11 Reasons To Love Costco That Have Nothing To Do With Shopping & (UPDATED 22NOV13) Costco labels Bible as fiction in this store. Pastor goes viral for wrong reason.19&21NOV13

(JUST from the header on this post I will ask you not pass judgement on Costco until you ready the Daily Kos article.) I have enjoyed shopping at Costco for many years now, and after making the decision (today) to no longer shop at sears, starbucks and target until they improve the pay and benefits for their employees I will be spending a lot more money there. Thank you Mr Jelinek for having the morals and courage to provide for your employees, corporate America could learn a lot from you. See The 10 Companies Paying Americans The Least: 24/7 Wall Street http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-10-companies-paying-americans-least.html
for the reasons I am boycotting sears, starbucks and target. This from HuffPost and Daily KOS.....

It's not just the bulk toilet paper and $1.50 hot dog combos. There's more going on here.
1. The company pays a living wage. Costco's CEO and president, Craig Jelinek, has publicly endorsed raising the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour, and he takes that to heart. The company's starting pay is $11.50 per hour, and the average employee wage is $21 per hour, not including overtime. Most other big box retailers start their employees at minimum wage.
2. Workers get benefits. About 88 percent of Costco employees have company-sponsored health insurance, according to David Sherwood, Costco's Director of Financial Planning and Investor Relations. "I just think people need to make a living wage with health benefits,” Jelinek told Bloomberg. “It also puts more money back into the economy and creates a healthier country. It’s really that simple.”
3. The CEO makes a reasonable salary. Costco's CEO makes far less than most executives, with a total compensation package of about $4.83 million in 2012. In contrast, Walmart CEO Mike Duke made roughly $19.3 million during the same year. Walmart's CEO earns as much as 796 average employees, according to CNN Money, compared to Costco's CEO making 48 times more than the company's median wage.

4. Costco helped its employees weather the recession. When the economic crisis hit and other retailers laid off workers, Costco's CEO approved a $1.50-an-hour wage increase for many hourly employees, spread out over three years.
5. Costco doesn't kill Thanksgiving. While many of its competitors are forcing employees to work on Thanksgiving Day, Costco will buck the trend and stay closed.
6. It also doesn’t waste money on expensive advertising. The company doesn't advertise nor does it hire a public relations staff. Meanwhile, Walmart dropped $1.89 billion on ads in 2011.
7. Its prices aren't horrendously high. Costco never marks up products by more than 15 percent, while most retailers commonly mark products up by more than 25 percent.
8. It embraces equality. Costco scored extremely well (90/100) on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equality Index, an assessment of LGBT policies in the workplace.
9. It hires from the inside. More than 70 percent of its warehouse managers began their careers working the register or the floor.
10. Costco's employees are loyal. For employees that have worked at the company for more than one year, the annual turnover rate is below six percent, according to Sherwood. For executives, the turnover rate is less than one percent.
11. Free samples. Need we say more?
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/19/reasons-love-costco_n_4275774.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

HERE is an update on this story from Sojourners and Daily KOS at The Bible, Costco, and Fiction: On Foolish Christians and Multiplying Hot Dogs & Pastor Apologizes to Costco, Praises Them for Their Good Works 22NOV13 http://bucknacktssordidtawdryblog.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-bible-costco-and-fiction-on-foolish.html

Thu Nov 21, 2013 at 01:01 PM PST

Costco labels Bible as fiction in this store. Pastor goes viral for wrong reason.

by Egberto WilliesFollow

A major chain found something out the hard way. They got national publicity for hitting the third rail. In a country that is 78.4% Christian, that is a dangerous mistake. Chick-fil-a can make a social mistake if it has some doctrinal backing in Christianity (implied or otherwise). The converse is not true.
Is the bible fiction? Is it literal? Did Moses really part the sea? Some people really think that the stories in the Bible are just that, fictional stories. However, some really worship the Bible as the word of God. When in doubt, if one is selling Bibles, neutrality must reign, lest you incur the wrath of the offended.
Costco labeled the Bible as fictional in a Simi Valley store. A pastor saw it.

