You hear it all the time: CEO's taking a huge raise while at the same time employees either lose jobs or struggle along with a pittance. If you're waiting for corporate boards to do something about it, you'll be waiting forever. If you're waiting for a stockholder revolt, well, I hope you packed a lunch.
So what can we do about it? We can pass a law.
No officer of a publicly-traded corporation may take as compensation, including all salary and benefits, an amount greater than fifty (50) times that of the lowest paid employee.
This is an issue that Republicans, who live and die at the whim of these CEOs, will have a hard time supporting. And it's an issue that can help us win seats in 2006.
If you're looking for an issue that irritates people on the left, right, and center, this is it. Since I've become known as the "office liberal," people occasionally stop by to impart their conservative "knowledge" in hopes that I might give in and go over to the dark side. But even the most rabid of these right-wing evangelists agrees on this one: CEO's are taking one heck of a lot more than their fair share.
At my company, we've experienced this personally. Despite the biggest year in the history of our company, employee raises were held to 2%. Not so at the top. The CEO, who already made multiple millions per year, got a 130% salary increase and another massive stock bonus.
This isn't a unique phenomenon. Take a look at one of those nice Republian "heartland" states, Indiana. There, CEO's at the top 30 companies took 218% jump in total compensation during 2003. I was particularly impressed with Sidney Taurel, at Eli Lilly, who took a puny 5,664.16% raise. In the same year, employee increases at these companies ranged from 2 to 4%.
And just because Enron and it's follies are out of the news doesn't mean these folks are backing away. During 2003, they really turned up the heat. Raises for CEOs at the nation's largest companies more than doubled in 2003. The Corporate Library, a company that analyzes corporations for investors, reported that the median rate for CEOs at the nation's 500 largest publicly held companies increased by 22 percent, compared with a nine percent increase in 2002.
We are being robbed as employees, as investors, and as citizens, and we have to take action. The modern CEO puts the robber barons of the late nineteenth century to shame. This is one of the biggest factors in concentrating more and more wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people.
We have to put on the brakes, before we're broke.
Support the CEO Salary cap. If the top dogs want a raise, that's fine -- they can go up just as fast as the people at the bottom. If they want more, they can always try to take the company private. But a public company must serve the company trust, and that means fair compensation across the board.
Put Democrats on the side of the working people, let Republicans line up to save the fat cats. And watch us rebuild our natural constituency.