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Didn't miss that part at all. You ARE aware though that executive compension over the last 20 years or so has grown WAYYYYYY out of proportion to salaries of the worker bees. Even SHAREHOLDERS are starting to get p*ssed off.
"...But the truly eye-popping number in EPI’s study isn’t how much exponentially more CEOs make than their rank-and-file employees. It’s how exponentially their salaries have grown. Average CEO compensation, according to EPI’s calculations, rose 726.7 percent between the years of 1978 and 2011 — more than double the percentage increase in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. Meanwhile, pay for the average private-sector nonsupervisory worker rose a startlingly meager 5.7 percent. (Check out the full explanation of EPI’s methodology and data.)
My guess is that it’s this inequality that really erodes worker satisfaction and guts employee morale far more than the discrepancy between the top and bottom in any one year’s pay. We get it: You’re CEO, and you’re going to make a lot more, no matter what organizational theory or leadership wisdom might say. But shouldn’t the rest of us at least get to see our pay keep up with the times?"
CEOs and top execs are not paid for how 'hard they work'. They are paid because of the risk they take on in being responsible for so many people. The amount of uncertainty in the economic climate of today puts top leadership in an incredibly difficult position! Anyone could run a company in the '70s, when markets rose regardless of what a person did.
workers are unsatisfied because they seem to think that they deserve to make something beyond what they are intellectually capable of proving they can make. You are worth exactly what you are being paid, no more, no less. If you were actually worth more, you would have found a way to make more money. The average worker needs to stop complaining about those who are more successful than themselves and start trying to think of what they can do to actually earn more money.
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"A spate of shareholder revolts in recent weeks on both sides of the Atlantic have voted down companies' remuneration reports and several chief executives, including AstraZeneca's David Brennan, Trinity Mirror boss Sly Bailey and Aviva's Andrew Moss, have headed for the exit..."
"Citigroup's shareholders have said no to an exorbitant pay package for the bank's CEO, and why shouldn't they? Executive pay across American companies has ballooned to unacceptable levels, without the performance to back it up The vote, at Citigroup’s annual meeting in Dallas Tuesday, isn’t binding on Citigroup. But it’s a warning shot across the bow of every corporate boardroom in America.
Shareholders aren’t happy about executive pay.
And why should they be? CEO pay at large publicly-held corporations is now typically 300 times the pay of the average American worker. It was 40 times average worker pay in the 1960s and has steadily crept upward since then as corporations have morphed into “winner-take-all” contraptions that reward their top executives with boundless beneficence and perks while slicing the jobs, wages, and benefits of almost everyone else.
..."
Can you post an article that doesn't cherry pick eight companies also involved in fraud cases? Picking the bottom .01% of companies and claiming that it is a 'rampant trend' is hardly a smart thing to do. Is executive pay a problem in a select few companies? Obviously....is it a problem in the vast majority of companies? Absolutely not.
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So, are you REALLY claiming that Execs are THAT much more valuable today (when compared to worker bees) than they were in 1978 or 1960? - because if that's what you believe you should be aware than an increasing number of shareholders STRONGLY DISAGREE with your assessment.
Absolutely! The fact that you think otherwise indicates to me how disjointed your thinking is from what an executive really does as well as what the economic climate of the 60's and 70's was vs what it is today. One of the most important jobs of an c-level employee is to mitigate risk. The legal, economic, and legislative swings on a year to year basis are sickening today compared to 30-40 years ago. The world has become vastly more complex, and you are seriously complaining that the people who manage the risk associated exponentially rising complexity are paid more?
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The fact is, there is something SERIOUSLY WRONG with corporate culture today. There was a time when company execs worked for the good of the shareholders, but today - in part due the often incestrious relationship between CEO's and Boards or Directors - all too often the company execs are working for their OWN interests rather than that of the either the workers OR the shareholders. Giving themselves HUGE salaries and bonuses while driving the companies into the ground. This is NOT "free enterprise". It's NOT "a market-driven economic process". It's SYSTEMATIC LOOTING of companies by the CEOs and Board of Directors - and it hasn't just happened at Hostess. It's become a major trend in the corporate world - and it's NOT healthy.
