy into recession.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) fell 228.5 points, or 0.71%, to 31,761.54, the S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 45.79 points, or 1.15%, to 3,921.05 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) dropped 220.09 points, or 1.87%, to 11,562.58.

A busy week for earnings also included reports from Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) and Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) after the bell.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Shares of Microsoft were down 0.5% in after-hours trading while Alphabet was up 3% following the companies’ results. Microsoft ended the regular session down 2.7% and Alphabet ended 2.3% lower on the day. read more

Investors had been looking to see if this week’s earnings news from mega-cap companies might help the stock market sustain its recent rally. read more

Earnings from S&P 500 companies were expected to have risen 6.2% for the second quarter from the year-ago period, according to Refinitiv data.

Also during the regular session, Coca-Cola Co (KO.N) gained 1.6% after the company raised its full-year revenue forecast. McDonald’s Corp (MCD.N) rose 2.7% after beating quarterly expectations. read more

3M Co (MMM.N) rose 4.9% after the industrial giant said it planned to spin off its healthcare business. read more General Electric Co (GE.N)gained 4.6% after the industrial conglomerate beat revenue and profit estimates.

In other outlooks, the International Monetary Fund cut global growth forecasts again. read more

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 9.60 billion shares, compared with the 10.93 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

Declining issues outnumbered advancing ones on the NYSE by a 1.73-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.72-to-1 ratio favored decliners.

The S&P 500 posted 1 new 52-week highs and 30 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 39 new highs and 138 new lows.

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Additional reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal and Aniruddha Ghosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur, Anil D’Silva and David Gregorio

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Amazon to raise Prime prices in Europe as retailer wrestles with costs

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NEW YORK, July 25 (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) will raise fees for its delivery and streaming service Prime in Europe by up to 43% a year, the online retailer said on Monday, as it moves to counter higher costs days before it reports quarterly financial results.

The price hike, following one that Amazon announced for Prime in the United States in February, reflects mounting pressure from Wall Street on new Chief Executive Andy Jassy to shore up profit as inflation rises and a downturn looms.

Shoppers in Germany, Amazon’s second-biggest market after the United States, will see fees for an annual Prime membership rise 30% to 89.90 euros ($91.88). The retailer’s No. 3 market, the United Kingdom, will have a 20% increase to 95 pounds ($114.47) per year, while Amazon sites covering Spain, Italy and France will charge Prime members between 39% and 43% more yearly.

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The changes take effect starting Sept. 15 when members join or next renew.

Amazon cited “increased inflation and operating costs” as well as faster delivery and more content to stream in statements on the price rises, the first since 2018 for some of the countries. “We will keep working to ensure Prime offers exceptional value for members,” it said.

In April, Amazon posted its first quarterly loss in seven years from headwinds including higher wages, rising gas costs and an unrealized loss from its stake in Rivian Automotive Inc (RIVN.O).

In the just-ended June quarter, the value of that investment declined another $4 billion. Ford Motor Co (F.N), also a Rivian investor, recently sold some of its shares.

Amazon said it remains committed to working with Rivian, “an important partner” helping it put thousands of electric delivery vans on the road in the United States in 2022.

The logo of Amazon is seen at the company’s logistics center in Bretigny-sur-Orge, near Paris, France, December 7, 2021. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes GLOBAL BUSINESS WEEK AHEAD

Analysts on average expect net income of $1.38 billion when Amazon reports results on Thursday, according to IBES data from Refinitiv. This week, Walmart Inc (WMT.N) warned its 2022 profit would fall more than anticipated as higher fuel and food prices led consumers to ease discretionary spending. read more

Amazon, after record operating profits from at-home shopping in the pandemic, is now on a cost-cutting program. It has not backfilled roles in some warehouses, paused building a major office space in Bellevue, Washington and slowed warehouse openings while letting leases lapse.

It has increased prices for some merchants selling on its platform, too. In May, Amazon imposed an average 4.3% fuel and inflation surcharge on sellers storing and shipping their products in major European markets, following a similar move in the United States.

Analysts are concerned a downturn could slow a major profit engine for the company, its cloud division Amazon Web Services (AWS).

“AWS revenue is more exposed than (cloud rival Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O)) given a greater portion of the clients are in the startup space, which is under pressure,” Bernstein Research said in a recent note.

How much the Prime hikes will offset costs was unclear. Months into the U.S. increase, the percentage of shoppers who were Prime members for a year had grown, Colin Sebastian of Baird Equity Research said after Amazon’s Prime Day event.

