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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: 5, Interesting) by stretch611 on Monday April 12 2021, @12:01PM
As the parent AC said... The boards determine executive pay. Whats more is that in many cases, the CEO often is on the board for other companies and gives raises to CEOs who sit on his board in one huge circle jerk.
And CEOs never do anything wrong... If profits are up in a good economy, it is because of the CEO, not the economy. If profits are down in a down economy, its the economy's fault; not the CEO. And if a CEO is in the middle of a big f-up that ends up being so bad that the mainstream media reports... He will step down as CEO.... But of course retain his seats on the board in other companies. Only until he is forgotten and rises to become CEO of a different corporation.
And ofc, none of a companies actual workers have the experience to sit on a board, so their is no more hiring from within... That died 50 years ago. All board members must be hired from outside boards unless they happen to share the same last name of an existing board member. (but that is always a co-incidence.)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P