Says anyone who would rather complain about someone else than work harder to make themselves more successful.
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The baker's revolt at Hostess is simply a symptom of a much bigger problem today - company execs who taking advantage of BOTH workers AND shareholders, giving themselves HUGE raises and bonuses (even while often driving companies into the ground) - and both workers AND shareholders are getting sick of it.'
At Hostess the bakers decided "enough is enough".
And yes - I KNOW that the top execs at Hostess are only getting $1/year. I'm ALSO aware that they ONLY DID THAT after they were called out by the companies creditors for the huge raises and bonuses they had given themselves just a year or so ago. In short, they were caught with their "hands in the cookie" jar so they quickly reversed course to avoid criticism (and even possible criminal or civil liability).
Ken
The baker's revolt was a revolt of a group of people who made vastly more than they actually deserved according to the work they were doing. Is someone who mindlessly drives a truck from a warehouse to a store really worth $20/hr? Any one with a pulse and a driver's license can do that job.
Enough is enough? You are working in a factory for a living doing unskilled labor and complaining about making $16/hr? You know what, enough IS enough. Instead of rewarding the unbelievable laziness of workers such as the teamsters and bakers union, let them lose their jobs and actually learn a skill that is of value in a modern, information based economic system. If you are doing a job that any person with a pulse and a high school education can do, you should thank your lucky stars if you make anything above minimum wage.
Earning more money is an individual's responsibility. Stop complaining and study more, train yourself more, and make something more out of yourself.
CEOs and top execs are not paid for how 'hard they work'. They are paid because of the risk they take on in being responsible for so many people. The amount of uncertainty in the economic climate of today puts top leadership in an incredibly difficult position! Anyone could run a company in the '70s, when markets rose regardless of what a person did.
workers are unsatisfied because they seem to think that they deserve to make something beyond what they are intellectually capable of proving they can make. You are worth exactly what you are being paid, no more, no less. If you were actually worth more, you would have found a way to make more money. The average worker needs to stop complaining about those who are more successful than themselves and start trying to think of what they can do to actually earn more money.
Can you post an article that doesn't cherry pick eight companies also involved in fraud cases? Picking the bottom .01% of companies and claiming that it is a 'rampant trend' is hardly a smart thing to do. Is executive pay a problem in a select few companies? Obviously....is it a problem in the vast majority of companies? Absolutely not.
Absolutely! The fact that you think otherwise indicates to me how disjointed your thinking is from what an executive really does as well as what the economic climate of the 60's and 70's was vs what it is today. One of the most important jobs of an c-level employee is to mitigate risk. The legal, economic, and legislative swings on a year to year basis are sickening today compared to 30-40 years ago. The world has become vastly more complex, and you are seriously complaining that the people who manage the risk associated exponentially rising complexity are paid more?
Says anyone who would rather complain about someone else than work harder to make themselves more successful.
The baker's revolt was a revolt of a group of people who made vastly more than they actually deserved according to the work they were doing. Is someone who mindlessly drives a truck from a warehouse to a store really worth $20/hr? Any one with a pulse and a driver's license can do that job.
Enough is enough? You are working in a factory for a living doing unskilled labor and complaining about making $16/hr? You know what, enough IS enough. Instead of rewarding the unbelievable laziness of workers such as the teamsters and bakers union, let them lose their jobs and actually learn a skill that is of value in a modern, information based economic system. If you are doing a job that any person with a pulse and a high school education can do, you should thank your lucky stars if you make anything above minimum wage.
Earning more money is an individual's responsibility. Stop complaining and study more, train yourself more, and make something more out of yourself.
Total nonsense. Just the fact that you think that "Anyone could run a company in the '70s" (or the 80's etc) - clearly you know NOTHING about the period (or likely anything else for that matter) - high inflation, high unemployment, energy crises at home and political upheaval overseas - yeah a piece of cake.
Regarding "risk" - you don't think the WORKERS suffer from the "risk" too?
WHO are the ones' who are the FIRST to get LAID OFF when management badly manages that risk? It's NOT the Execs - it's the WORKERS. THEY are the ones who pay when management screws up the risk factors - and yet it's MANAGEMENT who gets paid the big bucks to manage that risk?
