If Unions are the bloodsuckers killing America, then what are the overpaid CEOs and Execs?

[OmahaBlueDog]

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

The case studies here focus on executive pay at six of the biggest banks that received government bailout funds and their multimillion-dollar lobbying efforts. Also in Executive PayWatch, you can find CEO compensation data for some of the country’s largest companies; learn how you, as a shareholder, can have your "Say-on-Pay"; and find out what you can do to ensure re-regulation of the financial system.


Thomas Montag
2009 Total Compensation: $29,930,431
http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/retirementsecurity/case_bankofamerica_2010.cfm

John Havens
2009 Total Compensation: $11,276,454
http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/retirementsecurity/case_citigroup.cfm

Lloyd Blankfein
2009 Total Compensation: $9,862,657
http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/retirementsecurity/case_goldmansachs.cfm

James Dimon
2009 Total Compensation:
$15,518,794
http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/retirementsecurity/case_jpmorganchase.cfm

Walid Chammah
2009 Total Compensation: $10,021,969
http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/retirementsecurity/case_morganstanley.cfm

John Stumpf
2009 Total Compensation: $21,340,547
http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/retirementsecurity/case_wellsfargo.cfm

I'm all for getting paid based on what you produce, but no one I know of does anything worth $27,000 a day (the pay at the low end of this scale). My apologies in advance, as I suspect this has been posted before, but if we (as a country) feel that public worker unions have to be broken to balance the books, it's also time to seriously discuss excessive compensation and higher taxes on the wealthy.

JMHO

[virgogal]

1. Gee,it's great to see

women have finally broken through the glsss ceiling.:sarcasm:

[Angry Dragon]

2. I have heard some say they are going god's work

I think I need to change gods maybe

[prairierose]

3. These are the leeches who are actually killing America...

they have to take the spotlight off themselves and blame someone else.

[MaeScott]

4. There you go. Connecting those pesky dots. nt

[Chris_Texas]

5. All too often they are allies.

[dmallind]

6. I understand what the intent here seems to be, even agree with it, BUT

such appeals are emotional rhetoric more than truly meaningful alternatives.

Let's take the highest number for start. Let's pretend that this is all cash equivalents, even though stock grants (the vast majority) do not cost the company as much by a long shot as the equivalent dollar in pay.

Let's further say BoA can do without a CEO entirely. He can be zeroed out and not replaced at all. Forget what that would do to share price, leveraging ability etc., or even if it's doable under banking regs (I have no idea.

Then let's split the money equally among all BoA employees - all 284,000 FTEs in 2009.

They'd get a $105.39 raise. Annual.

Now you could say that would be money better spent, and hey it may even be so, but remember the extremely unlikely assumptions above.

In very very few cases indeed would executive pay, reduced or eliminated in the most aggressive ways imaginable, generate as much as even pretty small percentage reductions in headcount or employee costs, simply because of the vastly greater number of front-line workers. Mr. Montag would only have to reduce employee costs by $106 each a year, or find ways to cut headcount by approximately 0.3%, to cover his income. That's the cruel math behind how and why execs can make so much and even, purely mathematically, be a benefit to the company while being so paid. Fair? Pleasant? Ethically sound on a universalized moral basis? None of those. But profitable? Yep.

Ironically, it is in smaller companies that lack the eye-popping exec pay numbers where the math would work out more significantly in the favor of workers, but usually there you are dealing with owners rather than (very highly paid but still) employees.

[OmahaBlueDog]

14. Let's say instead that we aggressively taxed pay higher than $760,000 for an individual

You dismiss the AFL-CIOs assertions because those FTEs -- the ones actually doing the day to day work that earns the money that pays these obscene salaries -- don't get more than $100. First, I'd rather see them get the hundred, but taking your argument for a moment, none of these execs are alone at the country club. There's usually a whole suite of overpaid seven-figure salary makers (CFOs, Vice Presidents, etc.). And we're just counting the money; we're not even counting the perqs (private jets, club memberships, company cars, limos). If you add them all up - it becomes far more meaningful than $100.

I'll agree with some of the most ardent Tea Partiers that $250K is probably too low to apply the highest rate. Instead, I choose $760K. That's 20x what the "average American worker makes" (I rounded, and I got that figure from the AFL-CIO site). Unless you're curing cancer or reversing global warming, no one is performing any service in this society worth more than that, and no one car argue that they are incapable of making it on that salary.

[dmallind]

19. ?

Where the hell do I dismiss ANY assertions? No I believe everything to be true - but that does not make the math wrong. How many people make how much and how many could you seriously suggest eliminating? Salaries of board members are in SEC filings of public companies - feel free to find an example that generates significant dollars to workers that would not also cripple the company. And remember to account for the actual cost of stock grants and options not the benefit to the receiver - unless of course you want to grant everyone a few stock options instead.

In all honesty a salary cap or truly excessive top rate like the 95% of the UK in the 60s and 70s would result in the same "brain drain" it did there. However I certainly agree we should both raise current higher bracket rates and institute a "super bracket". Just for the ability to sell it politically I'd go a round million personally, and set that rate at maybe 55%.

And of course it is easy for CEOs to show that they do create more than that kind of benefit to their employee - Montag again could pay for himself with a 0.3% headcount reduction. Whether that's fair or not (it isn't) it's still true.

[1776Forever]

7. Wish I could Tweet this post! Awesome! Skinner says new DU will have that on it! Yeah! n/t

[ProSense]

8. That's a great database. Here is something

that should get a lot of attention: outsourcing FAIL.

[OmahaBlueDog]

11. The best example ever of why work like that should be performed by unionized American workers

Thanks for posting that

[hobbit709]

9. A successful parasite doesn't kill its host.

[Autumn]

10. They are what makes this Country of ours great

according to the politicians who get a LOT of money from them. IMO Politicians CEOs and Execs are all overpaid blood sucking leeches.

[Poboy]

12. recommend

[RockaFowler]

13. Great site

Here is the highest paid CEO:

How many workers could be supported by Gregory B. Maffei's pay package?
Gregory B. Maffei made $87,493,565, which is equal to:
53 Nobel prize winners
218 average university presidents
218 U.S. presidents
321 AFL-CIO presidents
466 Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
2730 average workers
5,801 minimum-wage earners






How long would it take to equal Gregory B. Maffei's total compensation for 2009?
A Nobel prize winner would have to work until 2063 A.D.
An average university president would have to work until 2228 A.D.
The President of the United States would have to work until 2228 A.D.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney would have to work until 2331 A.D.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would have to work until 2476 A.D.
An average worker would have to work until 4740 A.D.
A minimum-wage earner would have to work until 7811 A.D.

[OmahaBlueDog]

15. Bingo!

..and there's no way that what he does is worth 2700 times what the average worker makes. If he were Thomas Edison, maybe. He's not.

[brentspeak]

16. Corporate executive leadership and their boards of directors are 'unions' in all but name

And they know it.

[krispos42]

17. Wall Street bonuses are a full 1% of the US economy

$140 billion annually.

How many union workers would that hire?

140,000,000,000 ÷ 60,000 = 2,333,333 people.

Gee, that's a hell of a lot of people. I bet that would really reduce the unemployment rate, those extra 2⅓ million people.

[Omaha Steve]

18. K&R!