<<< Date Index >>>     <<< Thread Index >>>

[IP] more on Offshoring helps the economy... if you're a CEO who offshores.





Begin forwarded message:

From: John Lyon <jelyon@xxxxxxx>
Date: September 1, 2004 12:22:48 PM EDT
To: dave@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [IP] more on Offshoring helps the economy... if you're a CEO who offshores.

A more nuanced look From Market Place, a public radio show:

August 31, 2004 Tuesday
New study suggests CEOs who send jobs abroad more likely to be rewarded with big pay raises

This is MARKETPLACE. I'm David Brown.

What could make the issue of outsourcing American jobs even more politically explosive? See what you think of this. A just-released study from a non-profit, liberal research group suggests chief executives who send jobs abroad are more likely to be rewarded with big pay raises. Skeptics might challenge the suggestion that there's a direct cause-and-effect relationship between outsourcing and rising CEO salaries. In fact, the relationship may be more nuanced. MARKETPLACE's Bob Moon takes a look.

BOB MOON reporting:

The study found that chief executives whose companies shipped jobs overseas enjoyed raises averaging 46 percent, more than five times that of the average CEO. The study's author concedes there may or may not be a cause-and-effect link between outsourcing jobs and big CEO pay raises. Some of the companies in question are, after all, unusually large and/or profitable. But Sara Anderson at the Institute for Policy Studies argues it's still unseemly for CEOs to be cutting back on jobs while their paychecks are getting obscenely fat.

Ms. SARA ANDERSON (Institute for Policy Studies): We do think it's a sign of, really, a perverse rewards system in this country, where executives generally are rewarded for decisions that may improve the bottom line regardless of how might they affect workers and communities.

MOON: New York University business Professor Lawrence White isn't convinced outsourcing has anything to do with executive pay. He says if a CEO can make his firm more efficient, he ought to be rewarded for that. And he worries this study just confuses the issue. He says an executive's pay often has little to do with his or her accomplishments.

Professor LAWRENCE WHITE (New York University): Generally executives in the United States are overpaid, and they are not adequately rewarded for better performance; they are not adequately penalized for poor performance. That's the real problem.

MOON: But the study's author says there's no way any improvement in a company's performance could justify some executive pay raises last year, as high as several hundred percent and in one case 103,000 percent. In New York, I'm Bob Moon for MARKETPLACE.

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/