Mr. Speaker, the 1990s will surely go down in history as the decade of corporate greed. Executive pay jumped 570% between 1990 and 2000 for the CEOs of Standard & Poor's top 500 companies. The explosion of CEO pay over the decade dwarfed the 37% growth in workers' pay.
According to Business Week CEO pay now stands at 531 times the pay of the average worker. If the average annual pay for production workers had grown at the same rate since 1990 their average salary would be $170,000 a year. The minimum wage would be $35 an hour.
When productivity goes up and profits go up, workers' wages are supposed to go up. That was the deal. That was the post-war labour accord. Capital has broken that compact and in their frenzy of wretched excess corporate executives have left any semblance of compensation fairness behind.