This strikes me as too pessimistic. Surely people have a better sense of proportion than Jim suggests. Looking at the extraordinary multiples of average worker pay that CEOs are hauling in, it's hard to see how anyone could equate CEOs' and workers' appetites as equivalent and representative of equal "greed." Perhaps I'm just naive.
-----Original Message----- From: Jim heartfield [mailto:Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk] Sent: Sunday, August 02, 1998 9:56 AM To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: executive pay
In message <l03130300b1e8f1e6a215@[166.84.250.86]>, Doug Henwood
<dhenwood at panix.com> writes
>Today's Financial Times has an article by reporter Tony Jackson, "The
fat
>cats keep getting fatter," on the worldwide boom in executvie pay. It's
>decorated by a chart of the ratio to CEO to average manufacturing
worker
>pay as estimated by the consulting firm Towers Perrin.
It is clearly beyond doubt that exec pay is pretty grotesque.
But I have some difficulty with the discussion that has sprung up around it.
First, esp. in the UK where this was raised, it is pointed that the discussion about exec pay is a self-criticism that is entirely generated from within business and amongst the establishment. There are no horny- handed sons of toil battering on the board room door demanding that the books be opened. Instead it is almost entirely a discussion arising out of business' own lack of confidence in itself.
After all, in days gone by it would have been inconceivable that capitalists would have had such anxiety about the fact that they were making money. What needs to be explained is exactly this recent embarrassment about their own pay-packets.
(I had a friend who worked for the Greenbury (I think that was what it was called) Committee on exec pay, in the last few months of the Tory govt.. He told me that Greenbury himself was a nervous wreck, who instantaneously went sick the moment he got the job.)
Second, the discussion around big exec pay rises does not create a good climate for pay claims amongst ordinary wage labourers. On teh contrary, a general climate is created in which any big pay demand is seen a greedy. It often strikes those on the left as a good propagandist weapon. So the slogans run, 'never mind the fat cats, what about the nurses' or whatever. But that is a losing strategy it seems to me. All the vilification of the chief execs pay does is to make any pay claim, anywhere on the scale sound self-centered and greedy. Claims based upon the idea that us proles are all put upon and victimised by low pay never work, because they militate against aggressive claims and tactics. Instead they create a climate where austerity is the order of the day. The very sentiments that are evoked against exec pay, end up being evoked against greedy workers. And of course, in such a climate, execs can go on pocketing the extra cash.
I wonder if there are any group of workers who have successfully used the comparison with greedy execs to further their own pay claim? -- Jim heartfield