It’s Past Time for Corporations to Disclose Pay Ratios
Four years ago, in the Dodd-Frank Act, lawmakers in Congress required America’s top corporations to annually disclose the ratio between their CEO and median — most typical worker — pay. This disclosure, corporate lobbyists immediately claimed, would cost firms millions of dollars a year to prepare.
These lobbyists then began pounding on the federal regulators responsible for writing the regulations to implement Dodd-Frank’s disclosure mandate. They demanded relief. They’ve won delay. Regulators still haven’t issued the needed regulations. No corporation has yet had to disclose any CEO-worker pay ratio.
This long delay, interestingly, has even begun frustrating some corporations. One firm, Noble Energy, has gone ahead and voluntarily computed its CEO-worker pay ratio. Noble’s CEO turns out to make 85 times typical Noble worker pay.
U.S. corporations currently pay their CEOs 331 times average U.S. take-homes. Companies like Noble want the chance to look good by comparison. Can’t blame them. But we can blame federal regulators for dragging their feet on Dodd-Frank.
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Originally published in Too Much online magazine.
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