Caleb Kaltenbach, pastor of Discovery Church, came across the Bibles while shopping for a gift and tweeted the picture on Friday with the comment: "Costco has Bibles for sale under the genre of FICTION Hmmmm..." That didn't sit well with members of his congregation.
“I was completely offended. It’s wrong, and I believe that the Bible is real,” Shellie Dungan told KTLA-TV.

Did the pastor go to Costco to get a response? Apparently he went directly to social media. He likely knew that he could rile up a significant portion of the Christian base to get notoriety. And he did. Follow me below the fold to see what happened next.

For all the brouhaha, Kaltenbach said the discussions the label has sparked have been good for the faith community. "It’s caused a lot of controversy, it’s caused a lot of conversation, which I think conversation is good," he told KCBS-TV.

I find it ironic that the pastor would go after a company like Costco. Costco treats its employees in a humane fashion by paying them a living wage and ensuring they have good benefits. Walmart stiffs its employees and pays them substandard wages while simulating support for family values. If the pastor wanted to do a Christian-like thing one would think he would be shaming Walmart into "doing unto others as they want done unto their shareholders." Costco says the mislabeling was a mistake by its distributor that they should have caught. Sadly, anyone who analyses this event should come to the conclusion that this pastor did an ‘un-Christian-like’ thing. He forgot about compassion.
Had the pastor gone directly to a Costco manager, he would have found out it was a simple mistake. By publicizing it as he did, he allowed the emotions to be unleashed on Costco. He likely hurt the bottom line of the company. That will affect many of its employees. Worse, he may have irreparably left a bad mark on the store’s manager that will follow that manager for life; So much for forgiveness.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/21/1257374/-Costco-labels-Bible-as-fiction-in-this-store-Pastor-goes-viral-for-wrong-reason

CEO pay is grotesque. This might change that. & Everything you need to know about today’s big jobs report & This graph calls the entire economic recovery into question 2&1AUG13

CEO pay is grotesque, it is obscene, and it is a big part of the reason the economy only added 162,000 jobs in July, the unemployment rate is 7.4% and the employment rate is flat. Daily Kos and USAction have started a petition campaign to force the SEC to enforce the provision of the Dodd-Frank law requiring public corporations to disclose the pay rates of executives compared to the corporations lowest paid workers. See the Washington Post's Wonkbook analysis of the jobs report and an interesting graph on the recession. Click the link to sign the petition....

Craig, join Daily Kos and USAction in urging the Securities & Exchange Commission to enforce the law on C.E.O. salaries—which should have happened three years ago. Click here to sign the petition.

Excessive C.E.O. salaries contributed to the reckless financial culture that nearly ruined our economy. The Dodd-Frank law, which Congress passed in 2010, requires publicly traded corporations to disclose how much their executives make—compared to their average worker.

Three years later, the law still hasn’t been enforced. Why? Because the Securities & Exchange Commission has not even passed regulations implementing the law. Meanwhile, big corporations are putting pressure on the S.E.C.—and Congress—to quietly kill it.

Enough is enough. This is basic public information we have the right to know, and will help prevent the next financial crisis. Join Daily Kos and USAction by signing our petition to the S.E.C., urging them to enforce Dodd-Frank’s provision on disclosing C.E.O. salaries.

Keep fighting,
Paul Hogarth, Daily Kos

Everything you need to know about today’s big jobs report

By Neil Irwin, Published: August 2 at 8:26 am

(Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

The July jobs numbers are out, and we’re here to give you quick-fire analysis of the report. Follow along as we make sense of it in in real time.

