The typical compensation package for chief executives who run companies in the S&P 500 jumped nearly 13% last year, easily surpassing the gains for workers at a time when inflation was putting considerable pressure on Americans’ budgets.
The median pay package for CEOs rose to $16.3 million, up 12.6%, according to data analyzed for The Associated Press by Equilar. Meanwhile, wages and benefits netted by private-sector workers rose 4.1% through 2023. At half the companies in AP’s annual pay survey, it would take the worker at the middle of the company’s pay scale almost 200 years to make what their CEO did.
There should be a rule (law) where the top 10% of the highest paid employees can only increase as much as the lowest pay increase in the company (not including non pay raise due to disciplinary actions) and I don’t mean on a percentage scale.
To add onto that, their should not be layoffs allowed for an extended period after that. Nor should transfers or title changes at that level be allowed to cause a pay increase beyond that limit within x amount of years of being employed or something similar.
I know it’s not a perfect solution, but it would be a start.
Edit: As others have pointed out, compensation is probably a better term. When I said pay, compensation is basically what I meant. Buuut, if you aren’t 100% explicit, then every loophole will be used to bypass that and just give them what they want anyways. Which the users below me pointed out and are absolutely correct.
Not pay.
Compensation
I don’t want them to do a loophole where the CEO has a $1 salary but they get paid in stock that they then sell.
My CEO literally makes several million a year and on top of that has stock.
The board just approved a double digit pay increase for him.
Meanwhile the majority of the rank and file barely got a cost of living increase.
Fucking hate the capital class.
Sell stock? Why sell stock when you can just leverage that stock for cheap loans? Income without the hassle of those fussy taxes! Oh and those pesky interest payments? Tax deductible!
I’d rather pin the maximum compensation in a company to some multiplier of the minimum compensation in a company.