CEOs make 230 - 1000 times more than I do.

[Catshrink]

I got curious about how a CEO's salary compares to mine so I did a little research. Looking at these numbers, the hourly wage of an auto worker, whether $35, 50, or 75, is nothing compared to the obscene amounts the executives make.

I looked up the salaries then divided them by 2080 hours/year (the standard number of hours for a 40 hour/week employee). The website I used for my data allowed me to compare their salaries with mine. I used $38,000, the average salary for a teacher in Arizona.

Here is the link to the AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch page. These are the salaries reported to the SEC for the year 2007.

http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/

(Sorry about the formatting. I don't know how to make this into a table in html.)

Company / CEO / SEC salary / per hour / # of catshrinks

Auto Companies:
Ford Motor Co / Alan Mulally / $21,670,674 / $10418.59 / 570
General Motors / G. Richard Wagoner / $14,415,914 / $6930.73 / 379

Drug Companies:
Abbot Labs / Miles D. White / $33,346,260 / $16031.86 / 877
Bristol-Myers Squibb / James M. Cornelius / $11,311,922 / $5438.42 / 297
Pfizer Inc / Jeffrey B. Kindler / $9,513,440 / $4573.77 / 250
Schering-Plough / Fred Hassan / $30,323,752 / $14578.73 / 797

Financial Companies:
AIG, Inc. / Martin J. Sullivan / $14,330,736 / $6889.78 / 377
Citigroup, Inc / Charles O. Prince / $15,105,376 / $7262.20 / 397
Bank of America / Kenneth D. Lewis / $24,844,040 $11944.25 / 653
Wachovia Corp / G. Kennedy Thompson / $21,198,510 / $10191.59 / 557
Wells Fargo / John Stumpf / $12,568,917 / $6042.75 / 330

Conglomerates:
3M Company / George W. Buckley / $17,359,336 /$8345.83 / 456
GE / Jeffrey R. Immelt / $19,591,580 / $9419.03 / 515
PPG / Charles E. Bunch / $10,496,642 / $5046.46 / 276
United Technologies / George A. L. David / $38,073,226 / $18304.44 / 1001

Food:
H.J. Heinz Company / William R. Johnson / $22,692,753 / $10909.98 / 597
Kraft Foods / Irene B. Rosenfeld / $11,299,535 / $5432.47 / 297

Retail:
CVS Caremark / Thomas M. Ryan / $26,097,790 $12547.01 / 686
Sears Holdings Corp / Aylwin B. Lewis / $8,888,682 $4273.40 / 233
Target Corp / Robert J. Ulrich / $12,185,404 $5858.37 / 320
Wal-Mart / H. Lee Scott / $31,597,424 $15191.07 / 831
Walgreens / Jeffrey A. Rein / $9,752,569 / $4688.74 / 256

[SharonAnn]

1. Umm, I get it all except the "# of catshrinks"

[Catshrink]

2. That would be me...

the number of times my salary that the CEO's represents. They could hire that many teachers for their salaries -- or I would need to work that many years to make that amount.

[Sgent]

3. Not that it makes that much of a difference

(the multiples would still be huge), but I know of no CEO working 40 hours a week. 60 is probably the norm, with 80 not outside of reasonable either.

[Catshrink]

5. I am a teacher and I work at least 60 hours a week too.

[Deja Q]

9. Does that count playing golf with the buddies?

[madmom]

10. Also, when I think of "work" I really don't see Rick Wagoner "working" and for that kind of money I

would at least like to see him sweat a little.:shrug:

[sarcasmo]

4. Greedy Pigs, the whole bunch of them.

[Catshrink]

6. Yep. What do they do with all that money anyway?

[Waiting For Everyman]

7. Well done, Catshrink!

That's the point. Those are the salaries that need reducing (taxing).

I'm sure some enterprising hotshot managers somewhere could be persuaded to replace them at a lot less Carshrinks - after all, there are a lot of people looking for jobs nowadays. That's only good business, right? Finding cheap labor? They should be all for that idea.

[Catshrink]

8. Thanks!

Cheap foreign labor? CEOs of Japanese companies don't make nearly as much as CEOs of American companies. Let's get some of that cheap foreign CEO labor and see how Mr. 1000X catshrinks likes it.

[Waiting For Everyman]

14. Ooooo... then they need to get into "parity" with that - immediately

(as the Senators just insisted to the UAW). We can't have such a "disparity" continuing now, can we???

:)

I'll bet the "good Senators" don't know that, or SURELY they would've brought that up. :sarcasm:

[Catshrink]

15. Nah. Let's just outsource their CEO jobs overseas

along with their health insurance and see how they like that.

[angstlessk]

11. INCENTIVE...Where's the INCENTIVE to work hard to make a company viable

when in one year you make enough money to be rich the rest of your life? They claim if we feed starving people or house the homeless for free it takes away their INCENTIVE to work...well, maybe the failure of so many companies is a result of the loss of INCENTIVE for the CEO to continue the viability of their companies cause they are set for life already? Not only that, even in failure they get MASSIVE golden parachutes...Where is the INCENTIVE?

[Catshrink]

12. Good point.

Buffet is right: this is class warfare.

[Catshrink]

13. ...

:kick:

[MazeRat7]

16. Well.. you would have to pay me at least 1000x my current salary

to do that job for even a medium sized company. I don't know how someone comes to find it's "acceptable" to be managed in such a manner. Your every waking moment from 5 am until midnight being "on". How they come to accept creating a dysfunctional family because they are never home, or for that matter "home" changes every few years. How they come to accept they are "owned" by the "man". In some cases, they are "the Man".

I'm not defending the current levels of compensation, however, if you ask me to do that for even a small company I would not consider it for anything less than several million/year

Naaaa... Now that I think about it, I just wouldn't consider it. Mostly I'm amazed that there are people who will sell their soul at the cross-roads that way.

Peace,
MZr7