This is an e-mail I received from the AFL-CIO. As I pointed out in a previous post, their math is very misleading. In fact, if you compare the average worker’s wage to the actual average CEO (not just the largest 500 companies where only 15% of Americans work) salary the ratio is less than 4:1, a far cry from 371:1.
However, as I said in a reply to this e-mail, so what? You can figure out the ratio for yourself if it’s all that important. Get a copy of the companies proxy, do some estimates and you have it. But I will save you the trouble. The ratio among large corporations in America is large, again so what? The Boards of Directors and shareholders have approved the compensation package.
We may envy these pay levels, even think them unfair and in some cases unearned, but how do a few hundred overpaid Americans affect your economic status? We focus on the wrong problems which is so typical of the political left.
Remember, the unions represented here negotiate for the pay and benefits of their members. Isn’t the real issue why they are not more effective in raising pay and preserving benefits for their members and what broad global economic forces are working against them?
And, by the way, while we are pointing fingers, take a look at the pay of top union leaders who are paid via members dues and not shareholders. In some unions the ratio of the union leadership pay to union members is greater than the 4:1 for all CEOs.
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373 to 1. That was the average CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 2014 for Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index companies. That means the average worker would have to work for an entire year to make what a CEO makes in a single day. When we talk about income inequality and the widening pay gap, this is what we mean.
Five years ago, Congress passed a law requiring all publicly traded companies to disclose the CEO-to-worker pay ratio. The thinking goes that if companies are required to disclose this ratio, consumers and shareholders would be able to hold companies more accountable to closing the pay gap within their own ranks. But Wall Street and big corporations have lobbied hard to stop the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) from enforcing this rule. It’s time to change that.
Click here to sign the petition telling the SEC it’s time to do its job and enforce the law requiring companies to disclose their CEO-to-worker pay ratios.
So what’s the hold up? Frenzied lobbying by major corporations that oppose the law and have successfully pressured the SEC to not step up and enforce it. Your petition signature will be delivered directly to the SEC in June to pressure it to do its jobs and start enforcing the law now.
The SEC is still considering this and corporations are lobbying hard against it. Which means we need your voice in the fight.
Click here to sign the petition now.
In solidarity,
Heather
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Heather Slavkin Corzo
Director of the Office of Investment, AFL-CIO
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