Guess who supplies him with those things. Did you guess that it was those evil people from up the ladder? Maybe even the President or CEO of the company? You were correct. Nope, you weren't, it was salaried 9i.e. waged) middle management who work out all the details, which teh board of directors OK's, or the CEO for that matter.
Look at it this way- if CEO's were paid according to their genuine markjet rate (i.e. excluding share options and bonuses for performance, etc.) their take home earnings would be a hell of a lot less...
For example:
"The highest paid CEO last year received a whopping $575,592,000.
pay of the eight who followed amounted to $489,525,000. And the
final seven of the top 20 CEOs garnered a mere $304,316,000.
There were also 10 substantial pay recipients who do not hold
CEO positions whose take totaled $407,358,000. All told these 30
company officials raked in close to $2.5 billion.
"The numbers are staggering," BUSINESS WEEK magazine noted in
its April 19 issue. "But," it added, "so is the performance of
American business." And the accompanying lengthy article clearly
credited the CEOs with being chiefly responsible for the
"staggering...performance" of the companies they headed. The
"top executives" were not only credited with having created
"enormous value" for themselves but also for millions of "middle
managers," "lower level workers" and, of course, "shareholders."
The primary medium through which these CEOs allegedly created
this wealth and spread it around is, of course, the booming
stock market. Nothing in the article said anything about the
fact that before there can be any wealth to spread around
workers have to create it.
According to BUSINESS WEEK, the average pay last year for a
"head honcho" (its term) at a large company was $10.6 million.
also an incredible 442 percent increase over the $2 million
yearly average in 1990. Of course, we are repeatedly being told
these days that workers' wages, too, have been going up. For
example, the hourly rate for nonsupervisory workers was up 3.6
percent in March compared to a year ago. The average blue-collar
worker's wage was up 2.7 percent, while the wages of white-
collar workers were up 3.9 percent according to the Bureau of
Labor Statistics. Those nominal increases don't come very close
to the "head honcho's" 36 percent increase. But, then, workers'
wages never do rise at the same rate as the incomes of the "head
honchos." In comparison, BUSINESS WEEK noted, "The AFL-CIO
calculates that a worker making $25,000 in 1994 would now make
$138,350 this year if his pay grew at the same speed as the
average CEO."
BUSINESS WEEK concedes that the CEOs have been helped in their
alleged accomplishments by a number of factors. "CEOs," it
noted, "have been toiling [sic] in a prime business environment.
Interest rates have fallen over a 15-year period, flicking up
only recently. Deregulation has overcome barriers within the
economy, and trade barriers have fallen overseas. A high-tech
revolution is making it easier to increase productivity. The
exceptionally good for executives to strut their stuff...."
Again not a word about any contribution by workers in the
ongoing production of the nation's immense wealth from which the
CEOs and the rest of the capitalist class expropriate the major
portion.
Incidentally, not all CEOs increased their take last year by 36
percent over their 1997 income. For example, last year's income
of the chairman and CEO at Merrill Lynch & Co., David H.
Komansky, was over 10 percent less than his 1997 income. In
1997, Komansky's total income was $11.1 million. Last year, it
was a mere $9.9 million.
Herbert M. Allison Jr., Merrill Lynch's chief operating officer,
suffered a similar fate. In 1997, his total compensation
amounted to $8.82 million. Last year it dropped to $7.87
million.
The reason for the cuts? Apparently Merrill Lynch's operating
profit last year was only $1.6 billion, a 20 percent drop from
1997."
Also, you neglect the share holders, who rake in a hell of a lot more money than the workers, by virtue of doing nothing except having a big pile of cash to invest.
:WIthout having the line thoiught up, without having the people hired, without having the correct tools and instructions, among other things, many factory workers wouldn't be able to perform their job.Perhaps this explains why it is fair for people up the ladder to make more money, even though they aren't physically making the product.
No, they make more money because there are fewer of such posts available, and their skills are comparably rarer on the jobs market, a CEO could still, just from market value alone, rake in £40K, most of the rest comes from sharing out the unearned spoils from profits.
The middle management are workers, they do all the real organising, and we could do without those CEO's.