And even when management DOES get laid off - all too often they get an enormous "golden parachute" (for screwing up?????).
And shareholder discontent is NOT just a with a handful of "chery picked" companies - it's a GROWING trend. Look at Viacom:
"...Redstone was awarded $21 million in 2011. That was nearly $6 million more than in the previous year when his Viacom compensation was $15 million. Viacom included 12 months in the compensation calculation last year, whereas 2010 was based on a nine-month period.
"Those are big numbers," said corporate governance expert Charles Elson. "Viacom seems to be paying their executives entrepreneurial returns rather than managerial wages to run an established company with long-term assets. There seems to be a disconnect there..."
Later, after all the bad publicity, compensation there came back down - so the examples I gave are NOT isolated cases. They represent a TREND and there's ALL KINDS of articles on the subject:
"The market is up, and the CEO is rewarded with a huge compensation package. The market is down, and the CEO is rewarded with a huge compensation package. There’s plenty wrong with this picture, not the least of which is the lack of any link between pay and performance, and the absence of any long-term performance measures.... "
""The current levels of compensation for CEOs in corporate America are, in a word, outrageous," Jack Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group, said to me in a conversation several years ago, a conversation that covered a number of topics, including the real levels of growth created by corporate CEOs..."
Get a clue about what's happening in the corporate world. The system is NOT working. There's too much interelationship between the various Boards of Directors and the CEOs. All too often the CEO for company#1 is on Board of Directors of company#2 and the CEO of company#2 is on the Board of Directors of company#3 - who's CEO is in turn back on the Board of Directors for the original Company#1 - and all these folks "scratch each others backs" approving raises and excessive salaries for each other. It's become far to "incestrious".
Ken
Last edited by LordBalfor; 11-21-2012 at 01:23 PM..
Total nonsense. Just the fact that you think that "Anyone could run a company in the '70s" (or the 80's etc) - clearly you know NOTHING about the period (or likely anything else for that matter) - high inflation, high unemployment, energy crises at home and political upheaval overseas - yeah a piece of cake.
High inflation isn't necessarily a problem if you have relative certainty as to the upcoming business cycles. You obviously have never had to do long term planning...
We are now (ie, in the last 15 year) in a period of shifting from an industrial based economy to a knowledge based economy, which is a large portion of the uncertainty in long term planning.
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Regarding "risk" - you don't think the WORKERS suffer from the "risk" too?
WHO are the ones' who are the FIRST to get LAID OFF when management badly manages that risk? It's NOT the Execs - it's the WORKERS. THEY are the ones who pay when management screws up the risk factors - and yet it's MANAGEMENT who gets paid the big bucks to manage that risk?
Who ever said management isn't the first ones to be laid off? Management layoffs are rarely announced to the rank and file employee, and only on occasion make national news stories. With all due respect, have you ever been in a management position?
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And even when management DOES get laid off - all too often they get an enormous "golden parachute" (for screwing up?????).
Do you understand what a golden parachute is? can you please explain it to me. You seem to be somewhat ignorant as to the concept.
Quote:
And shareholder discontent is NOT just a with a handful of "chery picked" companies - it's a GROWING trend. Look at Viacom:
"...Redstone was awarded $21 million in 2011. That was nearly $6 million more than in the previous year when his Viacom compensation was $15 million. Viacom included 12 months in the compensation calculation last year, whereas 2010 was based on a nine-month period.
"Those are big numbers," said corporate governance expert Charles Elson. "Viacom seems to be paying their executives entrepreneurial returns rather than managerial wages to run an established company with long-term assets. There seems to be a disconnect there..."
Later, after all the bad publicity, compensation there came back down - so the examples I gave are NOT isolated cases. They represent a TREND and there's ALL KINDS of articles on the subject:
"The market is up, and the CEO is rewarded with a huge compensation package. The market is down, and the CEO is rewarded with a huge compensation package. There’s plenty wrong with this picture, not the least of which is the lack of any link between pay and performance, and the absence of any long-term performance measures.... "
""The current levels of compensation for CEOs in corporate America are, in a word, outrageous," Jack Bogle, founder of The Vanguard Group, said to me in a conversation several years ago, a conversation that covered a number of topics, including the real levels of growth created by corporate CEOs..."
