CEO Pay: A Teeny-Weeny Secret for Rich Folk

The House Financial Services Committee has voted to repeal a provision in last year’s Dodd-Frank financial reform law requiring public corporations to report the ratio between CEO and median worker pay.

It’s no secret that U.S. worker’s wages stagnated while the economy doubled in size since the early 1980s. As economist Robert Reich explains with uncommon clarity and brevity, most of those gains went to America’s wealthiest families who can and do purchase lawmakers, as this latest slap in the face to American workers plainly shows. –ARK

Michael Winship via CounterPunch:

The annual “Executive Excess” survey from the progressive Institute for Policy Studies last September found that back in the seventies, only a handful of top American executives earned more than thirty times what their workers made. In 2009, “CEO’s of major US corporations averaged 263 times the average compensation of American workers.” And a USA Today analysis earlier this year found that while median CEO pay jumped 27% last year, workers in private industry saw their salaries grow by just 2.1 percent.

So how are many of those corporations addressing this gross inequity? By trying to cover it up.

Last year’s Dodd-Frank financial reform legislation requires publicly traded companies to report the median of annual total compensation for workers, the total compensation of the CEO, and the ratio between the two. Big business has lobbied loudly against the reporting requirement, and on Wednesday, the House Financial Services Committee voted 33-21 to repeal it.

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