A good friend of mine forwarded a link to this article in the Toronto Star about CEO remuneration. Far be it from me to begrudge anyone from making a lot of money. After all, that's how our economic system is designed. Ordinarily, there wouldn’t be much of note on this topic. CEOs of major Canadian companies make an extraordinary amount of money.
For example, the CEO and founder of Gildan Activewear, Glenn Chamandy, took home $16.5 million for his troubles in 2020. The scandal plagued SNC-Lavalin’s CEO Ian Edward was compensated to the tune of $8.02 million for 2020. The head of Telus, Darren Entwistle, was rewarded with a total of $16.04 million in 2020.
So, same old, same old, isn’t it? The fat cats get fatter? Except, I believe my friend’s outrage is prompted by a promise that these same CEOs made when the pandemic hit. They all pledged to take a pay cut, forego some or all of their salary or redirect it to charity. How'd that work out for them for 2020?
- Glenn Chamandy at Gildan doubled his pay from 2019.
- Ian Edward of SNC-Lavalin took a $200,000 pay cut, but it was topped up by a $5.61 million bonus.
- Darren Entwistle with Telus found his total compensation went up by 24 percent over 2019.
If you’re a CEO of a major corporation, it doesn’t look like there was much sharing of any pandemic pain, at least on the surface. According to the article, Gildan even lost $225 million last year, but still managed to find a few dollars for their CEO.
For all of the people laid off during this pandemic, for all of the essential workers working their asses off to get our groceries delivered, our packages to our doorsteps and our patients and elderly cared for, this has to be a bitter pill to swallow.
This is a far cry from the iconic ice cream brand, Ben and Jerry’s. Back in the 1980s, the founders decreed that no one would make more than five times the wages of the lowest paid worker. This would keep the pay of Ben and Jerry’s CEO quite low.
Except, they had difficulty recruiting executive talent because you can only eat so much ice cream in compensation over actual dollars.
They raised the ratio to 7 to 1, then ultimately 17 to 1. But even at the highest rate, CEO and executive compensation at Ben and Jerry’s was just a fraction of what others paid. Say the lowest salary at Ben and Jerry's was $50,000. The CEO would "only" make $850,000.
Then, Unilever took over in 2000, and not a peep has been heard since about executive compensation at Ben and Jerry’s.
We do know that historically, when society becomes top heavy in compensation or inequality, Mother Nature or the French take over and see to it that the appropriate parties are beheaded, incarcerated or banished. We were fortunate to take a tour of the palace at Versailles a few years ago. It’s a wonder that Louis XIV and Louis XV survived the public's perception of such opulence. But it caught up with Louis XVI who was beheaded died at age 38.
However, we learn very little from history. Remember a little thing called SARS from 2003? How a strategic stockpile of N95 masks created after SARS became someone’s budget line item so they were never replaced when they expired? How the federal government ‘reallocated’ resources for Canada’s pandemic alert system, the Global Public Health Intelligence Network (GPHIN) in early 2019? There weren’t any threats and Public Health basically muzzled GPHIN. By the time the pandemic hit, GPHIN had been gutted and valuable time was lost.
Ah, history. Ah, karma.
I'll leave you with a few views from that trip to Versailles.