So now your number of example companies has risen from eight to nine? Good god, the stupidity. A select few outliers does not make a statistical trend.
Quote:
Get a clue about what's happening in the corporate world. The system is NOT working. There's too much interelationship between the various Boards of Directors and the CEOs. All too often the CEO for company#1 is on Board of Directors of company#2 and the CEO of company#2 is on the Board of Directors of company#3 - who's CEO is in turn back on the Board of Directors for the original Company#1 - and all these folks "scratch each others backs" approving raises and excessive salaries for each other. It's become far to "incestrious".
Ken
The only world in which I have worked is the corporate world. I typically see three types of people. The first are the people who do their job well, work their 40 hours per week as per their employment agreement and often rise to some sort of middle management / subject matter expert by the end of their career. The second type of person is the type of person who skates out the second after their boss leaves, does the absolute minimum to get by and blames every bad thing about their own lives on people more successful than themselves. They continually stay towards the bottom of the pack due to their deplorable attitudes and lack of work ethic. The third type of person is the person who works 70-80 hours per week (often without the first two types even realizing they are working more than their contract), volunteer for extra projects for no extra pay, doesn't complain when things go wrong, and eventually rise to senior management status. It is not a 'problem with executives', it is a problem with the mindset of the second type of person - the person who would rather blame the successful person than work harder.
Ken - which of those three people are you? When was the last time you volunteered to work 20 extra hours in a week for no pay just to help the company out? Because those are the kind of people who become successful.
But again - it sure is a hell of a lot easier to blame senior management than work an extra 20 hours per week for no guaranteed extra money, isn't it Ken?
Union contracts and their rules- Wonder Bread delivery truck driver was not allowed to have Twinkies on his truck. Twinkies delivered by another delivery truck driver. But probably had nothing to do with Hostess going out of business LOL
While you're at it, be sure to blame Congress and our asinine protectionist policies, including sugar prices which are roughly TRIPLE those of other countries; small wonder that outsourcing is rampant for any company which uses massive amounts of sugar to make their products, with Brach's Candy, Hershey & Kraft among them.
Labor costs in sugar-centric industries are roughly equal in Canada and the US as the Orange County Register explained on their editorial page today, but the ignorance of the unions involved along with their stupid labor rules (drivers cannot load their own vehicles being one of them), as well as an equally dumb policy which states that the workers who load bread onto trucks cannot load cake and other sweets onto many of those same trucks definitely deserves a substantial portion of the blame.
Unions are experts at killing businesses and putting tens of thousands of folks into the unemployment line, and have a multi-decade history of doing just that.
I say fire all the striking workers. Hire people that want to work and make it a union free business. Why would any logical person be willing to lose their job by striking over employment thru a small compromise.
Union workers should be the best workers, employers should want to hire them, but we all know that most unions protect the laziest of workers just as much as the hardest working ones. I think the owners of hostess should be able to sue each and every striking baker and union rep, if they have to close their business down.
[quote=raison_d'etre;27050488]I say fire all the striking workers. Hire people that want to work and make it a union free business. Why would any logical person be willing to lose their job by striking over employment thru a small compromise.
Union workers should be the best workers, employers should want to hire them, but we all know that most unions protect the laziest of workers just as much as the hardest working ones. I think the owners of hostess should be able to sue each and every striking baker and union rep, if they have to close their business down.[/quote]
High inflation isn't necessarily a problem if you have relative certainty as to the upcoming business cycles. You obviously have never had to do long term planning...
We are now (ie, in the last 15 year) in a period of shifting from an industrial based economy to a knowledge based economy, which is a large portion of the uncertainty in long term planning.
Who ever said management isn't the first ones to be laid off? Management layoffs are rarely announced to the rank and file employee, and only on occasion make national news stories. With all due respect, have you ever been in a management position?
Do you understand what a golden parachute is? can you please explain it to me. You seem to be somewhat ignorant as to the concept.
So now your number of example companies has risen from eight to nine? Good god, the stupidity. A select few outliers does not make a statistical trend.
