Labor Day came twice last year. A week after the parades and picnics, Americans had their real Labor Day on Sept. 11. Americans poured out thanks to firefighters, police officers, paramedics and other workers who put themselves on the line to save others. Wall Street stockbrokers and secretaries, CEOs and minimum wage workers died--and survived--together.

The spirit of shared sacrifice was shattered in October as a parade of companies led by Enron began imploding from CEO greed.

Some of America's worst CEOs make more in a year than the best CEOs of earlier generations made in their lifetimes.

CEOs pumped up stock with accounting steroids, hitting quarterly earnings homeruns while doing serious damage to their companies, workers, shareholders and the economy.

Global Crossing Chairman Gary Winnick, who Fortune called "the emperor of greed," cashed in $735 million in stock over four years while leading the company to bankruptcy. The double crossing Winnick bought a California estate worth $94 million after $30 million in renovations. Meanwhile, reports NBC, "Global Crossing workers lost their jobs, their severance pay, and promised medical benefits. Entire 401(k)s were decimated. With the exception of a select group of executives, Global Crossing employees could not unload their stock for five years."

Back in 1950, when Business Week began ranking CEO pay, the highest-paid executive was General Motors President Charles Wilson, who made $4.4 million in inflation-adjusted dollars. In 2001, the highest paid CEO was Oracle's Lawrence Ellison at $706 million--nearly $2 million a day.

Wilson would have had to work for 160 years to match Ellison's $706 million.

The average CEO of a major corporation made $11 million in 2001, including salary, bonus and other compensation such as exercised stock options. That’s more than $33,000 seven days a week, in a year when the economy tanked.

CEOs made about 565 times as much as security guards, 445 times as much as emergency medical technicians and paramedics, 442 times as much as secretaries, 312 times as much as firefighters and 271 times as much as police officers.

Back in 1960, CEOs made an average 38 times more than schoolteachers, according to Business Week. By 1990, CEOs made 63 times as much. In 2001, CEOs made 264 times as much as public school teachers.

The Census Bureau recently analyzed what people could expect to earn, on average (adjusted to 1999 dollars), during a hypothetical 40-year working life at full-time jobs. College graduates could expect $2.1 million and high school graduates $1.2 million.

Workers with a professional degree, such as doctors and lawyers, could expect to earn $4.4 million during their working life--not even half what CEOs make in just a year.

While CEO pay spiraled out of control, worker pay was largely stagnant for decades. Average hourly earnings for production workers in 2001 were 9 percent lower than their 1973 peak, adjusting for inflation.

If workers' wages had kept pace with productivity gains since 1979, average hourly earnings would have been $21.71 last year, not $14.33.

This Labor Day, workers need rescue. Congress should start by raising the minimum wage, which would help boost the stagnant pay of average workers as well.

It takes more than three jobs at the minimum wage of $5.15 an hour--$10,712 a year--to support a family. The real value of the minimum wage peaked in 1968 at $8.28 per hour (in 2002 dollars). Today's minimum wage workers earn 38 percent less.

Members of Congress made 9 times as much as minimum wage workers in 1968 and 14 times as much today. In 1997, when the minimum wage was last raised, to $5.15 an hour, members of Congress earned $133,600. Since then, they've increased their pay by $16,400--much more than minimum wage workers earn in a year. Unless the Senate blocks it, Congressional pay will rise from $150,000 now to $155,000 in January 2003.

Congress should forgo another pay hike until the minimum wage has been raised enough to bring it back to the 9-to-1 ratio that prevailed in 1968. That would help Congress become more representative of low-and middle-income Americans and less representative of the swindling CEOs who pretended what was good for them was good for the country.

Holly Sklar is coauthor of "Raise the Floor: Wages and Policies That Work for All Of Us" (www.raisethefloor.com). She can be reached at hsklar@aol.com and Box 1045, Boston, MA 02130.

(c) Copyright 2002 Holly Sklar

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