Executive Salaries

Is it right that foreign employees of an Australian company get paid Third World wages while foreign managers of the same company get paid first-world salaries?

Do we still believe in the principle of equal pay for equal work? Or is it a case of George Orwell’s famous line in his novel Animal Farm to the effect that we are all equal but some are more equal than others?

All good questions as Australian companies are increasingly shifting operations offshore. We are told that Australian wages and salaries are too high and that moving offshore will “save” the company money by cutting labour costs.

Continue reading "The high salaries and low morals of corporate Australia" »

Credit card bill hurt?  Rate hikes hitting the mortgage payments?  Tired of endless waits on hold or in your local branch?

Fret not.  It’s all for a cause. Not yours, of course.  Our big banks.  Why, they’re so grown up, it’s like bonus season on Wall Street.  Makes you proud to be an Aussie.
Sure, wage increases for bank workers hover around 1-2 per cent. Yes, 5000 jobs have been off-shored. True, dividends are down 20 per cent. But spare a thought for Cameron Clyne, CEO of NAB.  He only made $14,246 a day last year.  A pygmy among the seven or eight figure giants - if you don’t include smaller banks like ME.

Continue reading "Please, dig deep for our bank chief executives" »

A couple of years ago I received a furious telephone call from the chief executive officer of one of our biggest companies complaining about what he regarded as the ungrateful and insulting tone of The Daily Telegraph’s coverage of executive salaries.

The bloke had a bit of a point because, as he pointed out, his salary was extravagant on paper but had coincided with an unprecedented period of increased returns to shareholders. He’d also resisted the slash-and-burn approach to running his business, shielding workers from dismissal when it would have been the easiest way to achieve short-term savings in what was then a looming economic downturn.

The point I tried to make in the media’s defence was that rather than accusing us of being cheap populists, he should really convene a telephone hook-up with his fellow CEOs and ask them if their remuneration fell into the same category as his.

Continue reading "Give shareholders the real power to cut bosses’ pay" »