The only world in which I have worked is the corporate world. I typically see three types of people. The first are the people who do their job well, work their 40 hours per week as per their employment agreement and often rise to some sort of middle management / subject matter expert by the end of their career. The second type of person is the type of person who skates out the second after their boss leaves, does the absolute minimum to get by and blames every bad thing about their own lives on people more successful than themselves. They continually stay towards the bottom of the pack due to their deplorable attitudes and lack of work ethic. The third type of person is the person who works 70-80 hours per week (often without the first two types even realizing they are working more than their contract), volunteer for extra projects for no extra pay, doesn't complain when things go wrong, and eventually rise to senior management status. It is not a 'problem with executives', it is a problem with the mindset of the second type of person - the person who would rather blame the successful person than work harder.
Ken - which of those three people are you? When was the last time you volunteered to work 20 extra hours in a week for no pay just to help the company out? Because those are the kind of people who become successful.
But again - it sure is a hell of a lot easier to blame senior management than work an extra 20 hours per week for no guaranteed extra money, isn't it Ken?
LOL
You complain that I "only" listed "nine" examples for you AFTER I ALREADY listed data showing the AVERAGE Exec salary had climbed out of proportion to both stock values of companies (ie the DOW and S&P) AND average worker-bee salaries. What part of AVERAGE do you NOT understand? You CLAIM to be an exec and you can't even grasp the idea of "average"??????
Nor is it JUST "nine companies" where shareholders have become upset with sky-high top exec pay. Plenty of other examples out there such as Yahoo, UnitedHealth, United Natural Foods, Sanmina-Sci, Saks Inc, Sprint, Qwest Communications, Legg Mason, Lennar, KB Home, Constellation Energy, and Apple - ALL of which have had shareholder grumblings about excessive exec pay (and a resulting "adjustment" in exec compensation).
So, why do you think that top execs deserve so much more today (relative to both the worker-bees AND the shareholders) than the did in the past? You claim first that top execs deserve so much more than they did in the past because the business world is more risky today than in the past but your diatribe did nothing to PROVE that (let alone prove that it's "so much more risky" today that the execs deserve SO MUCH more pay) NOR did you prove that top execs face a greater risk of layoff than the worker bees - let alone prove that that risk of exec layoff is so much greater today than it's been in the past that execs deserve to be compensated 10 times or more (relative to worker-bee pay) then they have back then.
Sure - top execs work LONG hours to get to the top - NO ONE is DENYING that - but top execs worked long hours 20 years ago too - as they did 30 years ago and 40 years ago - and yet today they are paid VASTLY more relative to both total company value (as measured by the S&P) AND the average worker-bee salary. There has been a gradual shift of money AWAY from both the worker bees AND the shareholders TOWARDS a relatively small group of people at the top of major firms.
The issue isn't that top exec deserve MORE than the worker-bees. OF COURSE they do. That's NOT the issue. The issue is "do top execs deserves so much more today - relative to BOTH the worker-bees AND the shareholders than they did in the past" - because THAT is what's happened. The salaries of those handful of top execs has climbed wayyyyyyy out of proportion of both worker-bee compensation AND company value (as measured by the total stock value) It seems to me that the rise in top exec pay should be in line with at least ONE of those measures. If their compensation is way out of line with the value they are returning to the company, HOW are they worth the salaries they are being paid? It's certainly not showing up in the values returned to the SHAREHOLDERS.
Ken
Last edited by LordBalfor; 11-22-2012 at 06:49 AM..
Something else to consider with CEO and high level exec pay is it is salary. Just because you don't see the CEO doesn't mean he or she isn't working. Even when they're home they're getting work done. Sometimes their work is studying up on the latest changes to government laws, regulations, taxes, and fees. I've seen our hospital's CEO working weekends trying to catch up on all the latest info. Healthcare is a fast changing industry.
Hostess execs failed horribly. But the baker's union certainly didn't help. I wish those unions all the luck in trying to negotiate a contract with whomever buys Hostess. Most likely, they'll be bought out by a company who already has their own non-union factories and distribution network and wants the license for the Hostess products so they can produce them using their famous names and sell off the rest. They've strikes themselves out of work just before the holidays. Great job idiots.
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