Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Saturday, September 12, 2015

Target CEO's Golden Handshake Pretty Much Matches The One For All 17,600 Canadian Employees

An interesting talking point has seized the interwebs today: The amount of money Target has set aside to pay its Canadian staff is slightly less than the money it paid out to one former employee: Its CEO.

Gregg Steinhafel took a total of $61 million U.S. from Target when he left the company last spring, according to Fortune's calculations. Meanwhile, the fund Target set up to pay employees as it winds down operations over the next four months is set at $56 million U.S. (That’s $70 million Canadian, at current exchange rates.)

Interestingly, Target’s money-losing foray into Canada was one of the top reasons cited for Steinhafel’s departure when he resigned last May, along with the retailer's infamous credit card data breach.

To be clear, Steinhafel’s actual severance package — the money he got just for handing in a letter of resignation — amounted to $15.9 million. But add in his deferred compensation (a kind of tax-saving retirement fund), his stock options and a pension that he got to keep, and Fortune calculates his total “walk-away” package at $61 million.

That number is actually kind of hard to pin down, thanks to changing stock prices and other variables. USA Today calculated a slightly lower number for Steinhafel’s departure, at $55 million, while Bloomberg calculated his retirement plans as being worth $47 million.

Regardless of the actual number, the scale of Steinhafel’s pay compared to the compensation for Target's entire Canadian staff is raising eyebrows online.

Many economists studying the roots of the rising income gap argue that inequality actually happens within companies — it’s the result of businesses constantly hiking pay for their top managers while holding down labour costs for the rest of the company.

In that context, Steinhafel’s massive payout is one singularly large contribution to the problem.

The gap between top execs and everyone else has been growing for decades. U.S. CEOs today typically earn 354 times as much as the average worker at their company, compared to just 46 times average worker pay thirty years ago.

In Canada, the CEO-to-worker pay ratio is lower, at 206 times average pay, but that’s still one of the largest pay gaps in the developed world. (In Britain it’s only 84.)

At the big-box retailers, the inequality is even larger: Steinhafel’s pay was 597 times the pay of the average Target employee, according to a 2013 ranking from PayScale.com. Only Walmart’s CEO, Michael T. Duke, made out better: He earned 1,034 times the average Walmart employee’s salary.

So if you want to know where rising inequality comes from, just take a look at your local big-box retailer.

Original Article
Source: huffingtonpost.ca/
Author:  Daniel Tencer

No comments:

Post a Comment