While the July Marketing blitz was “not a blow out,” he said, “there is less churn than feared from higher membership costs.”

($1 = 0.9785 euro)

($1 = 0.8299 pound)

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Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in New York
Editing by Matthew Lewis and Deepa Babington

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Why Big Tech Is Making a Big Play for Live Sports

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LOS ANGELES — More than a decade after Apple disrupted the music industry and Amazon upended retail, the tech heavyweights have set their sights on a new arena ripe for change: live sports.

Emboldened by their deep pockets and eager to boost viewership of their streaming-subscription services, Apple and Amazon have thrust themselves into negotiations for media rights held by the National Football League, Major League Baseball, Formula One racing and college conferences.

They are competing to replace DirecTV for the rights to N.F.L. Sunday Ticket, a package the league wants to sell for more than $2.5 billion annually, about $1 billion more than it currently costs, according to five people familiar with the process. Eager not to miss out, Google has also offered a bid from YouTube for the rights beginning in 2023, two people familiar with the offer said.

reported by the SportsBusiness Journal.

Fans will still be able to access all the games on Sunday, regardless of who wins the rights, but they will probably pay a premium to add the service to their Apple, Amazon, ESPN+ or YouTube service, some of the dozen people said. It is not yet clear if that premium would be more or less than the $294 that DirecTV charges for a year, they added.

Apple and Amazon are trying to position themselves for a future without cable. Since 2015, traditional pay television has lost a quarter of its subscribers — about 25 million homes — as people traded cable packages for apps like Netflix and Hulu, according to MoffettNathanson, an investment firm that tracks the industry.

But the price of live sports rights is only projected to increase. The biggest media companies, including Disney, Comcast, Paramount and Fox, are expected to spend a combined $24.2 billion for rights in 2024, according to data from MoffettNathanson, nearly double what they spent a decade earlier.

The fragmenting of a decades-old distribution model has created an opportunity for Apple and Amazon. The companies want to expand deeper into media by selling subscriptions to Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime. Besides containing their own exclusive shows and sports, those services double as portals selling additional streaming offerings like Starz and HBO Max, which pay Apple and Amazon 15 percent or more of each subscription sold.

Amazon generates more than $3 billion annually from third-party subscription sales, according to estimates by the investment bank BMO Capital Markets. To make the business model work, Apple and Amazon must attract more viewers, and sports are the most powerful draw in media. The companies may be willing to lose money on Sunday Ticket to expose new customers to other parts of their business, the same calculation that DirecTV historically made.

SportsBusiness Journal.

For all their disruptive potential, though, Apple and Amazon have yet to win a marquee rights package in the United States. That is reminiscent of 20 years ago, when sports leagues feared they would lose viewers by shifting games from network television to cable. But the change gradually became standard.

Traditional television companies are trying to stave off Apple and Amazon by starting their own streaming-subscription services. Last year Comcast, which owns NBCUniversal, shuttered NBC Sports Network to bolster its USA channel and to encourage people to pay for Peacock, where it exclusively aired some English Premier League soccer games. Similarly, ESPN struck a deal with the National Hockey League to televise some games on its ESPN+ service, and CBS has shown marquee soccer games on Paramount+.

But those services have a fraction of the more than 100 million cable subscribers the media companies once reached. As a result, the bulk of sports programming goes on traditional pay-TV channels where they can guarantee leagues and advertisers larger audiences.

The National Basketball Association will be the first major test of the new competitive landscape. Its agreements with ESPN and Turner run through the 2024-25 season. Most sports and media executives predict that the league will stick with traditional broadcasters for most of its games, while carving out some small portion of rights for a tech company.

“It hedges them for the future and exposes the product to new audiences,” said George Pyne, founder of the sports private equity firm, Bruin Capital, and the former chief operating officer of NASCAR. “They can still have a long-term relationship with network partners but dip their toe in with new media.”

Until then, the best opportunities for Apple and Amazon may be overseas — where Amazon has been active for years — because European soccer leagues resell their rights every two to three years. Amazon recently scooped up rights to Europe’s top tournament, the UEFA Champions League, in Britain, Germany and Italy. It also has rights to France’s Ligue 1, which it offers to Prime Video subscribers for annual fee of about $90, and the English Premier League.

Media companies will be pressured to expand geographically to compete, said Daniel Cohen, who leads global media rights consulting for Octagon, a sports agency. Television broadcasters could also team up to pool their financial firepower, or buy each other outright, to compete with tech giants willing to pay billions for rights like N.F.L. Sunday Ticket.

