America may not get justice on outrageous executive pay but the Swiss might. They are having a national vote on excessive CEO pay.
With more than 100,000 Swiss citizens having signed a petition to limit “fat-cat” pay, voters will decide at a March 3 referendum whether top executives should have their compensation set by shareholders.
Switzerland believes excessive CEO pay was imported from America.
The vote is the brainchild of Thomas Minder, a Swiss lawmaker and managing director of herbal toothpaste business Trybol AG, whose petition blames highly-paid “fat cats” -- “Abzocker” in German -- for the financial crisis. If successful, the proposal will give shareholders an annual ballot on executives’ pay and block big payouts for new hires and for managers when they leave companies.
“Shameless executive payouts have very clearly come from the U.S.,” said Brigitta Moser-Harder, an activist shareholder, who owns shares of the country’s biggest bank UBS AG and largest engineering company ABB Ltd. and regularly speaks on the subject at annual shareholder meetings and on Swiss TV. “People have been outraged about high earners for years.”
Imagine if the United States has national ballot initiatives as some states currently do. We might actually get somewhere in stopping some of the outrageous and damaging things our government is always up to.
Comments
Swiss approved limits on executive pay - excellent
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/9905662/Switzerland-backs-c...
If this can happen in the land of Davos and secret bank accounts, then there's hope for the rest of the world. I can predict the responses from the banksters and supporters. Prepare for the following responses from mouthpieces that can't think, can't find Switzerland or Sweden (or tell the difference between the countries) or Somalia on a map, and are paid to curse logic.
"But, but this will drive the 'best and brightest' away from driving companies into mediocrity or oblivion for tens of millions of dollars," "the Swiss are Commies and don't appreciate capitalism," (yes, we will hear that - priceless), "the Swiss education system, no, the health system, uh, the Swiss are just bad people," and on and on.
CEOs and banksters and boardrooms need to face reality, they are running out of geography and have pissed off 99.9% of the populace globally. No boardroom or bank vault or TV studio is so far removed that they can ignore the population of the world anymore. If they want to bank in regulation free countries, try Somali banks and see what happens to their loot. Try incorporating in Mogadishu and hold board meetings in international waters, they need to beware of pissed-off pirates, especially because the elite don't believe in paying taxes to fund navies. And armed guards earning minimum wage might resent protecting them.
hope yet, great news!
although not in the U.S. Supposedly Obama is putting the last meager retirement funds on the table, social security to the GOP as a bargaining chip.
Nice article on layoffs and CEO pay from Fortune of all places
This is a nice article from Fortune of all places.
http://management.fortune.cnn.com/2013/03/05/layoffs/
It talks about how layoffs are used to get rid of people that threaten management's ego and other reasons, how CEOs that screw up get richer (never fired), and other good tidbits. How consulting companies always recommend layoffs, but not for the clowns that run the circus into the ground. Nothing new here, just nice to see it coming from the business press that is super-duper excited because the Dow is hitting new records (of course it did, so much Fed free money has to be invested by banksters somewhere).
Anyway, maybe some in the press actually look outside their windows and are wondering why they might want to address the gathering global crowds that seem pissed off, unemployed with no hope for a job or a decent future, hopeless, and completely ignored/locked out of any discussion to fix this mess immediately.
Fortune is surprising
It seems everyone gets it except corporations themselves. The answer is to business "everything" is to fire the workers.
If you want more people to read your links, you should format them. By SEO alone, search engines almost never index unformatted links.
Media pay + layoffs - guess they just couldn't ignore it anymore
I guess the media, at least in some places, just can't continue the lie that the "best and brightest" are kicking ass and everyone that has a job is superfantastic and earns good wages while everyone that gets canned was a pathetic loser that needs to die already.