How markets reacted

Financial markets interpreted the jobs numbers as moderately negative for the economy. The stock market was down at 10:00 a.m., off 0.3 percent as measured by the Standard & Poor’s 500 index.
The bond market rallied, meanwhile, with the yield on a 10 year Treasury bond falling .08 percent to 2.625 percent, retracing most of a huge jump on Thursday. That reflects investors concluding that soft jobs data will make the Fed slower and more cautious in exiting from its easy money policies.
Indeed, on Thursday futures markets implied a 41 percent probability that the Fed will raise interest rates by the end of 2014. After the report Friday, those odds fell to 38 percent.

Number of part-time workers still rising

One of the more disappointing trends over the last few months is that job growth has been strongest in low-paying sectors that tend to offer lots of part-time jobs, particularly in retail and leisure and hospitality. Obamacare may also be affecting employers as they wrestle with the health care mandates, though the evidence is still uncertain.
The number of people working part time for economic reasons — they couldn’t find full-time work or had their hours cut back by their employer against their will — rose by 19,000 in July. Since March, that number has risen by a whopping 607,000.

What does it mean for the Fed?

With the Federal Reserve weighing when to begin slowing the pace of its $85 billion in monthly bond purchases, each unemployment report (and inflation report, and so on) takes on extra importance right now. How are Fed officials likely to interpret these numbers, and will the July report augur for tapering the purchases sooner (September) or later (December or beyond)?
On one hand, the unemployment rate came down significantly, to 7.4 percent from 7.6 percent. That gets us closer to the thresholds that the Fed has sketched out — that it will end its quantitative easing policies when the jobless rate is around 7 percent and consider raising interest rates when it gets to 6.5 percent or below. Thu, it supports winding down bond purchases sooner rather than later.
But not so fast. The Fed has gone to great lengths to assure that they are making these judgments based on the strength of the job market as a whole, not that one unemployment number. And given that the jobless rate fell in large part because people dropped out of the labor force, that is not going to automatically have Chairman Ben Bernanke reaching for the “taper” button on his desk. (Note: There is not, as far as we know, such a button on Ben Bernanke’s desk)
And the tepid numbers on payrolls, of only 162,000 jobs added and a downward revision for previous months, also appears to support caution in removing monetary accommodation.
Overall, the unemployment numbers help make the case for winding down purchases later rather than sooner, though there is lots more data to digest before the next Fed policy meeting, including the August jobs report.

Negative trends on hours and wages

Another disappointing element of the July jobs report was weakness in measures of worker compensation, which had been a bright spot in June.
For all private employees, average weekly hours worked fell to 34.4 from 34.5, and average hourly earnings ticked down two cents to $23.98. That was enough to push the index of weekly payrolls down 0.3 percent, following an 0.6 percent rise in June.

Where did the jobs come from?

So, what sectors were the big gainers, and the big disappointments, in the July jobs report?
First, the winners:
Retail. This sector has been on a hiring tear in recent months. There were 46,800 more retail jobs added in July, and job creation in the sector has averaged almost 40,000 jobs a month for the last three months. Apparently, consumers are buying, and retailers are staffing their stores to fulfill the demand.
Professional and business services. A stalwart of job creation through the sluggish recovery of the last few years, the sector added another 36,000 jobs in July. Unlike some months, the hiring wasn’t driven overwhelmingly by temporary jobs, which are counted in this category. Only 7,700 of those positions were in temporary services.
Leisure and hospitality. Like retail, this sector has been zooming forward, and it added another 23,000 jobs in July after an average of 50,000 a month in May and June. Americans seem to be going to hotels in restaurants in droves, or at least enough for restaurateurs and hoteliers to staff up.
Government. True, the government employment sector added only 1,000 jobs, and so was effectively unchanged. But the absence of a negative sign is actually progress. It compares with an average of 9,500 jobs lost in May and June. The federal government excluding the post office, dealing with spending cuts and the sequester, nonetheless added jobs, and local governments added 6,000 positions, suggesting that the long bleed  may be ending.
And the jobs day disappointments:
Construction. So much for the housing rebound producing a resurgence in construction employment. The sector shed 6,000 jobs in July, continuing a run of uneven results.
Other services. This grab bag category of employment includes the nonprofit sector, and it shed 2,000 jobs.
 Why did the unemployment rate fall?

