The
great news story about Dan Price, the founder of Gravity Systems, and his decision to pay a $70,000 annual minimum wage at his credit card processing company was
reported by
The New York Times with this interesting tidbit thrown in:
Under a financial overhaul passed by Congress in 2010, the Securities and Exchange Commission was supposed to require all publicly held companies to disclose the ratio of C.E.O. pay to the median pay of all other employees, but it has so far failed to put it in effect. Corporate executives have vigorously opposed the idea, complaining it would be cumbersome and costly to implement.
Yes, five years after the Dodd-Frank law was signed—including the provision that the SEC was supposed to require CEO pay disclosure—the rule hasn't been completed. Actually, that's not quite true. It was written in September 2013, but still hasn't been finalized, 18 months later. And Democrats who passed the provision
are fed up:
"This is just another example of the SEC not acting on the authority we gave them under Wall Street reform," Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) told HuffPost in a statement on Friday. "Since the legislation was signed into law, efforts by the SEC to implement these reforms have moved at a crawl."
Fifteen Senate Democrats, including Franken and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), signed a letter to SEC Chair Mary Jo White in December, calling on the agency to finalize the rule by March 31, 2015. The agency blew through the deadline without bringing up the rule for a vote. Corporate executives from dozens of different industries have pressured the SEC to delay the rule.
Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), who also signed the December letter, told HuffPost she was "disappointed" that the SEC was slow-walking "much-needed transparency."
"This data will be useful for policymakers and academics alike as we attempt to combat wage stagnation and income inequality," Baldwin said.
You have to wonder who the SEC is serving. Actually, you don't, and you can bet it's not Congress, or the government or the people. You see, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—which
lobbies the SEC—says it would cost more than $700 million annually for companies to come up with that data, because figuring out median pay for employees is just so hard. Do you have to count overseas employees, too? Do you have to count contractors?
The SEC says that the cost to business will be closer to $73 million annually—for all of corporate America. Or, basically, how much money the CEOs of just a handful of companies—Apple, JP Morgan Chase, Viacom—made in 2014. Yep, having to comply with this rule will surely bankrupt big business.