CEOs: A leadership challenge

Since 1978 the typical worker compensation has risen 12%. Since then, CEO compensation has risen an astronomical 940%. The low worker-to-CEO pay ratio shouldn’t be the benchmark for quality of equality, though.

The Institute for Policy Studies found that J.B. Hunt Transport Services had one of the lowest pay ratios during 2018 and its CEO, John Roberts, took $859,000 in 2017 — about 15 times the average worker. His compensation plan though was around $5 million worth with stock options, raising the ratio 100 times over.

Decreasing a base salary that accounts minimally for the entirety of a CEO’s total compensation plan to ensure solvency of a company is misleading. Can a company take meaningful strides in times of pandemic and trouble to assure a corporate culture aversion toward avarice? When a ship is sinking it is the captain who is last to leave and he who elects to take the largest sacrifice.

My hope is that corporate decisions are made for both the upward mobility of the company and a sustainable, proportional rise for its employees. I don’t think we should applaud CEOs who appear to engage in a PR campaign to make it look like they’re making a bigger sacrifice than they actually are.

Lead by example. Don’t alienate your workforce by saving the top tier first. Apply the value standards and mission statements not only for the good times, but more so in times such as these.

SASHA FISHER

Coeur d’Alene