Beware Corporate COVID Propaganda
JIM HIGHTOWER
09/21/2020
( Otherwords.org ) - CEOs say they're cutting their own pay in solidarity
with laid off or hurting workers - only, not really. By Jim Hightower |
September 16, 2020
COVID-19 has been a doubly-deadly disaster for millions of Americans,
destroying both life and livelihoods. But one of the most heartening
responses to the crisis has come from the least-expected place: corporate
executive suites.
This spring, numerous CEOs made headlines by showing some class solidarity.
If we're having to wallop our workers because of a pandemic, these bosses
told media interviewers, the least we can do is cut our own salaries.
Yes - all in this together! Only. not really.
An analytical firm looked at the books of nearly all major U.S.
corporations, finding that a mere fraction had made any cuts to senior
executive pay. The few that did only made little nicks in the boss's
take-home, rather than real cuts.
The trick is that the "sacrifices" only applied to official salaries. They
are the tiniest part of a chief executive's compensation, which mostly is
made up of bonuses, stock options, etc.
For example, United Airlines, which is presently zeroing out the paychecks
of 36,000 workers, docked its CEO's salary by nearly a third - which sounds
like a real gesture, but that works out to less than three percent of the
$22 million he's getting in total pay.
So middle-income workers get the boot, while the boss still has his job,
gets more than $21 million in annual pay, and claims bragging rights for
being an "ethical" corporate chieftain.
The ethical crime here is not merely in the cynical fudging of numbers, but
that even in this unprecedented time of national crisis, the elites who've
converted capitalism into a system of plutocratic plunder still feel
entitled to cheat.
If a nation's economic system doesn't care about shared sacrifice in hard
times and shared prosperity in good times, why should the majority who pay
the price and are denied the gains care about that economic system?
Via Otherwords.org
