Nor­mal­ly, sto­ries about cor­po­rate greed prompt me, and I sus­pect many oth­er read­ers, to mere­ly shrug and mum­ble: “So what else is new?”

But a report on CEOs get­ting 29 per­cent pay hikes in the time of Covid brought to mind a piece of sage advice I was offered many years ago, in the ware­house area of old Mon­tre­al where Leonard Cohen’s haunt­ing “Suzanne” is set.

A home­less man asked me to retrieve some deposit bot­tles from a side­walk exca­va­tion. Being young and fit, I jumped into the hole, absorbed the land­ing by bend­ing my knees — and split my jeans wide open.
In the serendip­i­tous way that good deeds are reward­ed, there was a tai­lor shop near­by. The elder­ly Jew­ish pro­pri­etor sewed the rip while I wait­ed. The bill for the ser­vice was a dollar.
I only had eighty cents.

“What? Are you nuts?”, the tai­lor said. “You walk around with­out a dol­lar in your pocket?”
“I’m a stu­dent,” I said, as if that explained penury and what was appar­ent­ly heed­less irresponsibility.

The tai­lor took the mon­ey, gave me a bale­ful look, and  hand­ed me back five cents.

“A les­son in life,” he said. “Always car­ry a dol­lar. Nev­er take a man’s last nickel.”

    A DOLLAR AND THEN SOME

Chief exec­u­tives now put an aver­age of 320 times more dol­lars in their pock­et than their typ­i­cal work­er. I’m in no posi­tion to judge whether they are worth the com­pen­sa­tion, but I sus­pect econ­o­mist John Ken­neth Gal­braith summed it up best:
“The salary of the chief exec­u­tive of a large cor­po­ra­tion is not a mar­ket award for achieve­ment. It is fre­quent­ly in the nature of a warm per­son­al ges­ture by the indi­vid­ual to himself.” 

                             FOR GLARING EXAMPLES…

Between its 737 Max being ground­ed and the dec­i­mat­ing effect of the Covid pan­dem­ic on air­lines, Boe­ing report­ed a $12 bil­lion loss for 2020. To off­set it, the com­pa­ny announced plans to lay off 30,000 work­ers, then hand­ed chief exec­u­tive David Cal­houn $21.1 mil­lion in compensation.

Nor­we­gian Cruise Line lost $4 bil­lion, fur­loughed 20 per­cent of its staff, while more than dou­bling the pay of CEO Frank Del Rio to $36.4 million.

With hotels around the world as good as emp­ty because of Covid, Hilton lost $720 mil­lion, laid off near­ly a quar­ter of its cor­po­rate staff, yet some­how found $55.9 mil­lion for chief exec­u­tive Chris Nassetta.

I don’t begrudge any­one a slight­ly inde­cent pay­check. But when a CEO makes “a warm per­son­al ges­ture” at the expense of oth­er people’s jobs, he should at least have to look each one in the eye, indi­vid­u­al­ly, and explain why their job and fam­i­ly are less impor­tant than his pay and bonus package.
And offer them a warm, per­son­al handshake.

What’s the bet on how many CEOs would will­ing­ly make the effort? Or come up with a plau­si­ble ratio­nale? Or get their hand shaken?

                            A LESSON IN PERSPECTIVE 

How­ev­er, the world’s rich­est CEO, Jeff Bezos, did promise share­hold­ers that Ama­zon will become “Earth’s Best Employ­er and Earth’s Safest Place to Work.”
He’s also sell­ing a seat on his upcom­ing space flight for $28-mil­lion.
Hope­ful­ly Mr Bezos and who­ev­er goes along for the ride, will look down and call to mind this obser­va­tion from astro­naut Neil Arm­strong, the first human to walk on the moon:

“It sud­den­ly struck me that that tiny pea, pret­ty and blue, was the Earth.
I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blot­ted out the plan­et Earth.
I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”

Mean­while, Amazon’s cur­rent ethos was summed up in a con­ver­sa­tion a New York Times reporter had with an Ama­zon exec­u­tive who spent sev­er­al years as a book buy­er for the online retailer.

“We had beat­en pub­lish­ers into sub­mis­sion,” the exec­u­tive said, not­ing gid­di­ly that when “Ama­zon asked for a nick­el, pub­lish­ers know (sic) to give a dime.”

At a guess, I’d say he’s one of many exec­u­tives who nev­er had their jeans sewn up by a wise Jew­ish tailor.
More’s the pity.

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