Staggering CEO pay smashes all previous records

CEO pay reached astronomical levels last year, according to a new report whose author said he's never seen anything like it.<br /><div><br /><div>The 10 highest paid CEOs all took home more than $100 million, and two 'earned' more than $1 billion in a single year, according to GMI Ratings' 2013 Pay Survey.</div><div><br /><div>"I have never seen anything like that," the report's author, Greg Ruel, told the Guardian. "Usually we have a few CEOs at the $100m-plus level but never the entire top 10."<br /><br />Median workers' pay in the U.S. fell 9 percent since 1999.<br /><br />McKesson CEO John Hammergren, who took home<a href="http://www.forbes.com/pictures/eggh45jef/john-hammergren-of-mckesson/"> $131.2 million in 2011</a>, didn't even make this year's list. Perhaps that's because<a href="http://teamsternation.blogspot.com/2013/08/McKesson-shareholders-reject-CEO-pay.html"> investors said 'no' to his exorbitant pay package this year</a>. <br /><br />According to <a href="http://www.alternet.org/billion-dollar-pay-check-10-ceos-america-break-all-records-executive-pay?page=0%2C1&paging=off&current_page=1#bookmark">The Guardian</a>,<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">...median household income, adjusted for inflation, was $51,017 in 2012, broadly unchanged from 2011. Wages for the average household have fallen about 9% from an inflation-adjusted peak of $56,080 in 1999. The census figures show a sharp recovery for those at the top of the wage scale as those at the bottom continue to see falls. </blockquote><div>Here are the top 10:<br /><ol><li>Facebook, Inc., Mark Zuckerberg, $2,278,668,214 </li><li>Kinder Morgan, Inc., Richard D. Kinder, $1,116,685,089 </li><li>Sirius XM Radio Inc., Mel Karmazin, $255,355,676 </li><li>Liberty Media Corporation, Gregory B. Maffei, $254,890,638 </li><li>Apple Inc., Timothy D. Cook, $143,828,867 </li><li>Dick’s Sporting Goods, Inc., Edward W. Stack, $142,052,496 </li><li>Liberty Interactive Corporation, Gregory B. Maffei, $136,450,484 </li><li>Starbucks Corporation, Howard Schultz, $117,562,601 </li><li>salesforce.com, inc., Marc Benioff, $109,544,875 </li><li>Verisk Analytics, Inc., Frank J. Coyne, $100,432,117 </li></ol>The report doesn't disclose the gap between the CEO's pay and the average worker's pay.<br /><br />The<a href="http://teamsternation.blogspot.com/2013/09/ceos-must-expose-inequality.html"> Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)</a> proposes companies disclose the gap, and the <a href="http://teamster.org/">Teamsters</a> support that proposal. Take, for example, Hammergren. During his tenure as CEO at McKesson, the company paid nearly $1 billion in fines for Medicaid fraud and price fixing, while newly organized Teamsters at the company's Lakeland, Fla., warehouse can't afford health insurance.<br /><br />Making CEO's explain to investors that there's a mind-boggling distance between their pay and their average workers' pay might just shame them into common decency.<br /><br /></div></div></div></div>

CEO Pay inequality wages Staggering CEO pay smashes all previous records

CEO pay reached astronomical levels last year, according to a new report whose author said he's never seen anything like it. The 10 high...

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