Income Equality Aotearoa New Zealand Inc. - Closing the Gap
For Immediate Release 11th April 2017 Media Release
SHAME ON YOU! EXCESSIVE CEO PAY MUST BE CALLED OUT
Businesses with top-heavy CEO pay packets are not good corporate citizens and need to be held to account for their
contribution to New Zealand’s harmful levels of inequality, Peter Malcolm, spokesman for the income equality project
Closing the Gap, said today.
CEO pay in New Zealand has shot into the stratosphere, rising by 85 percent in recent decades — a rise that’s not
justified by CEO productivity, Mr. Malcolm said. That massive increase compares with a rise of just 13.5 percent for
wage and salary earners.
“Concern about the widening gap between the rich and everyone else is putting excessive CEO pay in the spotlight,” he
said, “and companies would do well to take heed.”
Prime Minister Bill English recently criticised the board of the New Zealand Superannuation Fund for approving a 36
percent pay rise for its chief executive, up to more than $1 million a year.
Meanwhile, the Dunedin gaming studio Rocketwerkz, has shown there is another way, winning a lot of good publicity and
kudos in the process, Mr. Malcolm said.
Rocketwerkz CEO and founder Dean Hall has reportedly pegged his salary at 10 percent above the next highest-paid
employee at his company, and offers unlimited annual leave and profit-sharing.
And just recently it was announced that Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon pegged his annual salary to US $81,840, and the
highest paid member of his senior leadership team was on
US $ 175,000. per year
“Shareholders and workers alike need to call companies out on excessive CEO pay as not just bad for society, but bad for
their own businesses,” Mr. Malcolm said.
“Fairer societies work better for all of us, wage earners and CEOs alike.”