Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Tell Washington to Stand Firm on CEO Pay Disclosure

Please join with others and add your name to support this important step:


Americans for Financial Reform

At long last, the Securities and Exchange Commission has taken a first step toward requiring publicly held companies to disclose the ratio of their CEO’s pay to their median employee’s pay.

The pay gap between CEOs and the average American worker is outrageously high - 354-1 according to an end-of-2012 calculation by the AFL-CIO. The Institute for Policy Studies points out that the financial world has given out many of the fattest paychecks of recent decades, as a result of compensation systems that encourage excessive risk taking and contribute to growing inequality of income and wealth.


Runaway executive pay, linked to short-term stock or profit gains, helped fuel the massive betting spree that gave us the financial and economic meltdown of 2008-09. In a modest response, the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 requires companies to reveal more about their pay practices. Investors need this information, both to guard against risky bets by self-seeking executives and to evaluate a company's long-term soundness in light of evidence that outlandish pay at the top breeds cynicism and opportunism up and down the line.

But Wall Street has raised a tremendous hue and cry about the supposed burden of compiling such data. And even now, the financial industry, along with other corporations and business groups in Washington, is working overtime to get the SEC to roll back a proposed rule that it took three years to issue.

Enough already. Five years have passed since the financial crisis, and three years since Congress enacted the Dodd-Frank law. Join us in urging the SEC to stand by a strong proposal that rightly includes part-time and overseas workers. Tell the SEC to finalize this rule soon and follow up with action on other legally mandated steps to counter questionable corporate pay practices.




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Sent by Americans for Financial Reform
1629 K Street NW, 10th Floor, Washington, DC 20006 - (202) 466-3311

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