(The cartoon above was drawn by Mike Luckovich for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.)Yesterday I posted about the large corporations that paid their workers the least (with many of their workers getting wages at or close to the minimum wage -- meaning they remain in poverty even though they work hard at a full-time job). Today, we look at that problem in a slightly different way -- by looking at the CEO to worker pay ratio.
The Bloomberg News (a business-oriented news publication) has just looked at this problem and published the results of what they found -- and its not a pretty picture. Thanks to stagnant worker wages and growing CEO compensation, the CEO to worker pay ratio has increased by a whopping 20% in just three years (2009 through 2012). The average for all U.S. corporations is now a 204 to 1 ratio (but is much larger than that for the biggest corporations).
Corporate apologists will try to tell you that this huge CEO to worker ratio is necessary to get and keep the best executive talent. That is a lie. The United States has the largest CEO to worker salary ratio in the developed world, but that doesn't mean they also have the most talented CEOs. The Japanese corporations have done very well (and in many instances even outperformed U.S. corporations), and yet their CEO to worker pay ratio is only about 35 to 1 -- not even close to the outrageous ratio in the United States.
And some ratios are much worse than the ridiculous 204 to 1 average ratio. Bloomberg News has compiled a list of the 250 corporations with the worst CEO to worker ratios (and I urge you to check out their whole list). I will just list here the ten corporations with the worst ratios:
1. JC Penny Co. (1,795 to 1)
2. Abercrombie & Fitch Co. (1,640 to 1)
3. Simon Property Group Inc. (1,594 to 1)
4. Oracle Corp. (1,287 to 1)
5. Starbucks Corp. (1,135 to 1)
6. CBS Corp. (1,111 to 1)
7. Ralph Lauren Corp. (1,083 to 1)
8. Nike Inc. (1,050 to 1)
9. Discovery Communications Inc. (833 to 1)
10. Yum! Brands Inc. (819 to 1)
