WAGE GAP IS A SIN

About ten or fifteen years ago The Presbytery of New Hope in eastern North Carolina had an overture they sent to the General Assembly. The overture they sent was to ask that the PCUSA committee on investments initiate stock holder resolutions to establish that the salaries of the CEO would not be more than 200 times the average salaries of the non managerial staff. The Presbytery included in that resolution the idea that all compensation for the CEO be included in that figure. The idea was that the top person, with all the perks and privileges, should not make more than 200 times the average of all the secretaries, janitors, maintenance workers and other non-management people. For every dollar of increase in that figure, the CEO could get 200 dollars. The Presbytery believed that the wealth ought to be shared with those who did the work.

That was a rather radical idea as the gap between the CEO and the non-management people at the time was larger. The CEO's of the largest companies in the country were being paid 411 times the average. At the time the gap between the CEO's in this country was larger than the gap in any European country.

The Resolution went to a committee at the General Assembly and the investment committee representatives said they were already talking to companies about that issue and we did not need to pass that overture. The Presbytery's overture was answered in the negative.

So it was with sorrow that I read the Washington Post article that reported that "When it comes to wage inequality, the U.S. ranks alongside developing countries. " Our gap is a little smaller than the gab between CEO's and the non-management people in Uganda and Jamaica, but our gap is bigger than even the Cameroon and the Ivory Coast. (Their article did not use numbers)

It is not just the hedge fund managers who are afflicted with greed. It is in all of us, and the work of all of us is to control the greed of each other. That is the beauty of joint and shared power. The group is supposed to restrain my greed, and I work with others to restrain the greed of others. When the compensation committees of these large corporations are made up of other CEO's nobody is restraining any body's greed.

Workers have to share in the profits of the corporation just as much as the stock holders. It is not Socialism or Communism which tells us that the workers must be paid fairly. There are very strong and prosperous companies who have some limits on CEO salaries and who keep the ratio in check. I think it is Christian Justice for all of us to push for a reasonable ratio. What we have now is just sinful.