Read glassdoor for good insights (although they are now apparently trying to censor negative reviews according to some folks). Anyway, Murdoch and Ailes may be megarich and Murdoch may love getting richer through phone hacking and bribes (allegedly), but the reviews regarding Fox News are damn funny/tragic. People are working P/T hours as analysts and other positions and making $12/hr. for the honor (and this is in NYC). People earning that automatically qualify for govt. assistance that Murdoch and Ailes and Hannity et al. despise. Apparently the on-air talent can't make do without millions for repeating lies, but the people doing actual work at the bottom make jack and get treated like dirt.
WSJ is having layoffs. New CEO came from Bloomberg's organization and layoffs are happening and morale is down.
So it's happening everywhere, people getting canned, more and more consolidation and the rotation of the 1% at the top, jokers at the top making mad loot without innovating or creating anything themselves. So I guess it's harder and harder for media types writing articles to keep lying when reality keeps hitting them harder and harder. At some point some people must discover or rediscover integrity and truth. Journalism used to be a profession. Now they want all freelancers and part-time folks without benefits. And I'm guessing stories that go against corporations or the 1% won't earn one much $, but it's good to see some people risking it within big media to tell the truth. Again, it's all orchestrated, make people beg for part-time work just to survive and it's more likely that they won't dare criticize the boss that tosses morsels to the peasants.
How about we upset the whole freaking table and demand more than morsels?
Media offshore outsourced
Is a really bad thing. Frankly I think advertisers need to pay more generally for online. This race to the bottom on wages for everyone is insane. That said, those idiotic talking heads on cable noise get six figure salaries and that is also part of the problem. Real Journalism doesn't pay.
Same with everything - more educational demands = no job
And yet Columbia and other schools have Masters in Journalism when no such thing existed and yet great stories were being written by reporters/writers unafraid of tackling big issues (Columbia makes the $, loan companies make the $, the students - nope). Now we have script readers that have no objectivity or ability to actually conduct real research. It's all party-affiliated crap or people that pretend to be journalists while they record goings on in the halls of power to pen yet another "tell-all" about what they saw in the White House during this or that event - yawn, just in it for $.
Just like every field, papers and TV demand some Masters in Journalism, 10+ years in journalism, and then the people that spend $100,000+ for all these degrees will be ignored by people that want to pay $8/hr. to a freelancer. And then the guy in his 20s or 30s with the degree and debt will then get grilled as to why he's unable to land a job by someone that could start work at a paper with a high school degree decades ago and work his way up. Dark days in every field. It's good, the lies and games and rackets are burning so many people and tearing trust apart at every level that the whole thing will crash because no one will trust anything or anyone and the number of people being exploited/lied to grows with every day.
the entire education "piece of paper" requirement
If you think about it, people were setting the world on fire in all sorts of areas, including Science & Technology with Bachelor's degrees. Some even without high school. The piece of paper requirement has become fairly ridiculous in many cases. I do think one needs education to a certain degree but many universities are so large, the truth is one is self-educating and just racking up the credit hours. Self-education is the biggest skill one needs yet the paper chase is more and more not recognizing that.
Remember "transferable skills"? HR hates when that's mentioned
Seriously, it's all a sick joke. Give me someone that can think, write well, and conduct good, solid research (in whatever field), and that person will do well in most fields. Granted, some people do very well in the maths and sciences, and some do better in the social sciences/humanities, but there's so much a critical thinker with a solid base of education can achieve in any number of fields. Well, nowadays that whole concept is pissed on and disregarded. Broad thinkers and people that can educate themselves (for $0 thanks to the Internet) are absolutely viewed as a threat and can't get past computer screening and then really, really intimidated HR and potential managers. It's all leading to mediocrity now, utter destruction very soon. But you'll have many people that could do great things giving the middle finger to the Bozos that locked them out. Remember when Renaissance Man meant something? Now it's a relic of the past.
corporate jungle
I find it sad that one of the 1st female CEOs cancels a policy that is geared towards working mothers. Typical. But mediocrity and sociopaths rewarded in corporate cultures has been going on for a long time.