From: jajohnso-AT-interserv.com
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 14:34:20 -0700
Subject: Corporate Executive Compensation


The following article appeared on the New York Times News Service wire last 
week.  It should go under the file of stating the obvious, except that Wall 
Street's been denying this for a decade now.  But capitalism is still the 
fairest and most efficient economic system, right?:)

	To some, it's a potentially explosive case of the haves and the have 
nots.  To others, it's simply the way of the free market.
	Last Year, most corporate brass received big [pay] icreases, but most 
workers' pay barely nudged.
	Politicians and media have zeroed in on the widening disparity in pay 
among [sic] top executives and average workers, and recent surveys bear them 
out:
	--Average wages and benefits for U.S. workers rose 2.9 percent during 
1995, the smallest increase in 14 years, according to the Bureau of Labor 
Statistics.
	--Nationwide, chief executive officers of the 20 companies with the 
largets announced layoffs last year saw their salaries and bonuses jump by 25 
percent, according to Business Week.
	--Total CEO compensation at 30 major U.S. compaies soared to 212 times 
what the average U.S. worker earned in 1995, up from 44 times the average in 
1965, according to a survey by Pearl Meyer & Partners, a New York consulting 
firm.
	--The AFL-CIO said the average CEO of a large corporation made 187 times 
the wage of the average factory worker, up from a spread of 41 to 1 in 1960.
	"We're constantly being to to work smarter, leaner, faster, and [to] do 
more with less, but that doesn't seem to be the same with most major 
corporations when it comes to executive compensation," said W. E. "Sonny" 
Sanders, secretary-treasurer of an Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union 
local.

Yours &c.,

Jeff Johnson				  "Amicus Socrates, amicus Plato,
Graduate Student, Political Science		sed magis amica veritas."
University of Wisconsin--Madison	 	              --Aristotle



     --- from list marxism2-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---