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from the because-when-they-mess-up-they-only-have-a-golden-parachute...wait-a-minute dept.
Why are CEOs of U.S. firms paid 320 times as much as their workers?:
Last August, Jamelle Brown, a technician at Research Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri, contracted Covid-19 while on the job sanitizing and sterilizing rooms in the facility's emergency department. Luckily, his case wasn't severe, and after having quarantined, he was back at work.
Upon his return, Brown was named Employee of the Month in his unit and given a gift voucher for use in the hospital cafeteria. The amount: $6.
"That stung me to the bone," said Brown, who makes $13.77 an hour and has worked for almost four years at the hospital, owned by the corporate giant HCA Healthcare. "It made me sit back and say, 'This place doesn't care for me.'"
Research Medical's owner, HCA Healthcare Inc., is a profitable, publicly traded network of 185 hospitals and 121 freestanding surgery centers in 20 states and England. Even in the year of Covid-19, 2020, the company generated $51.5 billion in revenue and increased its pretax earnings by 3.6 percent. Its shares are up by 14 percent this year, versus 10 percent on the Standard & Poor's 500 index.
That performance helped boost the total compensation HCA's chief executive, Samuel N. Hazen, received last year to $30.4 million, a 13 percent rise from 2019, documents show. Although Hazen's salary was 5.8 percent lower in 2020, the total worth of his compensation package equaled 556 times the compensation received by the median employee at HCA — $54,651.
The figures highlight the growing CEO pay gap, a problem among many public companies according to some investors and workers and even a few CEOs. In 2019, for example, the average pay ratio among 350 large American companies was 320-to-1, according to research by the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, D.C. In 1989, the average was 61-to-1.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @11:40AM (7 children)
There are a limited number of older white males available to fill CEO slots, while Racialized populations keep growing like rabbits. Economics 101 tells us what will happen to their respective salaries.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @12:08PM (2 children)
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @12:22PM (1 child)
As opposed to stuffing unqualified women and ethnics into positions just to meet a checklist. Remind me who thinks they're entitled...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @03:50PM
Methinks your argument would be quite a bit stronger if you could demonstrate that those crusty old white guys were actually better qualified than women and "ethnics". Just sayin'.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday April 12 2021, @02:09PM (3 children)
I just want to mention The Peter Principle.
It has been hinted to me several times that I could move from senior developer into management.
I have pointed out that:
* I do not want to be in charge of human beings, there are others who are skilled at that
* The Peter Principle. I could move from what I am competent at into a role I would be incompetent at
* While I am all for increasing shareholder value, my focus is on how to make technology do that, rather than other means of increasing shareholder value that CxOs are more suited for
* There should be a career track for a developer without having to go into management
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 12 2021, @03:58PM (1 child)
There is. You just end up with a lower salary than your peers.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 12 2021, @05:00PM
That is true.
Some peers who go into management are not so good at it, which is a more vulnerable place to be than being highly regarded at what you might have done in your previous position.
Managers get rated too. And even by people they manage.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sjames on Monday April 12 2021, @04:19PM
The fundamental fail there is that management is seen as ABOVE the roles that actually drive the company's value. So much so that a wet behind the ears new to management manager (been a manager for a whole hour) is seen as a step above a developer with 20 years experience. This in spite of the fact that a department would be better off making the senior developer the manager pro-temp than it would making an MBA manager the senior developer pro-temp.
Also worth considering, what will most impact company performance, the CEO decides to go golfing all day and some paper has to wait a day to be signed, or the custodian decides to golf all day and turning the building's HVAC back on has to wait a day.