By Jim Hagarty
2007
More cheery news. This just in. The average Canadian earns $38,010 a year.
Meanwhile, the 100 highest-paid chief executive officers in Canada had already earned that amount by 9:46 a.m. on the second day of the new year.
“Minimum-wage workers would have barely rolled out of bed on New Year’s Day by the time the country’s top earners pocketed the $15,931 that will likely take the low-paid workers all of 2007 to make,” reported the Toronto Star this week.
The man who came up with these figures put them in these terms because he believes the average Canadian will be able to relate to them better than simply trying to compare their $38,010 to the $9 million the average top private-sector executive earns in a year. He’s onto something, for sure, but I think his comparisons are still out of reach of the comprehension abilities of most of us. ln fact, if the rest of us were smart enough to figure this all out without the help of this guy, we’d probably be the ones making the $9 million.
I believe we need even better yardsticks with which to measure this discrepancy in earnings. Here are a few, courtesy of me and my calculator. Assuming you are an average wage earner, these CEOs are making 236 times more each year than you are. Put a different way, the guys in the penthouses, driving the Maseratis and flying the Lear Jets are getting a weekly paycheque that is 23,678 per cent higher than yours. You are earning $21 an hour. They are making $4,945 in that same hour. ln fact, it takes them about 15 seconds to earn what you make in 60 minutes.
Go ahead, get mad.
But in the time it takes you to say, “These guys are making way too much money,” each of them just pulled in $5.50. You really can’t win. Even if you just say, “Darn it all!”, they still earned over $3 in the time it took you to get that out. Write a letter to somebody about it if you like, but keep in mind that the half hour it takes you to compose it and mail it will have seen another $2,472.50 flow into the pockets of the ones you are writing to complain about. Make a quick call to your member of Parliament. Another $1,000 gone. An angry email. Goodbye $500.
Now, that you’re feeling really good about things, let’s look through the other end of the binoculars. You are 30 years old, making the average Canadian wage of $38,010. At that rate, you will have to work until you are 266 years old to make the $9 million that our top CEOs earn in one year. Over a 35-year career, at that rate, they’ll earn $315 million. You’ll work till the year 2866 to bring in the same.
But cheer up. Ontario is doing away with the mandatory retirement age of 65, so you’ll be able to work away happily into your third century – even longer. Now here’s the topper. lf you get caught with your fingers in the company cookie jar or screw up so badly on the job you leave your boss no choice but to walk you to the door, you will get a severance package amounting to zero to take with you on your way home to break the good news to your family.
The CEOs will do a little better than you. They don’t usually set one foot inside a boardroom without their exit from the company already having been planned for and planned for very well. A few weeks back, when Hydro One CEO Tom Parkinson resigned his job amidst criticisms of his salary – $116 million – and his questionable spending habits, he was “bought out” by the government (a.k.a. you and I) for $3 million. As it turned out, and this will come as a surprise, Tom was discovered to be a gigantic asshole. Perhaps this is a reach, but I’m guessing it’s a little easier, with a $3 million cheque sticking out of your back pocket, to look into the faces of your disappointed wife and kids, who may be unhappy that Daddy got the boot.
But cheer up.
Tom will soon get even a higher-paying job with a larger “golden handshake” package ready. These guys float around in a stratosphere that, while not heavily populated, is impervious to entry by the average schmoe.
However, I am in danger of being hypocritical here, as I once scaled the wage heights my friends could only dream of one day ascending. I was 16 and helping build a bridge for the Conestoga Expressway in Kitchener. I was pulling down an impressive $1.65 an hour when my poor high school friends were running around catching birds in the Monkton chick hatchery for $1. I lorded it over them every chance I got.
By summer’s end, I had a raise to $2 for my 50-hour weeks.
That was the last time, I’m pretty sure, that I ever earned double what my friends were pulling down. I gotta say, it felt pretty good to among the “filthy rich” for once.
Yes, I well remember the severance package I negotiated with my construction boss that first day on the job. I was 16, they needed me and I had the upper hand. If I am not mistaken, the supervisor pointed to his steel-toed workboot and then to my skinny ass and said something to the effect that if I pissed him off, these two things connecting one day would be my severance package.
Tom Parkinson would have been proud of me.
As I am of him.
