The USA was once the great engine of world capitalism but an addiction to banking and finance has laid the economy low. A new report shows that the bosses are still raking it in and that the most highly paid executives are those who've laid off most workers: a bitter irony before Labour Day.
This weekend is Labour Day in the US. Labour Day marks the anniversary of the killing of protesters by federal marshals at the 1894 union strike at the Pullman railway company in Illinois. President Grover Cleveland, who had deployed 12,000 troops to break the strike, hastily created the holiday to appease
outraged workers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/sep/01/unemployment-executive-pay-bonuses
Today, in midst of the great recession, Labour Day also marks a miserable time for American workers. Overall unemployment is steady at about 9.5%, according to the US Bureau of Labour Statistics. Indeed, for young people aged 16-to-24, the unemployment rate for youth reached a record 19.1%, the highest since records were created in 1948.
The Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) has just released its annual survey of executive compensation. The IPS has calculated that the CEO's of the 50 companies that have laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis took home 42% more pay in 2009 than their peers on the Standard and Poor's 500 index. In fact, 72% of the companies announced mass lay-offs at a time of positive earnings reports.
"Our findings illustrate the great unfairness of the great recession," concludes Sarah Anderson, lead author on the IPS study. "CEO's are squeezing workers to boost short-term profits and fatten their own pay checks."
