For years, the AFL-CIO has published its ‘Executive Paywatch,’ which (despite using a tiny fraction of the top-earning CEOs across America) has a clear purpose of painting nearly all CEOs with the same broad brush of “corporate greed.”
While it’s generally understood that the purpose of the AFL-CIO’s Executive Paywatch is to create a media buzz about executive compensation that can be used by the media to foster an “us vs. them” environment in the public mind, when the Wall Street Journal publishes an article entitled Pay Packages for CEOs Rise to Record Level, using a similar approach as the AFL-CIO, it requires a deeper dive into the actual data.
In this episode of Labor Relations Radio, we cover the salaries of sports figures, celebrities, and even social media figures, as compared to the 0.01 percent of CEOs cited by the AFL-CIO and Wall Street Journal.
Resources cited:
Concession Stand Worker hourly salaries in the United States at The Madison Square Garden Company
The Highest Paid CEOs in the S&P 500: Top Pay Packages of 2021
Number of employer firms in the United States in 2017, by employment size
Occupational Employment and Wages, May 2021: Chief Executives
View the entire Twitter thread here.
Labor Relations Radio, Ep 22: Shedding the Light on 'Excessive CEO Pay'—How the media distorts the topic