They Never Learn…

August 18, 2009

Stephen Schwartzman, CEO of financial firm Blackstone made a sweet $702 million in 2008. Never mind that Blackstone stock has plummeted 40 percent over the last two years. On the slightly more modest side of corporate excess, Abercrombie & Fitch CEO Michael Jeffries took home $72 million in 2008, even though his company’s stock sank 55 percent in the last two years.

This, as national unemployment skyrockets toward 10 percent and wages and salaries for the rest of us fell 4.7 percent in the 12 months through June – the biggest drop since records began in 1960.

What will it take for the greed-meisters of Wall Street to realize that their shenanigans can’t continue? Is it that difficult to see how the very same people whose selfishness helped crash our economy are trying to pick it clean once again?

This is why AFSCME is leading the fight to re-regulate the financial industry and reign in the excessive paychecks that unaccountable corporate boards of directors routinely hand out to many of America’s CEOs. Their rapacious behavior not only threatens the interest of shareholders but the security of working families who have their savings invested in the market.

We obtained an enormous victory a few weeks ago when the U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation granting shareholders greater say over executive pay. But this is only the first step. Greed and corporate scandals will continue putting our pension plans in jeopardy until we win the fight to restrain undeserved CEO pay and make corporate boards more democratic.