'Are these men really worth that much more than the average worker?'

In its annual survey of top CEO pay issued last week, The New Zealand Herald showed the average earnings of CEO’s jumped 12% last year to $1,750,141 compared with a 2.4% rise for average New Zealanders.

The top CEO pay-packet went to Fletcher Building’s Ross Taylor, who took home $5.3 million.

The “obscene” 12% pay jump for “already overpaid CEOs last year reveals a wilful ignorance from much of corporate New Zealand” to the on-going harm inequality is causing the very society they live in, according to Peter Malcolm, spokesperson for the income equality project Closing the Gap.

“Are these men — and the top six earners were all men — really worth that much more than the average worker? According to justice, fairness and actual performance studies, absolutely not,” said Malcolm.

“The mismatch between worker and CEO pay contributes hugely to the large and growing levels of inequality in New Zealand and around the world.”

Malcom added that there is no up-side to inequality: “it’s 100 percent harmful across the board, in health, education and well-being”.

“What’s more, none of the arguments for these bloated pay packets stand up to scrutiny.

According to several researchers, including the University of Auckland’s Tim Hazeldine, have pointed out, this trend “lacks any obvious empirical justification in terms of general improvements in marketing, productivity, and profitability.”

“What is the answer? More pressure on corporates to rein in excessive pay; government support for worker cooperatives; regulations linking CEO pay to that of the lowest-paid worker; and a much more steeply progressive tax system that takes a bigger bite out of any earnings over, say, $200,000 a year,” said Malcolm.

“We can and must turn this around and in an election year we need to keep up the pressure on the government, on corporates, on the CEOs themselves to do the right thing.”