Administration April 3, 2005

Sprint Shareholders To Vote on Offshoring Study

March 16, 2004 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Sprint Corp's shareholders will vote on a proposal at this year's annual shareholder meeting to further examine the company's offshoring efforts.
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The proposal seeks a report by an independent committee on Sprint’s decision to have certain computer programming work done overseas.   The measure was introduced by the Communication Workers of America (CWA) Pension Funds, according to a Kansas City Business Journal report.

Further, the report would examine the potential risks of offshoring – sending United States-based jobs overseas – to the company’s name and reputation domestically.  

In the proxy filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the company said it opposes the proposal.   The company said such an examination is not necessary since Sprint does not have a large-scale offshoring initiative and because the proposal would assess the potential impact of “necessarily hypothetical situations.”

Through five-year agreements signed last year with IBM Corp and EDS Corp, Overland Park, Kansas-based Sprint is outsourcing some of its information technology functions. Some of that work will be done offshore.

The offshoring initiative is not the only proposal being opposed by Sprint.   The company also announced its opposition to three other proxy propositions:

  • Requiring that the lead independent director of the company also become the chairman of the board.
  • An executive compensation policy that more closely ties stock grants to the performance of Sprint stock relative to its industry peers.
  • Capping annual CEO compensation at 50 times the average compensation paid to employees who are not exempt from coverage through the Fair Labor Standards Act.

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