“It comes down to a Silicon Valley ego thing,” Mr. Cohen said of the high-dollar N.F.L. deal. “I don’t see a road to profitability. I see a road to victory.”

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Wall Street dips after Fed minutes published

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  • FOMC minutes published at 2 p.m. EDT
  • Markets endured topsy-turvy trading prior to release
  • Investors watching c.bank’s stance on rate hikes, inflation
  • Uber, DoorDash fall as Just Eat agrees Amazon partnership
  • Indexes up: Dow 0.23%, S&P 0.36%, Nasdaq 0.35%

NEW YORK, July 6 (Reuters) – Wall Street put a seesaw day behind it to close higher on Wednesday, as investors digested new clues on the U.S. central bank’s approach to rate policy and its inflation fight detailed in the minutes from the latest Federal Reserve meeting.

After a brutal selloff in global equity markets in the first half of the year, nervous investors are keeping a close watch on central bank actions as they try to assess the impact of aggressive rate hikes on global growth.

They got their latest data point on Wednesday afternoon, when the minutes of the June 14-15 policy meeting detailed how the U.S. central bank was prompted to make an outsized interest rate increase. The minutes were a firm restatement of the Fed’s intent to get prices under control to address stubborn inflation and concern about lost faith in the central bank’s power. read more

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The 0.75 percentage-point rate increase which came out of the meeting was the first of that size since 1994. According to the minutes, participants judged that an increase of 50 or 75 basis points would likely be appropriate at the policy meeting later this month.

Prior to the minutes’ publication, investors had been pricing in another 75-basis-point rate increase at the upcoming July 26-27 gathering, meaning the fact that both 50 basis points and 75 basis points remained on the table pointed toward the Fed acknowledging the impact of its rate rises on the economy.

The minutes reflected participants’ concern about rate increases having the potential for a “larger-than-anticipated” impact on economic growth.

“I think people are heavily focused on the terminal rate of what the Federal Reserve’s increases are, and the 50-75 debate just points towards where you end up,” said Jason Pride, chief investment officer of private wealth at Glenmede.

Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., June 30, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

He noted that a 50 basis-point hike would point toward a terminal rate of 3%, while 75 basis points indicated a peak of 3.25% or 3.5%. At 3.5% or above, the likelihood of recession is about 50%.

Prior to the publication of the minutes, all three Wall Street benchmarks had endured a seesaw session, and while there were further swings between positive and negative territory in the moments after the 2 p.m. EDT release, markets built solid gains for the rest of the day.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) rose 69.86 points, or 0.23%, to 31,037.68, the S&P 500 (.SPX) gained 13.69 points, or 0.36%, to 3,845.08 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) added 39.61 points, or 0.35%, to 11,361.85.

Eight of the 11 S&P subsectors closed higher, with utilities (.SPLRCU) and technology (.SPLRCT) leading the way. The biggest outlier was the energy index (.SPNY), which slipped 1.7% as crude prices fell to a 12-week low on recession fears.

Elsewhere, Uber Technologies Inc (UBER.N) and DoorDash Inc (DASH.N) fell 4.5% and 7.4%, respectively, after Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) agreed to take a 2% stake in Just Eat Takeaway.com’s (TKWY.AS) struggling U.S. food delivery business, Grubhub. read more

Rivian Automotive Inc (RIVN.O) gained 10.4% after the electric-vehicle maker’s deliveries nearly quadrupled as it ramped up production. read more

Volume on U.S. exchanges was 11.31 billion shares, compared with the 13.08 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.

The S&P 500 posted 2 new 52-week highs and 29 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 20 new highs and 109 new lows.

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Reporting by David French in New York and Amruta Khandekar and Bansari Mayur Kamdar in Bengaluru
Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Matthew Lewis

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Grubhub gets Amazon investment; Prime members to get fee-free food

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July 6 (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) has secured the right to buy a 2% stake in Just Eat Takeaway.com’s (TKWY.AS) Grubhub and will offer no-fee access to the service for a year to U.S. Prime members, hoping to boost subscriptions with a renewed push into meal delivery.

Announced ahead of Amazon’s July “Prime Day” marketing blitz starting Tuesday, the deal lets the online retailer’s loyalty club members use Grubhub without delivery fees on orders over $12 in more than 4,000 U.S. cities.

Shares in Just Eat Takeaway rose more than 15% to 15.86 euros in Amsterdam trading. The deal is a major relief for Europe’s largest meals company, whose stock had fallen 70% this year.

