[IMC-Boston-Editorial] Labor Day column on narrowing the wage gap

[Betsy Leondar-Wright]

Hello,
Would you be interested in running this Labor Day column about the wage gap
by Sam Pizzigati?
Thanks,
Betsy Leondar-Wright
 
BEYOND THE LIVING WAGE: A NEW CHALLENGE FOR PROGRESSIVES
By Sam Pizzigati
 
Over the past dozen years, probably no grassroots campaign has excited
progressives more‹and generated more real victories‹than the living wage
movement.
 
Over 120 communities, big and small alike, have now enacted ordinances that
require businesses that win government contracts to pay a living wage. These
victories have made an undeniable impact. Low-wage workers from Baltimore to
Los Angeles have seen their annual take-home pay rise by hundreds, even
thousands, of dollars.
 
Yet, as a sobering new report reminds us, the pay gap in America¹s
workplaces‹ between workers and top executives‹has actually widened, and
significantly so. Last year, notes ³Executive Excess 2006,² a just-released
report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy,
top executives at major U.S. corporations took home 411 times more than
average workers.
 
In 1994, at the birth of the living wage movement, chief executive pay
outpaced pay for average workers by only 142 times.
 
All this concentrating of wealth at the top of our corporate ladder has
become America¹s single biggest engine of inequality. Between 1993 and 2003,
according to researchers at Harvard and Cornell, the top five executives at
America¹s 1,500 biggest companies more than doubled their share of corporate
earnings. These top execs took home $290 billion, over a quarter of a
trillion dollars. .
 
The impact of executive pay jackpots on our great divide actually goes far
beyond the sheer immensity of this $290 billion. To fatten corporate bottom
lines and hit those jackpots, executives have downsized workers, outsourced
jobs, gutted pensions, trimmed benefits, and slashed R & D. These executive
decisions, taken together, have left American workers appreciably poorer ‹
and American companies considerably less competitive.
 
How have progressives responded? Trade union and activist religious groups
have taken the lead. They¹ve pressed resolutions against CEO pay excess at
annual corporate shareholder meetings. And they¹ve lobbied for new rules
that could help shareholders challenge corporate boards that wink at
executive pay outrages.
 
But organizing against executive pay excess remains, by and large, a
low-priority concern for most progressives. And that¹s a shame. The struggle
against greed in the suites could become, with a strategic approach
imaginative enough, a wonderful opportunity to shove corporate behavior and
power back onto America¹s political radar screen.
 
And what might that approach be? The new ³Executive Excess 2006² report
offers a provocative suggestion: Let¹s build on the successes of the living
wage movement.
 
Living wage campaigns all start from the same basic assumption. Our public
tax dollars should not, as activists from ACORN put it, ³be subsidizing
poverty-wage work.²
 
Our public tax dollars should not be subsidizing executive jackpots either.
But right now they are. Corporations routinely pocket government contracts
and subsidies that translate into mega-paydays for their top executives.
 
Just one example: CEOs at the nation¹s top 34 defense industry companies,
the new ³Executive Excess² report documents, have seen their average pay
double since the ³War on Terror² began.
 
This sort of profiteering is going on throughout the U.S. economy. Nearly
every major corporation in the United States today is taking in substantial
revenue from government contracts, subsidies, tax breaks, or grants.
 
The living wage movement, jurisdiction by jurisdiction, is organizing to
place strings on these contracts and subsidies. No tax dollars, the living
wage movement demands, to companies that pay poverty wages! Why not ratchet
up that demand? No tax dollars for companies that pay plutocrat wages!
 
One member of Congress is already moving in this direction. Rep. Martin Sabo
from Minnesota has proposed legislation that would deny corporations tax
deductions on any executive compensation that runs over 25 times what a
company¹s lowest-paid workers receive. Under current law, the more
corporations lavish on their executives in ³incentives,² the more they can
deduct off their corporate income taxes.
 
Sabo¹s Income Equity Act offers a precedent that could be extended to any
situation that involves the transfer of tax dollars to private corporate
entities. In a jurisdiction that has already enacted a living wage
ordinance, for instance, progressives could insist that no government
contracts ought to go to companies that pay their top executives over 25
times that jurisdiction¹s living wage.
 
With a rule like this in place, top corporate executives would suddenly find
themselves with an incredibly powerful personal incentive to advocate for a
higher living wage.
 
As a nation, we already deny our tax dollars to companies that discriminate,
in their employment policies, against women and people of color. We¹ve
determined that our tax dollars must not subsidize corporate practices that
widen racial and gender inequality.
 
So why should we let our tax dollars widen economic inequality?
 
That doesn¹t make sense. Then again, excessive inequality never does.
 
-------
 
Sam Pizzigati, a contributor to Executive Excess 2006, edits Too Much, an
online weekly on excess and inequality. His email: editor at toomuchonline.org.
 
785 words


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Betsy Leondar-Wright
Communications Director, United for a Fair Economy
(617) 423-2148 x113
29 Winter Street
Boston, MA 02108
http://www.FairEconomy.Org


United for a Fair Economy is an independent national organization
that raises awareness of the damaging consequences of concentrated
wealth and power.

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