Shocking report: Canadian CEOs get paid too much

If someone offered me 24 million dollars a year I would gladly take it. It comes back to the payroll offers being made. I am quite sure if a company went to the ranks they could easily find someone qualified and probably knows the company better, make a reasonable offer and gladly have it accepted. The days of bringing in hired guns at a huge pay package hopefully are numbered. Just look South of the boader. Shareholders need to vote directors that have the best interest of everyone in mind not just stuffing the pockets of a select few.

This is another perfect example of why the "economic recovery" is just a joke.
If you want to have a successfull economy you need to do what is known as true profit sharing.
This is where you take the net profit of the company every month and divide it by the total amount of hours worked by every employee right from the ceo's down to the cleaning crew and pay everyone equally per hour, you want more cash work more hours.
EVERYONE who works for the company all works just as hard as everyone else to help the company succeed due to the fact that they would benefit from increased profits just as much as the ceo's.
However I know this will never happen because the rich want to stay rich and do not like having to live on a budget like normal people.
Yea I know it's a pipedream but if people tried pipedreams once in a while you would be amazed what could be acomplished.
(you may now commence making fun of my post if you so desire, I'm used to it)

Now, just like in the early 1930's the US business 'leaders' continued to be richly rewarded while millions went without (very similar to Germany in the late 1920's). Sadly though this time around our political 'leaders' don't have any current examples of what happens when this is allowed to continue unabated believing instead the issue is about absolute poverty and not relative poverty. It is sad when as a society we laud these financial gluttons instead of limiting the scope of their damage and instructing the young in how to avoid those failings. Instead our sycophant politicians whore themselves out to these financial 'Gods' sending other peoples children off to die in wars protecting and enriching the assets amassed by these affluent parasites.

Life is not fair, but you have to look at it from CEO's perspective. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to get to that level and they've done it. CEO's are driving forces behind strong economies because of their abilities to create new jobs, that what the U.S. needs right now. You also have to remember these are businessmen and executives and the founders of the companies took a lot of financial risk to get to where they are. Plus these are private/public companies so it doesn't matter how much they get paid, if it was a government job then that would be a whole different ball game. I don't know about vast majority of CEO's but some are very generous like Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg give millions away to the needy. I think if a person does make that much money, the role should be honored to someone who would give back like these fine examples.

Matrimonial ,Pleeeeeease give me a break.

Ashamed, the profit of a company does NOT belong to the employees, it belongs to the owners (ie shareholders). You can't just split the profit amongst employees. As for the CEO "pay", most of that is stock options and not actual cash.

It used to be mostly cash until people complained about it, tax laws were changed and so much of it was changed to options. As a result, the best way to boost your pay as a CEO is to boost share price in the short term instead of thinking about the long term health of the company. As a result you often see many large-scale layoffs that result in a short term share price spike and consequently make those options worth a whole lot more. If everyone stopped worrying about what someone else makes and just worried about themselves you would not see that situation. Yes CEOs would get large salaries paid in cash...more than now but total compensation would fall and you would not see so many things done just for short term gains.

It should also be noted that the wealthiest 1% of tax payers pays almost 30% of the TOTAL amount of tax, so while these guys live in mansions maybe you should keep in mind that they also pay for your schools and hospitals.

You cannot just pass laws and tax strategies that punish the wealthy anymore like you could in centuries past. The wealth they have is portable and if our laws become too punishing to them they will take it and live elsewhere where they are not punished. If you think this is acceptable then you have absolutely no knowledge of tax or economics and should just keep your mouth shut and maybe re-read my above paragraph.

