AFL-CIO Site Reveals Runaway CEO Pay
April 23, 2013
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Did you know that the CEOs of the “Campaign to Fix the Debt” – the corporate front group that wants to cut Social Security and Medicare and lower corporate taxes – have parked more than $418 billion of untaxed corporate profits overseas? Overall it is estimated that U.S. corporations have as much as $1.9 trillion sheltered overseas. That would make a nice down payment on fixing the debt.
Read all about these facts and more in the 2013 edition of the AFL-CIO’s Executive PayWatch. PayWatch not only shines a light on the “Fix the Debt” hypocrisy, but it also explores the huge wage gap between CEO pay and the average U.S. worker.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka notes that since 1982, the CEO versus worker pay gap has jumped from 42 times more than the average rank-and-file worker to 2012’s record 354 times greater. In real dollars, a CEO of a Standard and Poor’s 500 Index company averaged $12.3 million a year in total compensation, while the average rank-and-file worker earned $36,654.
“Runaway CEO pay is fueling economic inequality in the U.S. and undermining our shared prosperity,” says Trumka. “In addition, high levels of CEO pay can encourage excessive risk by CEOs, which hurts the long-term prospects of the companies they run.”
PayWatch unveils several new features this year, including the multimillion dollar nest eggs of the leading Business Roundtable CEOs—the same group that wants to cut Social Security benefits, the records of 40 of the largest mutual funds and their votes on CEO pay proposals for the companies in which they invest, the CEO to worker pay gap around the world, and trends in CEO pay.
As in past years, visitors to PayWatch can compare their pay and benefit package to that of a CEO, search the CEO pay database and take action to rein-in CEO pay.
Click here to take a closer look.
