| WASHINGTON
- April 6 - As new executive compensation figures are revealed this week,
the updated AFL-CIO Executive PayWatch website (www.paywatch.org)
gives visitors the tools they need to get the real scoop on CEO pay,
including 10 shocking examples of CEO pay at major global corporations
that are driving down living standards for workers around the globe.
The expanded website will also allow visitors to compare their pay
to updated CEO pay figures at 1500 companies as proxies are filed.
CEO pay is growing faster than all major economic indicators —
up 23%, according to the New York Times. The
average CEO of a major US corporation made $11.9 million in 1999,
476 times what the average blue-collar American worker made. That's
up from 42 times more in 1980, and 85 times more in 1990.
US CEO pay dwarfs foreign CEO pay. German CEOs make 13 times more
than the average German manufacturing employee. In Japan, the CEO-to-worker
pay ratio is just 11-to-1.
"What looks excessive in the context of US workers is truly outrageous
when viewed globally," said AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Richard Trumka.
"The global economy is not working for working families when boards
of directors hand US CEOs tens of millions of dollars while paying the
people who actually do the work less than ten dollars a day."
GE's Jack Welch, for example, earned
over $90 million in 1999, as much as the total
earnings of half of GE's Mexican workforce of 30,000. A GE (NYSE:GE)
worker in Mexico makes about $2 an hour. GE also operates in China and
India, countries where workers are often paid pennies an hour.
The Gap CEO Millard Drexlar took home stock options worth $685 million,
prompting former compensation consultant Graef Crystal to observe that
Drexlar "has been given stock options in dosages that would kill a horse."
The Gap (NYSE:GPS) is the largest importer of goods from Saipan, and
is one of a handful of retailers that has refused to settle a lawsuit
alleging that garments made there, labelled "Made in the USA," are produced
by indentured servants. Garment workers in Saipan work 12 hours a day,
seven days a week, and sleep in barbed wire barracks.
Bank of New York CEO Thomas Renyi took home nearly $75 million in
cash and stock options in 1999, despite the fact that over the past
three years more than $7 billion was illegally funneled out of Russia
through the Bank of New York (NYSE:BK). Such capital flight has contributed
to falling living standards for working families in Russia as funds
stolen from the Russian people — through organized crime and misdirected
IMF foreign aid loans — are transferred abroad by Western financial
institutions.
Mining company Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold (NYSE:FCX) CEO James
Moffett has long cultivated close ties with Indonesian dictator Suharto.
Human rights monitors say they have seen the Indonesian military arriving
in Freeport company helicopters and boats to quell anti-Freeport indigenous
protest. Moffett took home $37 million in pay and stock options in 1999.
Other companies profiled in the global paywatch section include Black
& Decker, Unocal, Goldman Sachs, Coca Cola, Citigroup, and Honeywell
International.
In addition to such global company profiles, the PayWatch website
this year will provide investors, workers and the public easy-to-understand
summaries of the pay of the CEOs at 1500 of America's largest corporations,
together with interactive tools that allow users to compare their salary
and perks with their company's CEO pay. The website also offers "action
tools" visitors can use to express concern about runaway executive pay
to company boards, the SEC, the IRS and Congress.
Since its launch in 1997, PayWatch has remained among the Internet's
most popular sites, with over 8.5 million hits in the last year and
nearly 20 million hits since its inception. It was a Yahoo "best pick"
in 1997.
The AFL-CIO is the umbrella organization for the nation's unions,
representing more than 13 million working men and women around the nation.
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