Top bosses (CEOs) get 21% raise (in IA)

[leQ]

The bosses of Iowa's largest companies received an average 21 percent pay increase last year, dwarfing the raises of the average Iowan.

But the Des Moines Sunday Register's survey of 2004 executive pay found that bosses are increasingly getting paid based on their performance. Chicago compensation consultant Donald Delves reviewed the numbers for the 20 largest publicly traded companies based in Iowa and said he saw few instances of pay failing to track profits and share prices.

{snip}

The increase in CEO pay nationally and in Iowa stands out compared with average workers. In the past year, the average Iowa worker's pay, including overtime, rose by 4.3 percent, according to Iowa Workforce Development.

Brandon Rees of the AFL-CIO estimated that average CEO pay stood at 42 times that of the average worker in 1980. By 1990 that ratio had expanded to 85 times, and today, he said it is 300 times more than what the average worker makes.

the Des Moines Register

[Demeter]

1. How Nice For Them

When the time comes to plead for leniency, or ransom, or bribes, they'll be ready.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. If the parasites aren't careful, they will kill the host

This issue of ludicrous and idiotic CEO and top executive compensation has been around for years and has gotten exponentially worse as the statistics in the original post prove.

But, it has risen to levels that I think are nothing short of fraudulent and fiscally irresponsible to the larger class of shareholders. Stock ownership in this country will be (or already is)reduced to a Ponzi scheme where the top skims off the financial assets of their companies and then go blithely off to their private islands while their employees pensions fail and the 401Ks who invested in the stock also crash. There is no need for this type of compensation in any corporation anywhere.

[Warpy]

4. I read that the average pay increase for the CEO of a

Fortune 500 company has gone up 45% in the past year, and that they average over $100,000,000 per year.

Folks, that used to be called embezzlement, but since they've got buddies on boards of directors who are themselves CEOs of other corporations, it's become a closed system that's been barely legalized by these scumbags rewarding each other through boards of directors THEY sit on.

This is a feeding frenzy at the top. Look at your disappearing health insurance coverage, your disappearing pensions, your disappearing wage purchasing power. That's where it's going.

[Thor_MN]

16. There needs to be regulations preventing corporate board circle jerks

There should be more than 6 degrees of separation between any board memebers. That is, CEO A should not be able to sit on the board of Corporation B whose CEO B sits on the board of Corporation A.

Also, since Timmay Pawlenty, the *co wannabe Governor of Minnesota thinks that any new taxes that hit all people are bad (He prefers to call them "fees" and should only hit a small group of people based on their own choices) there should be a "CEO fee." No one is forced to be a CEO, they have more income than they need and a 40% "fee" based on their total compensation (income, options, perks, all of it) wouldn't hurt them in the least.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

3. Welcome to the new feudal American Empire

All Hail, King George. Thanks for all the fish!

[cascadiance]

5. We're having the same problem here in San Diego...

This article just came out in today's paper hilighting similar differences of pay between wealthy CEOs and the average worker, where the average CEO pay rose 10.4% and the average worker's salary went up less than 1%.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/business/20050522-9999-m1b22execpay.html

The CEO of Qualcomm took home $44 million in salary, bonus, options, and other compensation, an increase of $18 million over last year. That's jus f'in nutz!

[Robworld]

6. I'm shocked that the people in power would give themselves a giant raise

n/t

http://www.dumdumgoestothecircus.com /

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

7. Greed, the new American moral compass.

[Jensen]

8. This greed virus is rampant in the New Amrica, workers loose at every turn

The Ceo for United Airlines gave himself and his top management a 1.2 million dollar bonus just recently, while the comapny is in bankruptcy.

Another "Liberal" Judge Wedoff,just dumped the employees pension to the tax payers, while the CEO gets to keep his 4.2 million dollar retirement pension!

Please HELP see the thread on this, keep it kicked and sign the petition, Thank you
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3705963

[Occulus]

9. petitions won't work

the ONLY thing that will get their attention at this point is large numbers of people storming their buildings, refusing to be stopped by security, and invading their boardrooms to complete bring a halt to ALL the board meetings.

