TJ Walker and other speakers discuss CEO pay, which hit $14.5 million median for top 200 companies. Shareholders are voting down raises while workers face job losses and flat wages. The conversation covers whether companies should cut CEO pay when profits drop or just make it look fairer.
Chapters
From New York, here's T.J. walker.
Top CEO pay is up again.
A survey of the top 200 publicly.
Traded corporations reveals that the the median.
Salary of these top CEOs is $14.5 million.
14. Not a lifetime, not over 10 years.
But for one year.
This is up 5% in the last year.
At a time when the economy has.
Been just hemorrhaging jobs and we are.
On the verge of another worldwide recession.
Increasingly, when shareholders are given the option.
Of voting on pay raises for CEOs.
They are voting down.
Now, I'm not saying that CEOs need.
To have their salary tied three times.
The average factory worker.
It is a unique talent to be able to manage thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of employees.
As a CEO myself of other startups.
That have not been successful, I have.
A unique appreciation for how relatively rare.
And difficult this talent is. However, there is a crisis of confidence.
In the marketplace and it's not just because of all the suckers who got.
Into Facebook's IPO and lost money.
There is a sense among average consumers.
Investors, the public, the bottom 90%, that.
The rules are stacked against them in.
The United States and increasingly in the world economy.
And when they see people at a.
Certain level seemingly getting wealthier beyond their.
Wildest dreams, without any correlation to success.
The bottom line hiring more people, it.
Just brings about such resentment.
Corporate America and Fortune 500 companies around.
The world at some point have got.
To be concerned about the peasants coming with pitchforks, coming to not only the factories, but coming to the headquarters, the CEOs headquarters, coming to their mansions. And no amount of private security guards.
Pinkertons and bodyguards are going to protect them.
There's going to have to be a.
Greater effort put into at least the appearance of fairness with pay.
When workers are fired year after year.
No salary increases, and CEO's pay just goes up, up. If nothing else, some corporations are going to have to make a bigger play.
Of occasionally reducing their CEOs pay when profits are down.
If you can get wildly rich when.
Profits go up and stock prices go.
Up, there needs to be some countervailing.
Practice going on where your pay cut is shut. If that doesn't happen, there is a.
Real danger for corporate governance where either.
Government will step in or actual citizen uprisings.
