Boss to Workers: A Dollar for You, and $431 for Me

Date: September 4, 2005
Type: Media Article

Source: New York Times
Author: Hubert B. Herring

Ben Cohen's dusty vow that no Ben & Jerry's executive would make more than seven times the lowliest worker's wage seems a surreal joke now. Across corporate America today, bosses might be more likely to intone magnanimously, "I will never earn more than 400 times as much."

To be exact, for every dollar bill in a worker's pocket, the boss gets $431.

Farfetched? Not really. Again last year, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy, the ratio of the average chief executive's pay to that of production workers at 367 top corporations smashed through the 400-to-1 barrier, last breached in the wild late 90's.

To be exact, for every dollar bill in a worker's pocket, the boss gets $431. And here's a nugget of perspective: If the minimum wage had kept pace with bosses' pay since 1990, it would be $23.03 an hour.

Which bosses are really raking it in? Some of the big money is in war. At companies with at least 10 percent of revenue from military contracts, chief executives' pay tripled from 2001 to 2004.

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