Pat Barcas
Staff writer
Thursday, April 18, 2013
How about a pay rate of $46,231 per hour? That’s what Oracle CEO Larry Ellison makes. Or how about the more modest pay of $14,433 per hour? That’s what News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch is pulling in.
The AFL-CIO wants people to know that while the wages of the average worker stagnate, CEO pay has continued to rise, widening the wealth gap in America between the one percent and the 99 percent.
“American CEOs continue to do very well for themselves while average Americans struggle,” said AFL-CIO Richard Trumka via a teleconference April 15, tax day.
Trumka announced in Washington, D.C. the launch of the AFL-CIO’s new interactive website, Executive PayWatch 2013, which serves to track and display public S&P 500 CEO pay. The data is compiled from 327 companies based on SEC filings, and aims to post CEO pay for all 500 companies as the data is made public.
“Not surprisingly, the gap between CEO and worker pay has increased,” said Trumka. “Now, S&P 500 CEOs make 354 times what the average worker makes. This disparity has increased dramatically over the last 10 years.”
Trumka said the gap in pay is up from 281-to-1 in 2002 and 42-to-1 in 1982, and he wants to make sure people know about it through the PayWatch site, which is what the AFL-CIO calls “the most comprehensive searchable online database tracking the excessive pay of CEOs of the nation’s largest companies.” It offers visitors to the website the unique ability to compare their own pay to the pay of top executives.
In addition, this year’s PayWatch will look at CEOs of the shadowy “Fix the Debt” and Business Roundtable groups, which are pushing for more tax cuts for corporations and the super wealthy, while calling for benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare programs. The newly designed site also includes an interactive map that allows users to compare the pay gap between CEO and workers in other advanced countries.
“We are calling out the hypocrisy of rich CEOs who have the gall to ask for corporate tax cuts to be paid for by squeezing the retirement security of working America. The American public deserves to know the truth about their self-serving agenda,” said Trumka. “We think those at the top need to pay more. At least their fare share.”
According to federal records, Trumka makes about $302,000 in total pay per year, or just under 9 times that of the average worker pay of $34,645 last year.
To visit the Executive PayWatch site, go to www.aflcio.org/Corporate-Watch/CEO-Pay-and-You
Pat Barcas’ e-mail address is pat@foxvalleylabornews.com.