The pleasant surprise in an otherwise tepid jobs report was a drop in the unemployment rate, to 7.4 percent from 7.6 percent. But as we’ve all learned by now, you can’t take changes in the unemployment rate at face value. They can be good, bad or indifferent depending on whether they are driven by more people having jobs or people giving up looking for a job.
In this case, it’s all of the above. The number of people reporting that they are employed rose by 227,000. Good! The number of people who did not have a job but were looking for one fell by 263,000. Also good! But the number of people not in the labor force rose by 240,000, driving down the labor force participation rate. Bad!
The single indicator of the health of the job market that can sum all that up is the employment to population ratio, which was unchanged at 58.7 percent.

Unemployment rate falls to 7.4% as 162k jobs added

The numbers are in! The Labor Department reported that employers in the United States added 162,000 jobs in July, compared with a revised 188,000 in June. Revisions to May and June subtracted 26,000 from the earlier estimates of jobs added. That’s the bad news: That’s a bit below recent job market measures and thus a disappointment.
The better news: The unemployment rate fell to 7.4 percent, from 7.6 percent. Simultaneously more people had jobs, fewer people were unemployed and fewer people were in the labor force.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/02/everything-you-need-to-know-about-todays-big-jobs-report/?wpisrc=al_comboNE_b

This graph calls the entire economic recovery into question

By Ezra Klein, Published: August 1 at 11:57 am

From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

The core issue here is that the unemployment rate only counts people actively looking for work. That means there are two ways to leave the ranks of the unemployed. One way — the good way — is to get a job. The other way is to stop looking for work, either because you’ve retired, or become discouraged, or begun working off the books.
The yellow line on the left shows the official unemployment rate since 2008. It’s fallen from over 10 percent to under 8 percent. But the red line on the right shows the actual employment rate — that is, the percentage of working-age adults with jobs. What should scare you is that the red line has barely budged.
At the beginning of 2007, the employment rate was 63.3 percent, and the unemployment rate was 4.7 percent. By the end of 2009 — so, after the worst of the recession — it had fallen to 58.3 percent, and unemployment was up to 9.9 percent. Today, it’s 58.7 percent, even though unemployment has fallen to 7.6 percent. That means a lot of the people who’ve left the rolls of the unemployed haven’t gotten a new job. They’ve just left the labor force altogether.
Some of that’s natural. The population is aging, and the labor force was expected to shrink. But it wasn’t expected to shrink this much. The economy is a lot worse than a glance at the unemployment rate suggests. And instead of doing anything to help those people get back to work, Washington canceled the payroll tax cut, permitted sequestration to go into effect, and is now arguing about whether to shut down the federal government — and possibly breach the debt ceiling — in the fall.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/01/this-graph-calls-the-entire-economic-recovery-into-question/