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Shareholders have demanded it sell or find a partner for Grubhub, which it bought last year for $5.8 billion. Demand has waned since the height of the pandemic, and it has lost market share to Doordash (DASH.N) and Uber Eats (UBER.N). read more

Amazon will receive warrants representing 2% of Grubhub’s shares, and an additional 13% of shares conditional on the deal bringing Grubhub enough customers.

Amazon’s stock rose more than 1%, while Uber shares fell about 4% and Doordash tumbled about 7%. Just Eat Takeaway specified in a statement it continues to “explore the partial or full sale of Grubhub,” though there is no certainty any deal will be reached.

In a note on the Amazon deal, analysts from JPMorgan said it would bring new customers and strengthen Grubhub’s position in the United States, comparable to a partnership Amazon has in Britain with Just Eat rival Deliveroo (ROO.L).

A Grubhub delivery person rides in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., May 9, 2022. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly

“While Grubhub is now only a smaller part of Just Eat Takeaway’s portfolio, representing about 20% of estimated 2023 revenues, this step improves JET’s position in potentially selling (Grubhub),” analysts wrote.

Globally, Amazon has said it has more than 200 million Prime members. It raised the annual cost of membership to $139 from $119 in the United States this year and has aimed to show the higher price-tag is worth it.

Analysts said this was an easy, inexpensive way for Amazon to resume U.S. restaurant delivery after exiting that business in 2019 because it lacked sufficient restaurant supply.

“Our thought is ‘hey, why not?”, analysts at RBC Capital Markets wrote.

The deal represents a familiar playbook for Amazon, which for years acquired warrants to buy stock in air transport and food distribution companies, prodding these partners to support the online retailer’s business without putting up money for a total acquisition.

Just Eat Takeaway said the agreement is expected to expand membership to Grubhub+, while having a neutral impact on Grubhub’s earnings in 2022 and providing a boost from 2023 onward.

The company said that Grubhub’s gross assets were worth 6.5 billion euros ($6.67 billion) at the end of 2021, and it made a pretax loss of 403 million euros in that year.

($1 = 0.9746 euros)

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Reporting by Elena Vardon, Piotr Lipinski, Toby Sterling, and Aishwarya Venugopal; Editing by Louise Heavens, Kim Coghill and David Gregorio

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Factbox: Companies offering abortion travel benefits to U.S. workers

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June 29 (Reuters) – A growing number of companies, including JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N), Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O), Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) and Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) are updating or changing their health insurance policies to offer travel benefits to U.S. employees who may need to access out of state abortion services.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday took the dramatic step of overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that recognized a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion and legalized it nationwide. read more

Below is a list of companies that have said they will cover or reimburse U.S. employees who need to travel to receive medical care, including abortion, if access where workers live is restricted.

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Airbnb Inc (ABNB.O)

Alaska Air Group Inc (ALK.N) read more

Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O)

Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) read more

American Express Co (AXP.N)

Apollo Global Management Inc (APO.N) read more

Apple Inc (AAPL.O)

AT&T Inc (T.N)

Bank of America Corp (BAC.N)

Bank of Nova Scotia (BNS.TO)

Blackstone Inc (BX.N) read more

Block Inc (SQ.N)

Bumble Inc (BMBL.O) read more

Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CM.TO)

Carlyle Group Inc (CG.O) read more

Chobani

Citigroup Inc (C.N) read more

CVS Health Corp (CVS.N)

Deutsche Bank AG read more

Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS.N) read more

DoorDash Inc (DASH.N)

Equinox

Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) read more

Gucci (PRTP.PA)

H&M (HMb.ST)

HubSpot Inc

Intel Corp (INTC.O)

Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) read more

JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N) read more

Kroger Co (KR.N)

Levi Strauss & Co (LEVI.N) read more

L’Oreal (OREP.PA)

LVMH (LVMH.PA)

Lyft Inc (LYFT.O) read more

Macy’s Inc (M.N)

Mastercard Inc (MA.N) read more

Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) read more

Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) read more

Morgan Stanley (MS.N) read more

Netflix Inc (NFLX.O)

Nordstrom Inc (JWN.N)

OKCupid (MTCH.O) read more

PayPal Holdings Inc (PYPL.O)

Pinterest Inc (PINS.N)

Proctor and Gamble Co(PG.N)

Ralph Lauren Corp (RL.N)

Rivian Automotive Inc(RIVN.O)

Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) read more

Target Corp (TGT.N)

