SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Help Wanted: Slow and Expensive Corporate Accountant
May 27, 2014
Fortune 500 company is seeking a highly unproductive senior accountant to help inflate the cost of complying with a new federal law requiring that all publicly held corporations disclose the ratio between their CEO and median worker pay.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a long-time opponent of CEO-worker pay ratio disclosure, has just gone on record estimating that making this ratio calculation will force American businesses to expend a total of $710.9 million per year. For large companies, the Chamber reports, calculating a CEO-worker pay ratio will take an average of 1,825 number-crunching hours at an average cost of $311,800.
Unfortunately, the Chamber's projections have elicited widespread ridicule from independent observers. Given this ridicule, it is imperative that corporations like ours demonstrate that calculating a CEO-worker pay ratio will take the maximum possible amount of time and cost.
Successful candidates for our new accounting position must have a track record of delivering slow and expensive work in difficult circumstances. In this case, these circumstances include:
- Limited scope: The accountant responsible for calculating our CEO-median worker pay ratio does not have to bother calculating our CEO pay, since all publicly held corporations already must report their executive compensation. This work only involves calculating median worker pay.
- Flexible methodology: Under the proposed Securities and Exchange rule prepared to enforce the new disclosure mandate, companies like ours need only base their median worker pay figure on a sampling of our workforce.
Qualifications:
- Advanced degree in Accounting/Finance.
- The ability to produce inaccurate analyses in a less than timely manner.
- Self-starters and individuals with excellent multi-tasking skills need not apply.
Salary and Benefits:
Salary is flexible. To exceed the Chamber of Commerce average, we'll need to spend more than $311,800 to calculate this number, the equivalent of at least $650 an hour for six months of work. Benefits include generous vacation/unexplained leave time and nap room.
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Sarah Anderson
Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project of the Institute for Policy Studies, and is a co-editor of Inequality.org.
Fortune 500 company is seeking a highly unproductive senior accountant to help inflate the cost of complying with a new federal law requiring that all publicly held corporations disclose the ratio between their CEO and median worker pay.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a long-time opponent of CEO-worker pay ratio disclosure, has just gone on record estimating that making this ratio calculation will force American businesses to expend a total of $710.9 million per year. For large companies, the Chamber reports, calculating a CEO-worker pay ratio will take an average of 1,825 number-crunching hours at an average cost of $311,800.
Unfortunately, the Chamber's projections have elicited widespread ridicule from independent observers. Given this ridicule, it is imperative that corporations like ours demonstrate that calculating a CEO-worker pay ratio will take the maximum possible amount of time and cost.
Successful candidates for our new accounting position must have a track record of delivering slow and expensive work in difficult circumstances. In this case, these circumstances include:
- Limited scope: The accountant responsible for calculating our CEO-median worker pay ratio does not have to bother calculating our CEO pay, since all publicly held corporations already must report their executive compensation. This work only involves calculating median worker pay.
- Flexible methodology: Under the proposed Securities and Exchange rule prepared to enforce the new disclosure mandate, companies like ours need only base their median worker pay figure on a sampling of our workforce.
Qualifications:
- Advanced degree in Accounting/Finance.
- The ability to produce inaccurate analyses in a less than timely manner.
- Self-starters and individuals with excellent multi-tasking skills need not apply.
Salary and Benefits:
Salary is flexible. To exceed the Chamber of Commerce average, we'll need to spend more than $311,800 to calculate this number, the equivalent of at least $650 an hour for six months of work. Benefits include generous vacation/unexplained leave time and nap room.
Sarah Anderson
Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project of the Institute for Policy Studies, and is a co-editor of Inequality.org.
Fortune 500 company is seeking a highly unproductive senior accountant to help inflate the cost of complying with a new federal law requiring that all publicly held corporations disclose the ratio between their CEO and median worker pay.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a long-time opponent of CEO-worker pay ratio disclosure, has just gone on record estimating that making this ratio calculation will force American businesses to expend a total of $710.9 million per year. For large companies, the Chamber reports, calculating a CEO-worker pay ratio will take an average of 1,825 number-crunching hours at an average cost of $311,800.
Unfortunately, the Chamber's projections have elicited widespread ridicule from independent observers. Given this ridicule, it is imperative that corporations like ours demonstrate that calculating a CEO-worker pay ratio will take the maximum possible amount of time and cost.
Successful candidates for our new accounting position must have a track record of delivering slow and expensive work in difficult circumstances. In this case, these circumstances include:
- Limited scope: The accountant responsible for calculating our CEO-median worker pay ratio does not have to bother calculating our CEO pay, since all publicly held corporations already must report their executive compensation. This work only involves calculating median worker pay.
- Flexible methodology: Under the proposed Securities and Exchange rule prepared to enforce the new disclosure mandate, companies like ours need only base their median worker pay figure on a sampling of our workforce.
Qualifications:
- Advanced degree in Accounting/Finance.
- The ability to produce inaccurate analyses in a less than timely manner.
- Self-starters and individuals with excellent multi-tasking skills need not apply.
Salary and Benefits:
Salary is flexible. To exceed the Chamber of Commerce average, we'll need to spend more than $311,800 to calculate this number, the equivalent of at least $650 an hour for six months of work. Benefits include generous vacation/unexplained leave time and nap room.
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.