CEO salaries climb while workers lack benefits
The CEO of Yahoo earned $109.3 million in salary, stock options and perks last year. That is enough money to provide full health-care coverage for 53,000 uninsured Americans or to provide day care for more then 25,000 working mothers.
I’m not suggesting for one moment that the CEOs of America’s largest corporations should not be well compensated. If they are successful and if they return value to the shareholders, then compensation should be tied to their performance. But I do think there needs to be some sort of balance in our economy if we are to sustain the middle class long-term, which, after all, are the consumers that buy the goods, services, products and concepts that provide the profits that allow the companies to pay their CEOs the dollars that they command today.
At a time when more and more working men and women are going without health care insurance, more than 47 million Americans are without health care coverage in America today, and as more and more unions are being busted by abusive uses of bankruptcy laws and by outsourcing of American jobs, isn’t it time for us to reflect upon the nature of the relationship between employers and employees in our country?
Yes, there are owners and there are employees. But make no mistake about the fact that it is the employees of America who produce the goods and services that generate the profits that make the wealthy richer. And if that middle class is further eroded or even destroyed, as may well be the case, our nation as a whole is at serious risk and we best take note of that fact.
Chip Gerrity
New Jersey International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
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