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) read more

TPG Inc (TPG.O) read more

Uber Technologies Inc (UBER.N)

Ulta Beauty Inc (ULTA.O)

Unilever PLC (ULVR.L)

United Talent Agency read more

Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc (WBA.O)

Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) read more

Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N) read more

Yahoo

Yelp Inc (YELP.N) read more

Zillow Group Inc (ZG.O)

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Reporting by Doyinsola Oladipo and Akash Sriram; Additional reporting by Chavi Mehta, Manas Mishra and Nichola Saminather; Editing by Anna Driver, Rosalba O’Brien, Bill Berkrot, Daniel Wallis, William Maclean

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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How Elon Musk and Tesla Helped Make C.E.O Pay Even Richer

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While those compensation totals are taken from the company’s financial filings, they are often estimates driven by the companies’ attempts to value the stock their chief executives might receive. As a result, the executives may earn less than those totals, especially if the bear market persists and their companies’ stock prices remain depressed, but they could also take home far higher amounts should the stocks recover.

Many of the highest-ranking executives in the survey received pay packages that were far larger than those of the heads of far bigger companies with much larger profits. For example, Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple, received his first equity award since 2011 last year and had total compensation of $99 million, putting him just 13th in the survey.

Despite the growth in pay, shareholders, apparently believing that it is being tied to performance, have voted in favor of most packages. Only 3 percent of “say on pay” votes got less than 50 percent support from shareholders in the year through June 3, according to an analysis of 1,444 public companies by Willis Towers Watson, a consulting firm that advises companies on executive pay programs and corporate governance matters.

For several years, public companies have had to compare their chief executive’s compensation with that of a typical employee, the result of a regulation passed by Congress that aimed to help investors assess the level of executive pay. Last year, chief executives earned 339 times more than the median pay of employees at their companies, up from 311 times in 2020, according to Equilar. The median employee wage rose 10 percent last year, to $92,349 from $83,808.

Last year’s executive pay jumped in part because corporate boards, which decide chief executive compensation, wanted to reward top officers for navigating their companies through the pandemic.

In addition, the stock market rallied in 2021, and the value of stock grants, which typically constitute the largest share of chief executive compensation, was also higher. When stock prices are rising, boards tend to say executives are doing a good job — and pay them more.

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Amazon’s captive staff meetings on unions illegal, labor board official finds

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May 6 (Reuters) – A U.S. labor board official believes Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) violated federal law during mandatory staff meetings it held in New York City to discourage unionizing, a board spokesperson said on Friday, in what could lead to a new legal precedent.

The Amazon Labor Union alleged the retailer forced workers at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island to attend the so-called captive audience trainings and said staff were threatened with dismissals if they joined the ALU, according to an amended complaint and an audio recording the union shared with Reuters.

The regional director of the Brooklyn-based office of the National Labor Relations Board has found merit to the allegations, in a potential first regarding captive-audience practices, board spokesperson Kayla Blado said. If the parties do not settle, the Brooklyn division will issue a complaint against Amazon that could be litigated up to the NLRB at the federal level.

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The NLRB’s Brooklyn region includes the borough of Staten Island.

An Amazon manager in March told workers that if they voted to organize, unions could bargain for a contract clause that “would require Amazon to fire you if you don’t want to join the union and pay union dues,” according to the recording the ALU shared.

In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said, “These allegations are false and we look forward to showing that through the process.” Mandatory meetings have been legal for over 70 years and were commonly held by employers, Amazon said.

The NLRB precedent that the meetings are legal dates to the 1940s.

The New York warehouse elected to join the ALU within weeks of the March incident, becoming the first Amazon facility to vote to unionize in the United States. Amazon is contesting the result.

Amazon’s meetings have been a flashpoint for labor organizers who for years sought to represent workers at the second-largest U.S. private employer but lacked an equal venue to counter the company’s point of view.

Seth Goldstein, a pro bono attorney representing the ALU, said, “We hope that Amazon will cease their meritless objections to our overwhelming election victory and will instead focus on ending their unlawful union-busting practices.”

Last month, the NLRB’s top lawyer, Jennifer Abruzzo, asked the board to ban businesses from making workers attend anti-union meetings, calling them inconsistent with employees’ freedom of choice. In a future case, Abruzzo said she would ask the board to overturn the precedent that the meetings are legal.

President Joe Biden, considered the most pro-union U.S. president in decades, last year appointed Abruzzo as general counsel, a position independent from the five-member NLRB.

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Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in Palo Alto, Calif.; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien and Leslie Adler

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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