CEOs profit from layoffs, underfunded pensions, tax avoidanc

Citizen Works
Executive Pay

CEOs profit from layoffs, underfunded pensions, tax avoidance

CEOs continue to gain while workers and taxpayers lose, concludes United for a Fair Economy and the Institute for Policy Studies' tenth annual CEO compensation survey, "Executive Excess 2003"

The key findings:

- CEOS at the 50 firms that announced the most layoffs in 2001 saw their median pay rise by a whopping 44 percent from 2001 to 2002. They earned a median salary of $5.1 million in 2002, 38 percent more than the median CEO salary of $3.7 million. Some highlights: Hewlett-Packard's Carly Fiorina laid off 25,700 workers and saw her pay jump from $1.24 million to $4.11 million. Delta Airline's Lee Mullins dumped 17,400 workers and saw his compensation jump from $2.18 million to $4.69 million. Tyco's Dennis Kozlowski cut 11,300 jobs, but his compensation jumped from $36.4 million to $71 million.

-- At the 30 companies with the most underfunded pensions in 2002, CEOs earned a median pay of $5.9 million, 59 percent more than the $3.7 million median for all CEOs that year

-- CEOs at the 24 Fortune 500 companies with the largest number of subsidiaries in offshore tax havens earned a whopping 87 percent more in salary than the median large company CEO between 200 and 2002

The report also found that the ratio of CEO pay to worker pay was 282-to-1 for 2002, about seven times greater than the 42-to-1 ratio in 1982, though down from the imperial heights of 531-to-1 in 2000.

For the complete report: http://www.faireconomy.org/press/2003/EE2003.pdf