The problem about voting shareholders who get hired and who does not is still in the hands of the "Haves" and not the "Have NOTs" Think of it, who holds most of the shares with veto voting power in any company? It's usually the CEO's themselves and their buddies. You cannot say those days of hiring top guns with excessive pay is over because the regular working joe like the average wage earner do not own stocks so how can you stop these kind of bureaucracy from voting into CEO position their favorite croony? The best way to stop this crap is really stop patronizing the company. If it's such a big company then buy a different brand. Of course, you'll just hurt the workers because all the CEO and other executives will do is just lay off people or fire people from their jobs in order to cut their operating costs but when they do that then they say they deserve a raise because they saved the shareholders money by cutting costs in order to make the company profitable. When you then look at the shareholders, you'll find that it's just the CEO and his croonies again that hold the most shares. What do you think those stock dividends and stock options are for? Decoration for the CEO? LOL

Wow Paranormal are you that misinformed ? The biggest shareholders of the biggest corporations in Canada are institutional investors and Pension funds. That's right. ORDINARY Canadians. Ever heard of the CPP ? Canada Pension Plan ? Which every working person contributes to ? They invest in the banks, railways ect because those are good solid investments. They get a say in who gets voted in as a director. OTIP ? Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan ? Do you have RRSPs through a bank or other Financial instituion in Mutual Funds ? Those are all stocks with voting shares. You personally don't get to vote because those shares are all voted as blocks but they still get a vote and they are owned by the "little guy".

You know what I said in my previous post about the CEO being rewarded for spikes in share values ? That holds true for these investors too. They want to see that spike so they can go to ordinary Canadians and say: "see, we made you money". None of you would be willing to wait for your investment to pay off in 5 or 10 years either. You want to see gains and you want it now.

Everyone comes on here and blames the CEOs and guys like Madoff, when each and every one you shares and equal amount of blame for the current situation. Your greed is no different from theirs. If you see your RRSP lose money you want it stopped. Now. You people have paved the way for the current system. You should all be very proud of yourselves.

The lack of economic and financial education and intelligence in this country astounds me a daily basis.

One only needs to see the disconnect between CEO pay and a companies ROI to realize how broken the system is. Blockbuster CEO, base pay $750K, + 'Bonus' $2.25 million + $650K cash retention bonus + $500K if company shares are no longer trading (company was De-Listed in June). Now when (not if) Blockbuster goes bust and defaults on it's bank loans can anyone guess who is going to see their mortgage & loan payments increase to cover the cost of this bad loan? Perhaps a few economics, finance & fraud classes might help educate Matrimonial Site, Chazztbay & Paranormal Freak how the system that worked so well with government oversite in the 1950's fell apart since Reganomics. These companies and positions only exist because we the society let them if you doubt that, ask someone in China or Russia who has a company that criticizes the gov't.

I have taken several of those classes as I am currently working on my MBA.

I am going to guess you are, or were a simple minded blue collar worker or a lower level white collar worker who has read a couple of articles. Kudos to you for at least trying.

I did not state this was government fault. I put the blame solely where it belongs. On every single person who has a pension or RRSP.

You made my point for me. We have those positions because everyone is ok with it as long as they tag along for the ride and make money too. As soon as the gravy train is derailed they kick and scream like spoilled children.

Same with the Mortgage crisis. Did you hear anyone other than economists complain about the rise of housing prices ? No, because if you had a house you stood to profit. When that ride crashed then everyone wanted their admission refunded.

You want to place blame ? Go find a mirror.

The percentage that CEOs get paid out is disproportionate to what the blue collar worker gets from putting in his hard earned cash into RRSPs, he might make 17.00/hr and still has the living expenses to cover. A CEO on the other hand might not have to worry about having to count his change to buy milk for the kids and he probably doesn't care much if the stock fall a few percentage points, he still gets his hefty bonus, how many millions do you need to live comfortably and retire?? the blue collar worker will never get there unless he puts in every penny he makes and never actually buy a single thing on credit. That is not reality!!!!

Thanks for your information. Interesting post because many people ignore this information...

"True profit sharing" sounds great on paper. There is a problem there though. You can't predict how many minutes, hours or days it will take to work something out, in some positions, in real life. Some people, like my spouse actually like their career. One month he has alot more hours at work than another month. Wouldn't some employees get angry that his hours are longer? However, he is there for the good of the company.
Thanks to Chazz for the information.