U.S. CEO Pay Jumps Minimum Of 27 Percent Last Year, Survey Finds 14DEZ11

CEO pay in the U.S. jumped a minimum of 27% this year (my pay, like that of the vast majority of Americans who are still fortunate to have a job, didn't increase this year, or the last, or the last) yet the gop and tea-baggers are refusing to raise the tax rates on the income and capital gains of the 1% AND it seems yet again the democrats are going to cave and pass legislation that protects the economic inequality plaguing the nation. Congress is waging class warfare on 99% of the country and Pres Obama has become the Commander-In-Chief of this force of 535 whose motto has become to serve and protect the obscenely rich, the greedy, the corporate welfare queens and the military-industrial complex.....
While the incomes of so many Americans remain the same size or get smaller, corporate chiefs can't say they're suffering in quite the same way.
American CEOs saw pay increases of between 27 and 40 percent last year, according to a GovernanceMetrics International survey cited by the Guardian. In addition, the median value of CEOs profits on stock options jumped to $1.3 million from $950,400.
This, even after Congress passed financial reform regulations that included provisions aimed at making CEO pay more transparent by allowing shareholders to weigh in.
The survey's findings may resonate with Occupy movement activists, who have been railing against income inequality since the protests first started. Indeed, CEO pay by itself exceeded the amount that his or her corporation paid in income taxes in at least 25 cases last year. And in the year before America's highest-highest-paid corporate chief netted more than $145 million, U.S. median income fell to below $27,000, meaning half of all earners made less than that.
But John Hammergren, CEO of healthcare provider McKesson, isn't the only boss taking home the big bucks. JPMorgan Chase Chief Jamie Dimon got a $19 million raise in 2010 and Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein netted an extra $3.6 million in bonuses last year.
The news is a good sign for people in the top one percent of earners, who saw their incomes drop by roughly a third in the official years of the recession, according to a recent report by The New York Times. Still, even after that fall, the net worth of one percenters remained 200 times higher than that of the median national income, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
Some CEOs even got huge pay packages for not doing their jobs. Eugene Isenberg took home $100 million for dropping his title as CEO of Nabors Industries in October. While Dougless Foshee, the CEO of natural gas pipeline operator El Paso, became eligible for an exit package worth $95 million after the company was acquired by rival Kinder Morgan.
Still, some don't seem to mind the huge CEO paydays. The vast majority of corporate shareholders say that CEOs are being compensated correctly, according to an October study from research firm Equilar.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this post said an increase to $1.3 million from $950.000 is a 70 percent increase. It is a 36.8 percent increase.

What other jobs do the richest Americans hold? Find the answer below:

10. Business Operations (Nonfinance)

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Percentage of top 1 percent with occupation in 2005: 3 percent
Percentage of top 1 percent with occupation in 1979: 2.4 percent

25 Giant Corporations That Paid Their CEOs More Than They Paid Uncle Sam 1SEP11

BET the Congressional budget / deficit committee doesn't do a damn thing about the corporate welfare system. Check this out from MOJO....

—By Josh Harkinson

It might make sense for a small business to pay its top brass more than it doles out to Uncle Sam in taxes, but what if that company has tens of thousands of employees and billions of dollars in profits? Well, this is America folks. What follows is a list of 25 mega corporations that paid one guy—their CEO—more money than what they spent on their entire federal tax bills last year. The same companies averaged $1.9 billion each in profits—money that was earned, in many cases, by cutting thousands of American jobs.
Source: Institute for Policy Studies

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• Major Study Links Decline of Unions to Rising of Income Inequality

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Josh Harkinson is a staff reporter at Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. Email him with tips at jharkinson (at) motherjones (dot) com. To follow him on Twitter, click here. Get Josh Harkinson's RSS feed.

U.S. Economic Growth Slows To 1.8 Percent Pace 28APR11

SO were is all that economic growth that was supposed to occur with the massive tax breaks for the wealthy and corporate America? Where is all the investment in America by the wealthy and corporate America that was supposed to create millions of jobs???? Where are the wealthy and corporate welfare queens investing the money from these tax breaks? Look at the huge increases in corporate executive pay and in off shore tax havens, that is where you'll find all the money. BOHICA America!

by The Associated Press

The economy slowed sharply in the first three months of the year as high gas prices cut into consumer spending, bad weather delayed construction projects and the federal government slashed defense spending by the most in six years.
The Commerce Department said Thursday that the economy grew at a 1.8 percent annual rate in the January-March quarter. That was weaker than the 3.1 percent growth rate for the October-December quarter. And it was the worst showing since last spring when the European debt crisis slowed growth to a 1.7 percent pace.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and other economists say the slowdown last quarter is a temporary setback. They generally agree that gas prices will stabilize and the economy will grow at a 3 percent pace in each of the next three quarters.

