Foulkes Tweets “Equality for All” but as CEO She Earned $29M, 1,000 Times Her Frontline Workers
Saturday, October 16, 2021
Top corporate executive Helena Foulkes has now entered the Democratic primary for governor in Rhode Island.
Shortly after she launched her campaign with a well-polished video and sent a “letter to friends,” Foulkes Tweeted that she was for “equality for all.”
But her track record as President of Retail at CVS and then as CEO of Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) shows that there was very little equality for all when it came to compensation.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTFoulkes' tenure at HBC was short -- just two years, and she earned more than $29 million annually. In contrast, frontline workers at the retailer made approximately $30,000 dollars.
Now, as a candidate, Foulkes will likely need to explain how her corporate compensation matches the Democratic party's ideals.
In 2020, at 45 major U.S. companies, the CEO took home 1,000 times or more what a median worker earned in 2019 and 2020, according to the AFL-CIO. The annual report on the discrepancy shows the growing gap between corporate compensation and what workers make.
Leading Senate Democrats in Congress are pushing the "Tax Excessive CEO Pay Act" which would penalize companies that pay their CEOs or other highest-paid employees 50 times more than the median pay for workers.
For Foulkes, she would have faced a lot of taxes. For most of the last decade, she consistently earned 100 times -- and upward -- the salaries of the workers she oversaw.
That legislation is sponsored by Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD).
Foulkes' Compensation Under Fire in Canada
Foulkes' compensation at Canadian retailer HBC came under fire from shareholders including public employees' pension systems.
At her first corporate annual meeting, about one-quarter of votes cast by HBC shareholders opposed the company’s multi-million dollar payouts to top executives for the second year in a row at an unusually secretive annual general meeting, reported the Toronto Star.
"Nearly 26.5 percent of votes cast were against the retailer’s approach to executive compensation, according to company documents. That amounts to about 47.9 million negative votes.'We are concerned that the board has again chosen to make awards to executives that are outside the compensation plan,' wrote the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, which holds a 10 percent stake in HBC, in its rationale for voting against the proposal."
“We do not feel that the awards have been sufficiently justified,” said the fund in a statement.
According to the Star, "The company’s highest paid executive, CEO Helena Foulkes, received a pay package of a little over $29.4 million for the 2018 financial year — her first with the company. Foulkes, who joined HBC in Feb. 2018, received a package that includes a roughly $1.6-million base salary and about $19.6 million in share-based awards and a roughly $3 million sign-on bonus. It also included a pension, a roughly $2.7-million guaranteed annual bonus, a housing and relocation allowance, and other compensation.
Kai Li, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business, told the Star that the structure of Foulkes'compnesation package is called the "golden handshake.
“They’re just throwing extra goodies to draw her here,” the professor said, calling it a bad business policy.
CVS Tenure
While Foulkes was a major earner at CVS in her final years before going to Hudson -- it was significantly less.
According to the website ExecPay.com, "Foulkes received an average of $5M in total compensation, including $919K in salary, at CVS Health from 2014 to 2017."
In her announcement video, Foulkes said she oversaw 200,000 retail employees. The majority of those employees made less than $15 dollars an hour and many made minimum wage -- less than $10 an hour. Thus, tens of thousands of the workers Foulkes oversaw made less than $25,000 a year.
At CVS, Foulkes made more than 200 times the front-of-store retail worker.
Foulkes Tenure Was Short and Highly Profitable
In March of 2019, the Star reported the announcement of Foulkes' departure, “Executive chairman Richard Baker’s influence over Hudson’s Bay Co. is about to get another big boost as Canada’s oldest retailer closes a turbulent chapter in its nearly 350 years of existence. The Canadian retailer said Tuesday that Baker will replace chief executive Helena Foulkes, who is departing the company about two years after she was hired."
“She and Baker spent much of the last two years marred in complaints from shareholders about executive salaries and their failure to unlock the value of the company’s real estate,” reported the Star.
Foulkes' campaign spokesperson Emma Caccamo repeatedly refused to respond to questions about the inconsistency between her advocacy for equality and her corporate compensation as compared to workers.
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