It just shows how pathetic people are today, all everyone does is complain and holler over how much CEO's make and yet they are unwilling to take a stand together and reign in these excessiveness. Instead of banding together and demanding a fairer pay scheme where the CEO of the company could only make as much as 20 times as the lowest worker in the same company. The government is also to blame for these huge social injustices. They ignore the plight of hard working families and do nothing to stop the situation from occuring. In fact they promote it by their own hiring schemes when hiring CEO for crown corporations and paying them private sector wages. Thats why your taxes go up. Do not get me wrong, I am not against paying CEO a six figure salary as long as the lowest worker is paid a salary that can maintain a decent standard of living and provide extras for their families. I have been accused of being a communist in my behaviour, however I believe I am socialist actually. I believe if CEO's would actuall share their wealth with the workers right down to the lowest paid ones. Our economy would be in much better shape today and also into the future. Simple concept really... lets take a look at it shall we...

Underpaid means making a choice between that frivolous purchase of flatscreen vs rent or food or clothes for their kids.

Fairly paid means food, rent and some frivolous things like tv's/electronics and trips.

Just think it would be a win situation for everyone, first of all the lowest paid would see their standard of living go up and actually enjoy life. The companies would generate huge sales and see their profits go up. That would please the share holders. But CEO's are too stupid to see the situation they caused in the first place with their layoffs and their nickle and diming their workers to death that cause everybody to be in this mess. Their attitude I am in it for me has ruin this county and others. This could have been a great generation, and they have the power to make this country a great place to live but they continually look after their own selfish needs. I also blame everybody who does vote on their shareholder meetings to vote for people who believe in fairness in wages and that CEO wages mean be reduced and workers should be paid fairly. What really sad is the fact that the share holders are you and me, and yet as share holders we cannot change this crappy system because the hogs are firmly entrenched in the boardrooms and will not be leaving anytime soon. Even the board of directors are composed of former CEO's so unless you fire them all and start fresh you might have chance to make a change. It comes down to one thing simple greed and the lack of moral conscience to help your fellow man. At least some CEO's recognise the social injustices this system has cause are will to make a change by pledging half their fortunes to help the less fortunate. Its sort of ironic though that for years they screw the people and I feel they are hedging their bets in case there is some sort of god they have stand before when they die and attone their own behaviour and to their fellow man/woman. If I had my way I would make every CEO work for 6 mnths living strictly on the wages of their lowest worker and see if they could survive and see first hand how hard it is for them to survive. Wishful thinking I know but you got to dream right. I am sure after that stint, they would more than willing to raise the wages of the lowest paid person. For every layoff that happens, I would make that CEO personally go to everyones house that got laid off and have them tell the family members of those being laid off and made sure they looked them in the eyes, so that they could see the devastion of their decisions cause to families all in the name to applease the share holder and the stock value. I am sure things would change immensely. I could go on but whats the point the rich are getting richer on the backs of poor and its been that like thousands of years . Pearsonally lately with all the boneheaded decisions CEO's from various companies have made, I feel a common chimp could make better decisions. THats All FOLks...enjoy the read.

What is so shocking? Money always go to the top 1% percent of the population everywhere in a world of capitalism!

Chazztbay, I really like your comments , I am what you would call a blue collar worker, although I pay in taxes, more than the average wage. Like I posted in the other blog about taxing the rich, I'll say it here. Keep allowing your public representation to borrow on your account, and keep borrowing personally on your account, and the super-wealthy will get richer.

...there's a surprise, tell us something new that we all didn't know about

Chazztbay and Matrimonial are both blind. We, the blue collar workers have been slaves for decades, they use worthless pieces of paper (we all call it money) to make us think we are all equals and that if you work hard you can be rich one day too but its BS. when this system started the elites already had as much money as they would ever need, and they could print more if they needed it. They spout BS about inflation which they control to their advantage, force us to pay for insurance because of crimes they probable orchestrated to make life harder for us which makes the masses feel they need it. I could go on and on all day. wake up people we are slaves and we will never be anything different unless these sick fucks have a miraculous change of heart. The point is the gap between rich and poor is large very large but the gap between rich and filthy stinkin rich is much much larger.