CEO Pay Rises To $12.7M Even As Pandemic Ravages Economy

[appalachiablue]

Last edited Sun May 30, 2021, 02:12 AM - Edit history (1)

- From Left: Brian Niccol, CEO of Chipotle; Advance Auto Parts CEO Tom Greco; Carnival Corp. CEO Arnold Donald. Pay packages rose yet again in 2020 for the CEOs of the biggest U.S. companies, even with the pandemic.
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- AP News, By Stan Choe, May 28, 2021. -Excerpts:

NEW YORK (AP) — As COVID-19 ravaged the world last year, CEOs’ big pay packages seemed to be under as much threat as everything else. Fortunately for those CEOs, many had boards of directors willing to see the pandemic as an extraordinary event beyond their control. Across the country, boards made changes to the intricate formulas that determine their CEOs’ pay — and other moves — that helped make up for losses created by the crisis. As a result, pay packages rose yet again last year for the CEOs of the biggest companies, even though the pandemic sent the economy to its worst quarter on record and slashed corporate profits around the world.
The median pay package for a CEO at an S&P 500 company hit $12.7 million in 2020, according to data analyzed by Equilar for The Associated Press.

That means half the CEOs in the survey made more, and half made less. It’s 5% more than the median pay for that same group of CEOs in 2019 and an acceleration from the 4.1% climb in last year’s survey. At Advance Auto Parts, CEO Tom Greco’s pay for 2020 was in line to take a hit because of a mountain of pandemic-related costs. Extended sick-pay benefits and expenses for hand sanitizer and other safety equipment totaling $60 million dragged on two key measurements that help set his performance pay. But because the board’s compensation committee saw these costs as extraordinary and unanticipated, it excluded them from its calculations. That helped Greco’s total compensation rise 4.7% last year to $8.1 million..

- WORKERS: Meanwhile, regular workers also saw gains, but not at the same rate as their bosses. And millions of others lost their jobs. Wages and benefits for all workers outside the government rose just 2.6% last year. That’s according to U.S. government data that ignore the effect of workers shifting between different industries. It’s an important distinction because more lower-wage earners lost their jobs as the economy shut down than professionals who could work from home.. “This should have been a year for shared sacrifice,” said Sarah Anderson, who directs the global economy project at the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies. “Instead it became a year of shielding CEOs from risk while it was the frontline employees who paid the price.”

- RATTLING AT THE GATES: Progressives in Washington are pushing for rules changes to narrow the gap between CEOs and workers. Companies have to show how much more their CEO makes than their typical worker, and the median in this year’s survey was 172 times. That’s up from 167 times for those same CEOs last year, and it means employees must work lifetimes to make what their CEO does in just a year. One bill in Congress proposes to raise taxes on corporations where the CEO makes 50 times or more than the median worker at the company. At some companies, shareholders are pushing back on compensation packages approved by the board..And if there’s anything that investors on Wall Street care about, it’s how well they’re getting compensated...

- More, Photos/Graphics, https://apnews.com/article/ceo-pay-rises-again-b1d87eb36ac921a159268a6b830fc308
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- CEO Pay Rises, Ave. Worker Pay Stagnates, This Week, Year, Decade: Daily Kos
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/5/29/2032418/-CEO-pay-rises-average-worker-pay-stagnates-this-week-year-decade-in-the-war-on-workers#comment_81042798
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- EPI, Prelim. Data: CEO Pay Rose Nearly 16% In 2020, Ave. Worker Comp. Rose 1.8%
https://www.epi.org/blog/preliminary-data-show-ceo-pay-jumped-nearly-16-in-2020-while-average-worker-compensation-rose-1-8/

[brewens]

1. It's gotten easier for them to "earn" raises and bonuses since we stopped expecting them to do a

good job.

[appalachiablue]

2. Easy street could experience a reckoning,

which could benefit many.