My UCLAW colleague Steve Bank and Emory law professor George Georgiev have an op-ed in the LA Times on the titular topic:
In tweets and articles, Abigail Disney — a filmmaker, activist and notably the granddaughter of one of the company’s founders — has called out the Walt Disney Co. for paying its CEO Bob Iger an “insane” $65.6 million in 2018. That is more than 1,424 times the median salary of a Disney employee, a disparity she says has a “corrosive effect on society.”
In its defense, Disney pointed out that it has made “historic investments to expand the earning potential and upward mobility” of its employees, introducing a minimum wage of $15 at Disneyland, along with an educational initiative for hourly employees.
They argue that the comparison of median employee to CEO pay is inherently problematic:
... such comparisons are meaningless to the point of being misleading. These things tell us virtually nothing useful about the actual pay practices, or inequities, of organizations. The compensation packages of tens of thousands of unique employees cannot be reduced to a single number.
Go read the whole thing, please.