Tracking U.S. Growth

Seasonally adjusted annual rate, in percent

Source: Commerce Department
Credit: NPR

But gas prices are still going up. The national average on Thursday was $3.88 a gallon, an increase of 30 cents from a month ago when the first quarter ended.
Rising gas prices are draining most of the extra money that Americans are receiving this year from a Social Security payroll tax cut.
In the January-March quarter, consumers boosted spending at a 2.7 percent pace. That was down from a 4 percent pace in the prior quarter and was the weakest pace since last summer. Consumer spending is important because it accounts for roughly 70 percent of overall economic activity.
Pump prices were mostly blamed for the pullback, although harsh winter weather also kept people from shopping.
Winter storms including rare snow that blanketed the South also forced builders to delay construction projects, a big factor holding back overall economic activity. Builders slashed spending on commercial construction, such as office buildings and factories, at a 21.7 percent annualized pace, the deepest cuts since late 2009.
Home building also was hurt. Builders cut spending on housing projects by a 4.1 percent annualized rate.
Bernanke at a news conference on Wednesday suggested that the crippled housing market will continue to weigh on the economic recovery. He pointed out that home building and commercial construction were both "very weak" in the first quarter. Normally, construction spending is a big part of economic recoveries.
The housing market's collapse thrust the economy into a deep recession, and economists say it will take years for the industry to heal. Two years after the recession has ended, the housing market remains depressed.
That's one of the reasons why the United States is experiencing a relatively slow recovery, Bernanke explained.
Another factor holding back the economy last quarter: Deep cuts by the federal government on military projects. That spending was cut by an annualized rate of 11.7 percent, the most since the end of 2005.

Related NPR Stories

Weekly Applications For Jobless Benefits Jump April 28, 2011

Fed Chief Offers Hints About When Rates Will Rise April 27, 2011

 

Economy

Weekly Jobless Benefits Applications Jump 25,000

The increase is the second in three weeks, a sign the job market's recovery is slow and uneven.

Economy

U.S. Economic Growth Slows To 1.8 Percent Pace

The economy slowed sharply in the first quarter as high gas prices cut into consumer spending.

Business

Bernanke Expects Jobs Market To Strengthen

Until Wednesday, no chairman of the Federal Reserve had ever given a full-fledged news conference.

Executive Pay Skyrockets 23 Percent In 2010, Top 299 CEOs Get $3.4 Billion 19APR11

SEE THE PREVIOUS POST ON THIS BLOG 'GUIDE TO CORPORATE FREELOADERS' POSTED 21APR11 AND KEEP IT IN MIND WHILE READING THIS FROM HUFFPOST....
WASHINGTON -- CEOs at 299 U.S. companies earned a staggering $3.4 billion combined in executive compensation in 2010, a new study by the nation’s largest labor union found.
Nearly 190 of those chief executives got a pay raise compared to their 2009 levels, the AFL-CIO noted in a report presented to reporters on Tuesday. The total amount of compensation represented a 23 percent increase from the prior year. In all, the sum of the salaries earned by those 299 CEOs equalled the combined average earnings of more than 100,000 workers in their respective companies.
The figures, which are part of the union federation’s annual Executive PayWatch -- a searchable database examining publicly available payment information from S&P 500 Companies -- reflect what AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka called a culture of “runaway CEO pay.” The numbers were presented as part of a larger pitch for Congress and the President to clamp down on executive compensation and protect the gains made on this front in the financial regulatory reform bill passed last year.
“The game is pretty rigged when it comes to the directors,” said Trumka. “It is getting a little better because the spotlight that we have been trying to shine on this for 15 years is starting to get a littler brighter now. We are having a moderating effect. But I think if the spotlight were to go away the game would go right back to what it was before."
A request for comment from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which lobbies on behalf of business interests, was not immediately returned.
Under the financial regulatory reform bill, commonly known as Dodd-Frank, shareholders of publicly traded companies are given a say-on-pay vote on executive compensation. While the votes are not binding, union officials view them as a vehicle for spotlighting -- or at least embarrassing -- executives who earn vastly disproportionate wages compared to the rest of their work force.
Among those CEOs highlighted in the AFL-CIO’s presentation were Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman (who was awarded salary, stock and other benefits totaling $84.5 million during just nine months of 2010), Occidental Petroleum CEO Ray Irani (who was paid more than $76 million in compensation) and Abercrombie and Fitch CEO Michael Jeffries (who earned more than $36 million). According to the AFL-CIO report, the average pay of the 299 CEOs would cover the salaries of more than 700 minimum-wage workers.

