AFL-CIO TAKES CLASS STRUGGLE INTO CYBERSPACE
WASHINGTON, April 10 (Reuter) - The American labour movement has
taken class struggle into cyberspace.
With hefty executive pay drawing widespread attention and some
scorn during the peak season of annual shareholder meetings, the AFL-CIO
Thursday launched an Internet website that gives users access to
compensation information -- and helps them to make their feelings known.
By shedding light on chief executive officers' salaries, bonuses and
stock options, AFL-CIO officials are hoping the new website
(www.paywatch.org) will stir activism among workers as shareholders or
participants in pension and mutual funds.
"We're here to make employees active owners,'' said Bill Patterson,
director of the labour federation's office of investment. "Active ownership
is going to be the way that CEO's are reined in.''
"The problem of bloated CEO pay happened because we did not have
a voice in the process,'' added AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasury Richard
Trumka. "With our new website, we will have that voice.''
The Executive Paywatch website allows users to look up CEO
compensation packages at any public U.S. company by providing a link to
the Securities and Exchange Commission website. It already provides quick
lists of CEO compensation at 96 of the 500 top companies it plans to offer
by the end of April.
For example, the site shows that Green Tree Financial Corp. CEO
Lawrence Coss received a $102.5 million bonus and was granted $38.8
million in stock options in addition to his relatively modest $443,608
annual salary for a total 1996 compensation package of $141.3 million.
The site also compares CEO pay on a weekly, daily, hourly and per
minute basis with the $200,000 a year salary of the president of the United
States, the $24,700 of the average American worker and the $11,440 of
minimum wage earners.
It even offers other comparisons, such as how last year's $39.8 million
compensation and stock option package granted to General Electric Co.
Chief Executive John Welch could support 3,480 minimum wage workers
or 199 U.S. presidents for a year.
"At a time when America desperately needs a raise, it is devastating to
workers' morale to realise that they would have to work thousands, literally
thousands, of years to earn what their CEO takes home each and every
year,'' said Trumka.
"This mocks all the values that hardworking Americans believe in,'' he
said. "And it widens the already-too-wide pay disparity between average
working families and the wealthiest Americans.''
In a recent example of sky-high executive compensation, Intel Corp.
said earlier this week that Chief Executive Andrew Grove got $96.6 million
last year by exercising stock options, the most any CEO has pocketed
through stock options so far.
The interactive website also allows users to calculate how long it
would take them to earn what a CEO makes in a year at their present rates
of pay.
CEO pay, which jumped 20 percent last year while corporate profits
grew only 11 percent and workers' wages rose just 3.3 percent, is now 212
times greater than the average worker's pay, up from 44 times greater in
1965, the AFL-CIO said.
The American Federation of Labour-Congress of Industrial
Organziations, whose 78 unions represent 13.1 million workers, cited recent
national surveys showing that 58 percent of the respondents were extremely
angry or very angry that the average CEO makes more than 100 times the
pay of an average worker.
Using information entered by each user, the website can draft a letter
or e-mail message to a company's board of directors, a pension or mutual
fund manager or Congress.
Union officials said they hope to broaden the application of their
website even further.
"We're just scratching the surface here,'' said Patterson. "I think you're
going to see lots of creative permutations to this whole idea.''
Some AFL-CIO unions and their members already have become
active shareholders, mostly through their representation as pension trustees.
The International Brothershood of Teamsters, for example, just released its
own list of the 19 "least valuable'' corporate directors based in part on
conflicts of interest and the financial results of the companies they oversee.