It's time we started crashing the party. It's time we started refusing to allow them to make their business decisions by going in, moblike, and ending their meetings.

[Jensen]

10. Maybe you are right but who would support that action.....

After all WE didn't do it when our votes for the elections where stolen.
I believe that as more Americans see what is happening in this country and the fact that the rich are richer and the poor are out of on the street, you will see a massive revolt that even with all their security cameras, security fences, it will not keep out the little people.

They are trying to turn us into a 3rd world country and we are to used to a different kind of life...so for now petitions will have to do!

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

11. You are actually invited to crash the party IF you are a shareholder

Often, employees ARE shareholders throught their 401Ks, etc. If you own stock as an individual, you can go. It's time to read those proxy statements and attend those shareholder meetings and talk about the issue of executive compensation.Rent the Solid Gold Cadillac with Judy Holiday before you go.

There is something else people could do, and that is really think about where they invest their money. Why should the shareholders of GE pay for Jack Welch's toilet paper? Why can't Jack Welch pay for his own toilet paper with the money he has earned and is continuing to earn as former head of GE?

You can make a statement with your dollars. Put your money in bonds and CDs until corporate America decides to stop picking the pocket and fleecing their employees and shareholders.

[Trillo]

12. Yes, but...

...in those meetings it's not "one person, one vote", its "one share, one vote". When one figures that preferred share's vote is often "1 preferred share= 10,000 common shares" (the number is defined by the company's own issuance and can be found in SEC filings), the corporate voting rights issue becomes "most of the time insiders have enough votes to do their will regardless of majority proxy opposition."

It all hinges on how "majority" is defined. Corporate's proxy game is rigged to benefit a few.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

13. That's exactly why some of the larger pension funds should

become involved. They have enormous holdings and they DO have a voice. Employee voices could be HUGE and they should be huge. Someone has not communicated with the rank and file about this.

Think about any normal IPO this way - Someone has a good model or product or service and they open themselves up to a PUBLIC OFFERING. This means that you will accept the dollars of the general public which will bring you millions and millions of dollars that you were not able to raise from private sources. Your job is to return value to those shareholders , either in the form of dividends per stock owned or increased value of each share dollar. Nowhere did those shareholders think they were pledging their personal hard-earned dollars so that you would take them and use them as your personal cookie jar and put a gigantic percentage of those dollars into your and your co-horts pockets. And then you bleed the company dry and the value drops and the shareholders are left with nothing but you have made off with a lot of public moola. It's a confidence scheme, no more, no less. That is what passes as the stock market and American industry today.

[Jensen]

22. My money has been OUT of UAL for about 8 years and I do NOT regret it!

[AP]

21. It's not so much greed as it that there's no counterbalance to corp. power

You have a government serving the interests of the government. You have labor organizations that are either being eviscerated of their last vestiges of power or they're not bothering to act smartly, you have consumer groups that have no power, and, probably on the bottom of the pile (according to Arthur Levitt) are investors who have no power to tell corporations how to behave, even though they own the companies.

Corporations are pushing, and nobody is pushing back saying no.

[Ksec]

14. This kinda shlt makes me freakin angry as hell

Outsourcing our jobs, wages dropping bennies non existent and the CEOs are rewarded? GRRRRRRR

[Ksec]

15. It can be stopped by

stop making the shareholders needs above the health of the company. Make them part of a team. Like a waterboy on the team. They get rewarded only if the team does well. They are not the be all to end all. Theyll still invest and itll actually make their investments safer when we improve the health of a company .

[bvar22]

17. Houston showed America how to get started last week.

The Halliburton Board was met by protestors in the streets!!!
Many arrests.

[lovuian]

18. This is setting a precedence for a Great Deprssion!!!

When the wealth of a nation is own by a few a Depression occurs!!!

[geckosfeet]

19. come on,, trickle down baby,, trickle down on me

How cool,, and I have no job, no health insurance, and I am way too old to join the service even if it was an option.

When do the demonstrations start ?

[AP]

20. It really is starting to fee like 1929 all over again.

Why don't people care that such dramatic polarizations of wealth are bad for the economy?