Over the last couple of months there has been a lot of talk about the Occupy Movement and how
Occupy Wall Street has spawned other Occupy events in other cities all over our country and even the world. I've listened to talk of the 99% vs. the 1% and Class Warfare and how corporations and corporate greed are to blame. Here are my thoughts about how it happened and how to fix it.
From March 2004 to June 2009 I had worked for one of the nation's top 10 Computers, TVs and Consumer Electronics resellers. They operate no less than seven (7) different web sites and if you buy computer products online, you have no doubt bought something from one of them. They were generating revenue in excess of $20 million a week when I last worked there. Life was good….
…for the CEO and his brothers who were the President and Vice President respectively, for the rank and file workers like myself, not so much.
According to his contract the CEO got a 5% pay raise to his Base Salary every year, he also got different performance and discretionary bonuses, stock options and of course a company car among other perks. His starting base salary was $400,000.00 at the start of his contract. By 2009 his base pay was $501,378.00 and with all the other compensation and perks added in, his total compensation in 2009 was $3,071,573.00. Did I mention the company car was a top of the line Porsche 911 Carrera GT3. In fact his car lease changed models every six months or so.
By comparison my Base Salary in 2009 was like almost all the other salespeople's. $18,000 per year, $692.31 bi-weekly or $8.65 per hour. Only it was actually lower. I, like most of the rank and file staff was considered "Exempt", which means the company can make you work for as many hours as they deem the job requires. So I had to work 45 hours per week and work 5 "free" overtime hours every week. That meant for 90 hours every two weeks I was actually paid $7.69 per hour, which is below the Minimum Wage.
I like others in sales was also paid a Commission based on sales profit. My highest gross paycheck (2 weeks) for 2009 was $1,598.86, not bad but nowhere near the $118,137.42 the CEO was averaging every pay period. During the five years I worked there my pay plan changed four times, each time a pay cut. The cuts were primarily to the commission side of the pay plan.
This is an actual example of where we lost the middle class. Over the years, the CEO's pay got a huge increase, but the pay for people that work for them did not only did not keep pace, in many cases they made even less than they did before. One of the single most expensive parts of any business is Payroll. If the CEO can cut payroll by either cutting workers pay or even worse, cutting workers jobs, then the company has more money available and more profit on the books. That's how the middle class workers lost. They would not be allowed to "share the wealth" because the CEO was looking at the bottom line and not seeing the middle class, they were only seeing numbers, not people.
It's hard to see the recession over the dashboard of a $150,000 Porsche. That's what I think the heart of the Occupy Movement is. We don't want Socialism, we only want to earn a decent wage so we can participate in the American Dream too. Is that too much to ask?
Here is a way to fix things without costing any corporation any more money or losing any more profit. If the corporations kept the total Payroll the same, but lowered the CEO's pay and raised the rank and file workers pay by the difference, the company would still be just as profitable and the people who actually do the work would get just a little bit more income. Does the CEO really need to earn 400, 500 even 800 times what the average worker does, or can they live on making 15, 20 or 25 times what the average worker makes?
If we take care of the working middle class, the economy will get better and everybody will be better off, not just the 1%.Think about it, and then think about this:
Overall Average CEO Compensation: $ 4,687,196
Median income of all occupations in 2010 was: $ 33,840
National Unemployment Rate at the end of August: 9.1%
http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/pay...Once again I think we should look at Warren Buffett's example
http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/pay...If Warren can make ends meet making only 15 times the median workers pay, then so can every other CEO out there.
Now look up the CEO pay of some of your favorite companies:
http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/pay...