Could 2014 Be Year One of the Pay Ratio Era?

[marmar]

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:


Could 2014 Be Year One of the Pay Ratio Era?
January 4, 2014

In the year ahead, nurses and college students just might jump-start the struggle against America’s chronic — and growing — income inequality.

From the White House to the Vatican, everyone these days seems to be talking about income inequality. But our politics hasn’t kept up. Concrete proposals that could actually narrow the gap between the rich and the rest of us haven’t yet moved onto our public policy center stage.

That could change in 2014.

We saw the first rumblings of that change this past fall in Switzerland, where young activists ran a spirited referendum campaign to cap Swiss CEO pay at 12 times worker wages. This 1:12 pay cap proposition was running even in the polls until a lush corporate ad blitz sent the measure down to defeat late in November.

That setback hasn’t at all doused the growing global interest in pay ratios. In Germany, France, and Spain, activists are now working on their own versions of pay-ratio income caps, and the ratio cap spirit has even spread to the United States, home to the world’s most generous CEO paychecks.

Major U.S. execs now pull in, on average, over 350 times the pay of America’s rank-and-file workers. How high does that CEO-worker pay gap go at individual corporations? We’ll soon know. ....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/could-2014-be-year-one-of-the-pay-ratio-era/#sthash.lZp0y97O.dpuf

[LiberalEsto]

1. K&R

a great idea and long overdue