“The levels of pay that we are seeing today are simply unacceptable,” said Brandon Rees, Deputy Director of the AFL-CIO's Office of Investment.
Outrage over an imbalance in compensation levels is nothing new for the union federation. The 12 million-member AFL-CIO has been putting out Executive PayWatch studies since 1997. Since then, compensation for CEOs has soared dramatically.
At various points, different remedies to curb rising CEO pay have been proposed, including advocating that companies that receive federal funds should be subject to actual caps on executive salaries. Now, however, proponents of limiting CEO pay have scaled back their ambitions, pushing transparency and the subsequent public shame as key remedies.
“This is a particularly important time for shareholders and anybody who wants to hold CEO’s accountable, because the regulations are being written right now… and [companies] are doing everything they can to try and dilute those regulations," said Trumka. "[Any] spotlight that can be put on them right now and their efforts to try to dilute the law and go back to business as usual for Wall Street is very, very helpful.”
UPDATE: J.P. Fielder, a spokesman for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, sends over the following reaction to the AFL-CIO's push to tackle CEO pay.

The Chamber feels that corporate executives’ compensation should be based on a balance of individual accomplishment, corporate performance, adherence to risk management, and compliance with laws and regulations, with a focus on shareholder value. The government should not pick winners and losers.

2011 EXECUTIVE PAYWATCH

 http://www.aflcio.org/corporatewatch/paywatch/

2010 Average CEO Pay at S&P 500 Companies
Salary	$1,093,989
Bonus	$251,413
Stock Awards	$3,833,052
Option Awards	$2,384,871
Nonequity Incentive Plan Compensation	$2,397,152
Pension and Deferred Compensation Earnings	$1,182,057
All Other Compensation	$215,911
TOTAL	$11,358,445

Source: AFL-CIO analysis of pay data from 299 companies, provided by salary.com.

According to the Federal Reserve, U.S. corporations held a record $1.93 trillion in cash on their balance sheets in 2010. But they are not investing to expand their companies, grow the real economy or create good middle-class jobs. Corporate CEOs are literally hoarding their company’s cash—except when it comes to their own paychecks.
In 2010, Standard & Poor's 500 Index company CEOs received, on average, $11.4 million in total compensation— a 23 percent increase in one year.[1] Based on 299 companies’ most recent pay data for 2010, their combined total CEO pay of $3.4 billion could support 102,325 median workers’ jobs.[2]
Fortunately, the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act contains new tools to help limit runaway CEO pay.  Shareholders now have a “say-on-pay” vote on executive compensation, and companies must disclose the ratio of CEO-to-worker pay at each company.
Trends in CEO Pay
Learn how CEO pay is being reformed by the Wall Street Reform Act.
Case Studies
Read examples of CEO pay abuses that shareholders should oppose.
CEO Pay Database
Find CEO compensation data for some of the country’s largest companies.
Pay Disparity Ratio
Learn about the new disclosure requirement that is giving CEOs conniptions.
What You Can Do
Tell Congress that you oppose repeal of Dodd-Frank and the pay disparity ratio.

1 AFL-CIO analysis of 299 companies in the S&P 500 Index. CEO pay data provided by Salary.com.
2 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2009 Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates, national cross-industry estimate of median annual compensation for all occupations.